Membership

Membership in our congregation has two elements to it: spiritual and civil. It can be easy to take the first for granted, and so usually when we use the word "member" we're usually talking more about the civil element, which has the spiritual element "baked in". But it's good to be clear about both.

Spiritual Membership

The first type of membership in our congregation is what we might call spiritual membership, which is that someone has Christian faith and is therefore a member of the one Christian Church, and considers Concordia to be "church home". Our Lutheran Confessions describe what the one Christian Church is:

Our churches teach that one holy Church is to remain forever. The Church is the congregation of saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.
Augsburg Confession, Article XII

Notice in this quote that the word "church" is used in two different ways: capital-C "Church" refers to the one Christian Church, which is the totality of all Christians (saints). There are not many Churches, but only one, as we also confess in the ancient creeds of the Church.

...I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic Church...
Nicene Creed, Article 3

And when the word "church" is used with a small-c, it refers to a local congregation. So "our churches" in the above quote refers to "the many local places where the one Christian church finds its concrete expression". We usually call these locations "congregations".

So there is only one Church, which finds local expression in many churches/congregations.

Spiritual membership at Concordia then refers to your Christian faith: you are a member of our congregation in the sense that Concordia—a place where the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion) are properly administered—is your church home. You believe and confess what our congregation believes, teaches, and confesses because it is in accordance with God's Word in the Bible.

In this sense, it's more common to hear a term like "regular attender" than "member", because most often we use "member" in the sense below. But we do hear the word used in Holy Scripture with reference to the body of Christ (e.g. 1 Corinthians 12:27), so we want to be clear about this specifically Christian sense of the word.

Civil Membership

Concordia is first and foremost a Christian congregation. Even if we were not organized in any civil sense, we would still be a Christian congregation. However, we are a registered charity under the Canadian federal government and a registered Society under the BC Societies Act. This means we have a civil element to our congregation as well. Under our constitution and bylaws as a BC Society, we have two types of membership: Communicant Member and Voting Member.

A Communicant Member is someone who not only considers our congregation to be their church home, but desires to publicly affirm that. A Communicant Member is baptized in the Christian faith and formally accepts what our congregation believes, teaches, and confesses, which we list in our constitution and bylaws as the basis for our congregation. Namely, that is the Bible (the Old and New Testaments) and the explanations of the Bible found in the Book of Concord (the Lutheran Confessions).

A Voting Member is simply a Communicant Member who has reached the age of legal majority in the province (19 years old) and who has attended at least one voters' assembly meeting within the last three years.

Becoming a Member

There are two general ways to become a Communicant/Voting Member of Concordia:

1. transfer from another LCC congregation or one in formal fellowship with LCC; or

2. profession of faith and acceptance of our constitution & bylaws

People who are already a part of another confessional Lutheran congregation may join ours by requesting a letter of transfer from their previous congregation. Once we receive that, our pastors and leadership will acknowledge that and receive the people into formal membership at Concordia.

For those who may desire to join the congregation from another denomination or from no church background, or for those who have grown up in our congregation and have gone through catechesis (basic Christian instruction) the process is a little different. The first steps below aren't necessarily in a strict order, but this is the general process.

1. Become a regular attender in worship.

2. Learn what we believe, teach, and confess through worship, Bible study, and other groups such as Elements.

3. Indicate your desire to become a member to our pastor(s).

4. Once our pastor(s) is confident that your confession of faith is in alignment with our congregation's, you'll be invited to profess that through signing a statement of agreement with our constitution & bylaws. You'll then be received into Membership by our Governing Team and received through profession of faith in a worship service.

5. After being received by the Governing Team, you are a Communicant Member. Then, if you are at least 19 years old, after attending one voters' meeting you'll be considered a Voting Member and eligible to vote at the following voters' meeting.

We want to encourage all who consider Concordia to be their church home to become Communicant Members. It is a good and healthy thing to join together with others in agreement about the things we believe and confess together.

If you're interested in becoming a Member and want express that and/or learn more about the process, please fill in the brief form below, and we'll follow up with you.