This afternoon’s members’ meeting was heavy to say the least. But walking out of the church, I found myself profoundly grateful, not despite the weight of it, but in many ways because of it. These moments cut through the surface and show us what church membership really means.

God’s Means of Grace

    Meaningful church membership is more than filling out forms or joining a club. It is God’s appointed means of grace for His people. When we covenant together as members of a local body, we’re placing ourselves under the care, accountability, and encouragement of brothers and sisters who have committed to shepherd our souls and walk alongside us. Today reminded me that this isn’t always comfortable, but it is always good. God works through His people, gathered and committed, to sanctify us and sustain us through every season.

The Seriousness of Sin

    We were also confronted today with the seriousness of sin and the necessity of addressing it when it arises among us. This is never easy. It would be far more comfortable to look away, to minimize, to excuse. But church membership is the prerequisite to church discipline precisely because discipline is an act of love that can only be exercised within covenant relationship. When we ignore sin, we abandon one another to its destruction. When we address it with tears and trembling, we demonstrate that we love each other too much to let sin have the final word. 

Little Victories Worth Celebrating

    Yet even in the heaviness, there were little victories to celebrate. Covenanted members showing up faithfully. God’s provision for the whole year. Honest conversations happening with grace and truth held in tension. Prayers offered with genuine concern for one another’s souls. These are not small things. They are evidences of God’s Spirit at work among us, knitting us together even when—especially when—the road is hard. Each act of faithfulness, each word spoken in love, each decision made with eternity in view: these are reasons for quiet, profound joy.

Love Over Judgment

    In my sermon on Romans 14, we explored Paul’s instruction not to pass judgment on one another in disputable matters. To recognize that we have freedom in Christ and that love must be our guiding ethic. Today’s meeting brought that passage into sharp relief. We may not always agree on every matter of church life, on every prudential decision, on every assessment of a situation. But our call is not to uniformity of opinion; it is to love one another well. We don’t all have to see things identically to walk together faithfully. What we must do is extend the same grace to one another that Christ has extended to us, refusing to condemn where Scripture leaves room for conscience, and choosing always to prioritize the unity of the body and the good of our brothers and sisters.

Unity, Not Uniformity

    That’s what delights me about members’ meetings, even the hard ones. We don’t gather expecting everyone to think alike or feel alike about every issue. We gather expecting something better: unity. Unity rooted not in our agreement but in our shared commitment to Christ, to one another, and to the mission He’s given us. Unity that can hold tension, absorb disagreement, and still choose covenant love. Today we didn’t have uniformity, but we had something far more beautiful and far more biblical.

Grateful to God for MCF

    I am so deeply grateful to God for Metropolitan Christian Fellowship. For a church that takes membership seriously enough to have meetings like today’s. For brothers and sisters willing to show up, engage honestly, pray fervently, and commit themselves to the messy, glorious work of being the body of Christ together. This is what it means to be the church. Not a perfect people, but a forgiven people; not a gathering of the likeminded, but a family bound by blood that isn’t our own.


    God is gracious. His means of grace are sufficient. And I’m honored to walk this road with you all.


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Author: Japhet Indico
Pastor and a member of MCF-Cebu