I’ve been immersing myself in CS Lewis these past few weeks while writing a series of posts on his books. I came across a short essay he wrote on church membership this morning with a great description of what it means to be a member:

“I am afraid that when we describe a man as ‘a member of the Church’ we usually mean nothing Pauline; we mean only that he is a unit–that he is one more specimen of some kind of things as X and Y and Z. How true membership in a body differs from inclusion in a collective may be seen in the structure of a family. The grandfather, the parents, the grown-up son, the child, the dog, and the cat are true members (in the organic sense), precisely because they are not members or units of a homogeneous class. They are not interchangeable. Each person is almost a species in himself. The mother is not simply a different person from the daughter; she is a different kind of person. The grown-up brother is not simply one unit in the class children; he is a separate estate of the realm. The father and grandfather are almost as different as the cat and the dog. If you subtract any one member, you have not simply reduced the family in number; you have inflicted an injury on its structure.”

Admittedly, I often think of membership in the church in more of a collective sense rather than a familiar sense. Being in the middle of planting a church, as well as taking potential members through our second membership class, this was a timely read and reminded me of Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians of the church as a body with different members (like arms and legs).

I love reading Lewis, who was not a proper theologian or professional minister, on things usually left to professionals. While I don’t always agree, it is refreshing to read him for his clarity and logic. He remains (usually) unconstrained from theological or denominational prejudices and writes with simple common sense.