A Pastor's Reflection: The Benefits of Membership
VFT
Are some people more special than others? As the pastor, to whom do you owe your time? These are important questions because you will have people pulling on your calendar and schedule and you’ll have to decide to whom, among the many people you encounter, you should give your time. Let me illustrate this point. At any given time you will have people in your church who need consistent and regular counseling. You might set up a weekly time to get together with a person in your church who is struggling with a besetting sin. You might meet with him for prayer, Bible study, and counsel. But what should you do when you have a visitor to your church, a person who needs counseling and a large investment of your time? To whom do you give priority? To the member or to the visitor?
For me, this was always (and still is) an easy question to answer. I always gave priority to members of the church. You see, there are benefits of church membership. A church member has made a commitment to join the congregation, serve the other members of the body, and even contribute in various ways to the life of the church. The visitor, on the other hand, has made no such commitment. I have found over the years that many visitors would do their best to take up a lot of my time, use a lot of church resources, and then leave after a while. Like someone using a free trial membership, once the time came to make a commitment they would flee and move on to the next church to do the same. Too many people treat the church like a gym—once the church no longer suits their needs, they dispose of it...