If you love Jesus you should love what Jesus loves, and that ultimately means you should be an official, active, and serving member of your local church (Eph. 5:25).
Church membership should be normal for Christians. Lives lived in regular accountability demonstrate the gospel’s reality to the world, particularly through the mutual love that Jesus identified as the mark of his followers. This is both biblical and strengthens evangelistic witness. Weaker and newer Christians gain feeding and accountability through membership, and mature and seasoned believers demonstrate authentic Christian living.
Hebrews calls believers to “consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works,” explicitly warning against forsaking assembly “as the manner of some is” (Heb. 10:24–25). This suggests participation isn’t optional but essential to spiritual health.
Church membership preserves biblical truth by establishing who bears responsibility for rooting out false teaching and protecting the gospel when leadership itself becomes compromised. Paul’s letter to the Galatians exemplifies this. I say this as a positional elder in my church — Paul appealed to the whole congregation rather than leadership alone to address doctrinal corruption. Think about it: how are you to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2), which positions mutual care as a central Christian obligation, if you’re not actively in a membership role? Thessalonians similarly exhorts believers to “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thess 5:11), framing encouragement as a reciprocal responsibility that requires presence and investment.
Healthy membership equips believers to recognize heresy when taught or communicated and transforms them from passive consumers into active defenders of the faith.
Acts depicts the early church persevering in apostolic teaching, communion, and gathering daily, with believers holding possessions in common (Acts 2:42–47), a portrait of intensive communal engagement rather than individual isolated devotion or nominal affiliation.
Ultimately, practicing membership glorifies God as Christians gather to form his body, living under the life giving words of scripture, fellowshipping with one another sacrificially, and reflecting his character.
As New York City sits under the oppressive rule or an Islamo-Marxist Mayor, Americans must remember NYC was once a Christian city.
Consider this quote from Philip Schaff, which comes a century before this picture.
“In 1854 there were in New York city, forty-eight Episcopal churches, forty-eight Presbyterian, thirty-five Methodist, nineteen Reformed Dutch, twenty-nine Baptist, eight Congregational, five Lutheran, and twenty-four Roman Catholic; besides the church edifices of several smaller denominations and sects, which must swell the number now to nearly 300.”
By Schaff's estimation, it was the prominence of these churches and their Sabbath-keeping that prevented New York City from becoming a “second Paris" (a city of infidels).
Tragically, as New York's churches departed from the faith, NYC became like Paris, so that today both are overrun by Muslims and Globalists.
For NYC, the largest part of the vacuum has come at the hands of liberal Christians who denied the gospel and emptied the churches and orthodox Christians who accommodated their faith and practice to culture so that churches no longer impressed Christian values on society.
Yes, there remains a remnant. But their voice has been drowned out by the "Sabbath-keeping" of Muslims praying in Times Square.
Hearing Mandami remake America into the image of his own ideologies is bad. But knowing what Christians abandoned to give him this platform only makes it worse.
If this is not a wake up call for the church in America's greatest city, I am not sure what is. But as America celebrates our country's 250th, may those Christians who love our country be so bold as to ask God to make the places where they live, Christian again.
The nations and its cities belong to Christ, and he has given his church the assignment of preaching the gospel to all peoples, so that churches would fill the cities, and cities would be turned upside down, as idols are thrown down and Christ is lifted up.
America began as a such a Christian commonwealth, with Protestant churches at the center of the city and civil spheres of various sizes shaped by a cadre of customs, laws, and commitments drawn from the Bible. But today the totalitarian ideologies of secularism, socialism, and Islam have moved into territory once occupied by Christians in the America.
Therefore, as July 4 drives us to consider our past, Christ's people must ask the Father to give the Son all the cities of the earth.
How often Psalm 2:8 has been used to catalyze missionaries to leave America and go the other side of the world. And rightly so. But the same Psalm should spur Americans to once again pray for our nation and all of its cities--the ones that were built by Christians and for the glory of Christ.
In 2026, we must remember our nation's Christian heritage and the full measure of our Christian calling. And we must not think that Christ will permit smug secularism and Mohammedan Marxism to win the day
Psalm 2:8 invites the Son to "ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession." And Revelation 2:26–27 applies this Psalm to the church. So on this day, as we celebrate America's history, may we remember its heritage and ask the Lord to have mercy on us and to pour out his grace again.
BREAKING: The Somali flag flying over Buffalo City Hall has been reportedly STOLEN just hours after it was raised.
Buffalo's Democrat Mayor Sean Ryan, claims that individuals cut the cable in the middle of the night and took the flag down. He then goes on a rant about "diversity."
Police are currently investigating, and no charges have been filed.
Imagine if a pregnant lady broke into your house and had a baby in your living room, and then says she now has a legal right to stay in your house FOREVER — that's how insane it is granting birthright citizenship to illegals.
Official transcript from the US Senate on May 30, 1866. Senator Jacob Howard, who introduced the 14th Amendment:
"This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens...”
SCOTUS got this ruling 100% wrong. A total travesty.