No Formal Membership at Xenos

Strange Things in Xenos
or Why Xenos will never be a model for other churches

27. No formal membership - This certainly is not unique, but it is somewhat unusual, especially for large churches. Our refusal to establish a formal membership is the result of our theological understanding of church membership, and our efforts to emulate the early church. Our definition of the church is spiritual, (i.e. all true believers are part of the body of Christ whether they attend meetings or not) and therefore we feel it would be impossible for humans to accurately know who is a member and who is not. We believe efforts to establish membership can result in an institutional definition of the church rather than an organic or spiritual definition. Some that we define as members would be truly non-members, while others who we deny are members would in fact be members.

We see this distinctive as a good thing, but at the same time, a minor thing. We don't feel strongly critical of churches that have formal memberships, and in fact, it would be difficult to say how much actual impact this feature has had on Xenos' development. Our leadership feel that refusing to define membership contributes to a proper view of the spiritual nature of the church. We tell people that we let God keep our membership rolls for us.

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