“Membership: Every Body in The Body”
By: Rev. Dr. Jeffrey A. Schooley
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The other night, Netflix’s algorithm got it right. I was scrolling for something to watch after Bri went to bed when whatever soul-hacking AI Netflix uses to analyze me and my tastes fed me up a nice, short documentary titled Join Or Die (2023). Feeling rather life-inclined, I was intrigued to know what I needed to do in order to stave off death. The answer? Pay attention to Robert Putnam’s contemporary classic Bowling Alone (2000). The documentary was largely a favorable retrospective on the circumstances that led to Putnam’s 1995 essay that would later become his wildly popular book in 2000.
If you’re not familiar with this work, Wikipedia’s introductory paragraph provides a nice synopsis:
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital”. Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active civic engagement which a strong democracy requires from its citizens.
Even if it’s been more than a decade since you last thought of Bowling Alone, my gut tells me that you already have a passing familiarity with it, since this work took America by storm in the year or so leading up to September 11, 2001 (at which point, all previous topics of conversation seemed to cease).
I found Netflix’s algorithm’s timing suspicious because in the weeks leading up to my watching this film, there had been conversations about a new membership class for the church. By my best estimate, there may be up to 17 total people who would be good candidates for membership in the church. (For some perspective, that would be a HUGE membership class for our church; it would represent a more than 10-percent growth in membership in a single day!).
But there’s always challenges to membership in Presbyterian churches because unlike our Catholic siblings, our theology does not proclaim that one’s eternal salvation directly correlates to one’s earthly membership in the church. The best representation of this difference is in the fact that non-members can receive the eucharist. I don’t advise trying that at a Catholic church. Additionally, we happily accept non-members into the full tapestry of our life together. Non-members can do everything a member can do with one exception: serve on one of the councils of the church (read: Session, Deacons, Trustees).
In addition to this theological flexibility around membership, we also have to pay attention to the moment in time in which we live. We are still living in the “bowling alone” world that Putnam described so well a quarter-century ago. (Quick aside: Putnam named his book Bowling Alone after discovering that bowling alleys were thriving with customers, but that bowling leagues had diminished considerably since their peak in the years immediately following World War Two. Putnam realized for those two things to be true, people had to still be bowling, but… bowling alone).
And so, a conversation about church membership sits at the intersection of two phenomena: a theology that emphasizes one’s participation – but not necessarily membership in – a congregation and a society in which “joining” isn’t really in vogue. My first decade in ordained church leadership has largely been lived at this intersection. Every church I’ve served (albeit to differing degrees of severity) has emphasized the need to grow membership. Some churches (not ours!) find their ego and identity in church growth so that every member who dies and isn’t replaced by a new member is just a sign that the church is “dying.” Other churches desire membership because they think it is good for both the person joining and the people who are joined. For my part, I’ve tried different approaches to honestly addressing the topic in its current context, but even my best efforts – efforts that are maybe too googly-eyed for me to authentically pull off when I describe joining the church as a “love letter” wherein a person tells the congregation, “I love you” and the congregation responds with “we love you too” – even my best efforts have felt wanting. Simply put, my challenge isn’t just to overcome spiritual nerves that folks might rightly have about joining a church, but to also confront the anti-joining status quo that is part of the spirit of the age in which we live.
But this is where Putnam is so helpful because he believes in joining. He believes in it deeply. His academic career is over (he turned 84 years old in January), but it is clear that even a life lived dedicated to this topic did not complete his efforts to plumb the depth of all of joining’s power and potential. Indeed, many of our big problems today can trace at least part of their origin back to this anti-joining impulse. We are all too well aware of political partisanship – which would seem to imply more people joining two opposing parties – but the reality is that “independents” are the largest “party” in American politics. According to a Gallup poll from January 2024, registered independents accounted for 40% of all registered voters, while both the Republican and Democratic parties only had 27% of registered membership each. (The remaining 6% went to small, third parties). Of course, one might contend that registration as an “independent” was bound to increase as different states began to allow that designation, but the reality is that states only began to allow that designation after a critical mass of people basically said, “I don’t want to join a party; make me an independent,” which only substantiates Putnam’s point. The result of this burgeoning “independent” affiliation is that political parties chase this essential voting bloc, even at the expense of their well-reasoned party platforms. (Indeed, in the past presidential election cycle, the Republican party did not even create an official platform, in part because platforms are too binding – that is, too much like membership – and is thus an electoral liability).
But even beyond the world of politics, this anti-joining impulse has far-reaching social implications. Fewer people participate in Parent-Teacher Associations now than ever before. Our present struggles to pass levies to fund our schools is probably not a surprise once we realize this. (And not just Bowling Green, but Perrysburg too… as well as hundreds of school districts throughout the state!). Organizations like the PTA – or Kiwanis or Rotary or bowling leagues or dinner clubs or bridge clubs or all the rest – mean that we are not being put into conversation with our neighbors. It means we live in the echo chamber of our own heads (and as anyone with anxiety and/or depression can tell you, “inside my own head” can be one of the worst residencies one can keep!). And what makes matters even worse is that America’s population has more than doubled between 1950 and 2024 (from 154 million to 341.8 million in nearly 75 years). In theory, we should need double the number of bowling leagues!
And while Putnam makes a good case for rekindling a society of joining, our theology makes an even stronger case. Proverbs (27:17) reminds us that “as iron sharpens iron, so does one person sharpen another.” This piece of ancient wisdom reminds us that we are only made better in who we’re created to be as we join our lives alongside others’ lives. But the strongest endorsement for joining the church (in particular) comes from the Apostle Paul who wrote in First Corinthians 12, “you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Indeed, the entire 12th chapter is dedicated to extolling the virtues of being members of the Body of Christ. And that word – “member” – is significant in this body metaphor as “member” derives from the Latin “membrum,” which literally means “limb.” We are meant to explore this metaphor to its very depths. We are meant to visualize a pile of limbs as the horror movie/stuff of nightmares it is, while also seeing that a bunch of assembled limbs can become a body capable of embracing and loving.
Ours is a world desperately in need of a hug. We live in a society – even a community – where too many people have become too accustomed to only seeing piles of limbs wherever their eyes survey. Plagued by such a perpetual horror show, it is no wonder people can act so horrifically.
I believe one of the primary missions of the Church today is to provide an alternative; it is to offer hugs where typically only horrors attend. I believe it is our duty to our neighbors – as an extension of Christ’s command to love our neighbors – to demonstrate how they can bring their member/limb to become part of a body bigger than them.
Of course, in the cosmic sense, you are already a member of the Body of Christ by dint of your baptism, your worship of God, and your receiving the eucharist (which, significantly, is also called “the body of Christ”). But you can’t necessarily blame your neighbor if they fail to see the cosmic truth in their midst. It is reasonable that they might need to see membership in more immediate, earthly ways.
And so, if you are someone who receives a phone call or email from me or any other member in the Membership Committee, I hope you’ll take the time to honestly consider joining the church. I believe that there are indescribable personal benefits to this decision, but there are also pro-social consequences to joining as well. And if you are already a member, I hope this article and a focus on membership will rekindle in you a love for the membership you already share.
While there is no reason to believe that a failure to join makes a person less Christian (whatever that might mean anyway?) or even less connected (we have good examples of non-members who are plenty connected!), I’m inspired by Putnam and the scriptures alike to continue to encourage membership. Not just for ourselves individually, not even for the church as a community, but because we live in a world full of lonely limbs looking for a place where they can rest their tired, fearful bones. Let us, then, model for them what it looks like to bring their “member” into a body bigger than themselves. Amen.
