Inattention.

I’d guess it’s the reason your church rolls are five, six, even seven times larger than your average Sunday attendance. Everything in life gravitates toward disorder and deterioration without attention. If you need evidence, look at your lawn. Healthy grass is a product of attention. You must pull weeds. Water in the morning. Mow often. Spray and fertilize. Neglect the yard and entropy follows.

Likely, pastor, you inherited a decade or more of inattention to the rolls and, by this point, have probably added to it. As my high school coach used to tell me, “Josh it’s really not about where you are … it’s about where you’re going.” I find that encouragement helpful and hopeful as we think through this essential area of membership that has been neglected in Baptist life.

Before you begin evaluating your membership roll, here are three words of caution:

1. Be patient

Love is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4a). It takes years to build relational trust in a church. Take time to build trust by preaching God’s Word and loving God’s people. Tackle books of the Bible and never skip hard passages. Live out what you preach by loving your people. Answer phone calls. Attend different Sunday school classes. Counsel struggling couples. Visit the sick. Volunteer in the children’s and student ministries. Disciple faithful men. Equip leaders. Pray for your people. Be patient.

2. Work within your system

You (most likely) aren’t the first pastor of your church. Godly men, women, and children have prayed, served, taught, evangelized, worshiped, and systematically organized your church into the coherent and vibrant body it is today. The coherence you experience flows from your constitution and bylaws.

Before you start skipping merrily on your way in an effort to trim the rolls, get to know your system. Learn how your autonomous congregation organizes herself. Talk to seasoned saints who can give you greater insight into why certain structures are in place. Don’t break your constitution and bylaws to get to the finish line sooner—that will lead to discord and a loss in confidence.

3. Practice regenerate membership

Managing the rolls is deeply doctrinal. According to Article 6 of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, we confess: “A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel ….”

Membership is for baptized believers, which means we must have practices in place that support our doctrine. This may mean tending to your constitution and bylaws. Make candidates take a class on membership essentials. Have them sit with a pastor to share their understanding of the gospel and personal testimony. In most cases, don’t baptize anyone who isn’t moving into membership. Cleaning the rolls without having meaningful practices that support regenerate membership is like mowing a yard full of weeds. It only appears to have solved the problem. The weeds continue to spread.

Now that you have prepped the ground, here’s a few practical tips to help you get started:

Recruit a team

When I began trimming, I began with a team. I looked for people who had four characteristics: They understood and supported the vision; they were knowledgeable about the history of our members; they were willing and hardworking; and they possessed wisdom in handling potentially difficult or awkward conversations. Get like-minded people around you to help share the load.

Set priorities

Teach the team the basics of church membership. Guide them through the doctrine of church discipline. Coach them on how the roll is a tool to identify who the pastors are to lead. Encourage them with the tremendous opportunity of reclaiming straying members.

Think concentric circles

Our team started with non-resident members before we moved to resident members. Not only will this keep your efforts organized, but it prepares your team for more difficult cases later in the process.

Get to work

It’s much easier to talk about removing members from church membership rolls than actually doing it. But do it we must. Pastor, go after your sheep.

Our team spent hours finding good contact information, drafting countless emails, making hundreds of phone calls, messaging dozens of people on social media platforms, and having face-to-face conversations with local relatives. Then we took all our work to member meeting after member meeting and had the church look over our recommendations and vote. Our hope through it all was to reclaim as many sheep back to the fold as possible and give the pastors clarity on who they were to shepherd.

Peter writes to the elders of the persecuted church, “So I exhort the elders among you … shepherd the flock of God that is among you ….” (1 Peter 5:1-2). The membership roll is your flock. Pastor, you will give an account for how you shepherd them (Hebrews 13:17). Get to work.

But remember, member care is never finished. It’s a lot like a lawn. It will always need attention. When you cultivate a healthy lawn, in time, weeds become the exception. You notice them and it takes less effort to remove them. So, begin the good work—the hard work—of tending to your member rolls.

As pastors, sometimes it’s hard to imagine there are people in the church who don’t like us. Maybe it’s a small minority, even just one or two people. But it’s true—sometimes people won’t like you. Maybe it’s because of decisions you’ve made. Maybe it’s your priorities or personality. Maybe it’s your preaching or even your clothing.

No matter the reason, this can be a hard thing for pastors to accept. Even if you’re not bothered by the opinions of others, it can be difficult to lead those who may be upset with you. So how do you lead people who seem like they don’t like you? Three simple, perhaps unsurprising ways:

1. Be glad they love Jesus.

It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s all about Jesus. Therefore, if these individuals truly love Jesus, this is something to celebrate. Even if they’re upset over trivial or secondary things, we can be glad they have the main thing—and that’s Jesus. Perhaps this isn’t true of all, but for those who love Jesus and just disagree with you, you still have more in common with them than anyone else in the world. You have experienced the same grace of God in Jesus Christ. This is something to be glad about.

2. Empathize with them.

Depending on why they’re upset, this may be difficult. But it’s at least possible to genuinely empathize with people you feel are in the wrong. If someone is upset (even over secondary things like music style or how long you preach), we can genuinely try and understand why they’re upset. At a minimum, trying to understand where they’re coming from may help limit your frustration. Of course, there may be exceptions to this rule.

3. Love and serve no matter what.

I tell my church family often that one of the most important times to gather with God’s people is when we don’t feel like gathering with God’s people. The same is true for us as pastors. One of the most important times to love and serve God’s people is when we don’t feel like loving and serving God’s people. And this includes the people who may not be very happy with you.

This may all seem simple. It is. It’s simple to understand, but at times very difficult to implement. Too often, however, our immediate response to criticism is, “Well, I don’t care what people think.” I’m all for caring more about what God thinks than what people think, but let’s not forget: we’re to care for the people in our flock. This means we should care what they think, at least to an extent.

A book that has helped me greatly with leading when people don’t like me is When People are Big and God is Small by Ed Welch. If you are deeply bothered by opinions others may have of you, I encourage you to read this book. It will challenge you in making sure your fear of God always trumps your fear of man.

We should be glad they love Jesus (assuming they do). We should empathize when they disagree or are upset. We should love and serve no matter what. After all, Jesus loved us while we were yet sinners. We can do the same for God’s people.

When I was in high school, all I needed to begin a dating relationship was to know a girl liked me. I didn’t consider other important factors, such as the girl’s character or relationship history. As a result, these relationships always ended badly.

Church membership is often treated this way. Many issues in our churches occur because we are often not clear with those seeking membership about what we believe and what we expect from them. Why? Because sometimes—like I was in high school—we’re just happy someone likes us. As a result, these relationships can often end badly.

That is why your membership process matters. At our church, we use a membership class to ensure people understand our expectations, what we believe, and how we operate. Here are a few best practices to consider if you are thinking about implementing a membership class or want to improve your existing membership process:

Be doctrinally firm

Doctrine is critical to maintaining unity in the church. Some doctrines are first-tier issues; others are second- or third-tier. A membership class is a great venue to be very frank about how your church views doctrine. Helping prospective members understand clearly what church leadership believes could save you much unnecessary heartache in the future.

Invite current members to the class

We ask our members to be table leaders in our membership classes. Table leaders interview incoming members, try to answer their questions, and ask them to dinner at their house. Church leaders and elders often conduct further interviews with prospective members when needed. Once the interview process is over, the table leaders present the prospective members to the congregation, share their testimonies, and recommend them for membership. We vote, we celebrate, and we welcome.

Careful in, beautiful out 

One of our deacons leads an exit care ministry. His job is to follow up with members who are moving to other churches. We love these people and often cry as our deacon reads letters at our member meetings from these departing brothers or sisters telling us of the church they are moving on to and how they still love our church. These departures are both beautiful and hard. We always say, “If leaving wasn’t hard, then it wasn’t good.” This healthy attitude starts at our membership class.

Following these practices creates a huge win for our church. Not only are we helping prospective members clearly understand where our church stands on important doctrinal issues, but our current members get a refresher course on what it means to be a church member and take ownership in that process. At the same time, relationships are formed between existing members and new members.

We typically have at least one prospective member decide to not join the church each time we have a class. Some want to wait and pray before joining; others move on to other churches that agree with them on issues that are personally important to them.

I praise the Lord for all of this. I am glad for these people. I am grateful that the unity in our church has been protected, and I am thankful that our current members get to see—and participate—in this important process.