What HCC Believes About Membership

In life, there are two levels of family membership: the global family of humanity and your local family unit. Similarly, God’s family has two levels, the global Christian family and your local church family. While you were not offered any choice regarding membership in the global and local human families, God offers every person the opportunity to become a member of His global family. The Bible says that everyone who believes and confesses that Jesus Christ died and was raised from the dead is given the right to become a child of God (Romans 10:9, 10), and we accomplish this by inviting Him into our lives to dwell personally with us (John 1:12). On a local level, every Christian further chooses whether they want to become a member of a local Christian church family. Belonging to the Heritage Community Church (HCC) is the result of one such choice.

For a human to be completely healthy, they must feel they belong to the global human race, and a local family unit, as we discussed above. This process of bonding with the local family is not only an indicator of an individual’s general human health, but is conducive to it as well. The Christian life is no different. A Christian’s spiritual health is directly related to how thoroughly and deeply they bond with a healthy local family of God. On the other hand, the writer of Hebrews warns about the danger of not affiliating with the local church (Hebrews 10:25). For these reasons, HCC regards local church membership as essential, and is committed to facilitate this connection for the Christian.

Therefore, HCC provides several landmarks along the path to membership.

After the initial visit to HCC and greeting at the door, each person will have received a bulletin, a welcome from the pulpit, and a letter from the Lead Pastor.

After these casual interactions, several more personal encounters follow. These include a call from the Fellowship Pastor and an invitation to attend the monthly Guest Connection Point (GCP). At the GCP, literature describing HCC doctrine and culture is distributed, with an explanation of how to join the local HCC family of God.

Joining the HCC family is initiated by attending the HCC Basics Class. This class is taught by the Fellowship Pastor or another church leader, and provides a survey of the church doctrine and culture. Attendees will also have the opportunity to interact with the Lead Pastor and ask questions about the HCC family.

After this four-week course, each person will have the opportunity to attend the H-101 Membership class on a Sunday afternoon. This culminates with signing the HCC Family Covenant, which makes you a local member of the family of God.

Generally, our society has mutual expectations of any kind of “membership”. If you join a pool for example, you expect the pool water to be clear and the facility clean and safe. In turn, the pool expects you to respect the facility, pay your dues and perhaps attend some meetings. In the same way, there are mutual expectations regarding joining a local family of God. Here are some mutual expectations from both church and member sides:

The church expects that each member will:

Participate in opportunities of bonding, discipling, serving, and evangelizing.
Faithfully support the church with Sunday worship attendance, finance (tithing), and positive attitudes.
Respect the physical plant of the church.
Defend and promote the spiritual and relational culture of HCC, as articulated in the doctrinal statement and the HCC grooves.

The member expects that the church will:

Provide ample opportunities for bonding, discipling, serving, and evangelizing.
Deliver high quality Christian worship music, preaching and teaching.
Offer a safe, rich, and nurturing environment for the spiritual development of children.
Make sure that the physical plant of the church is well kept.
Maintain a high level of moral integrity among the staff and lay leadership.
Provide the sacred services of communion, child dedication, baptism and marriage.

When these expectations are met consistently, God’s presence--His visible, tangible influence in the church--will be most evident. This helps us achieve HCC”s central purpose: To nurture love for Jehovah God, ourselves and others and provide a salubrious environment, that is, one promoting health and well being for all those attending HCC.

Members should bear in mind that their interaction with HCC is a two-way street. By joining a local church, the member is committing to be a positive influence in the local family of God, and vice-versa. The member also gives the spiritual leadership of HCC the right to shepherd them in their walk with Jesus. For example, suppose a member of HCC is married and blatantly violates the principles of Ephesians 5 regarding healthy Christian marriage. By virtue of their church membership, the couple gives HCC leadership permission to lead their marriage gently toward health. On the other hand, every member of the church has the obligation to engage the leadership of the church if they notice some lapse in ministry integrity. For this reason, HCC leadership actively invites membership feedback regarding the HCC ministry and its practices.

The commitment of the HCC leadership to shepherd the souls God has entrusted to them is also expressed in HCC policy about not performing child dedications, baptisms or marriage ceremonies for those who are not members of the HCC local family of God. Our reasoning is that performing these rites carries with it the person’s permission for the church leadership to shepherd them in the future, which is very unlikely to ever occur in the case of nonmembers. Our chief goal is to nurture the salubrious life, which can involve restoration, as found in 2 Corinthians 2, where Paul describes the results of a successful restoration. We certainly understand that life is complex and dynamic; therefore, HCC leadership intends to evaluate all cases having extenuating circumstances on a case-by-case basis. This option ensures that love--not law--governs our actions and that “Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).