AI and the church
A few days ago, I conducted a bit of a fun experiment that I think has ramifications on the future church. Since I've struggled for the last few years to find Biblical justification for church membership, I asked Google a simple question: "Is church membership Biblical?" Google quickly and confidently came up with a response (see below) which on the surface appears to give an answer to the question, but in reality just regurgitates the talking points that you'll hear from today's institutional churches. That's really no surprise since the Articial Intelligence (AI) algorithms that underly this response are good at collecting and summarizing information from across the Internet, but they are completely incapable of reasoning on that information. So the AI just trusts that what it finds by visiting all of the web sites on the Internet is "the Gospel truth". You only get counterpoints to the predominate answer by asking Google why church membership **isn't Biblical** (also below). AI can (and has) read the entire Bible, but it cannot understand such simple concepts as sin, the Gospel, and eternal life. It's just a soulless machine.
While the Internet can be a great place for learning more about God and His work through His Son, Christ Jesus, I would encourage everyone to be on their guard and use discernment when handling the information that they get from a search engine, just as you would from any other source. Going back to the first computer systems ever built, people have long trusted a computer printout to give them accurate information. While I believe that this is slowly changing, we are far too trusting as humans in that we easily believe everything that we see and hear. The online world in which we now live amplifies the situation. I believe that as Christians, our first and only truly trusted source of knowledge is Scripture. May God give us the wisdom to see the truth as He has revealed it to us.
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Google, is church membership Biblical?
Yes, according to most Christian interpretations, church membership is considered biblical, even though the Bible doesn't explicitly state a command to formally join a church; the concept is implied through the New Testament's emphasis on belonging to a local body of believers, submitting to church leadership, and participating in the life of a community of faith as seen in the early church practices described in the Book of Acts.
Key points supporting the biblical basis of church membership:
Early Church Example:
The Book of Acts portrays the early church as a united group where new converts were added to the church through baptism and actively participated in the community.
Church Leadership and Submission:
The Bible instructs Christians to submit to church leaders and elders, which implies belonging to a specific congregation where such leadership is established.
Corporate Body of Christ:
The metaphor of the church as the body of Christ suggests that Christians are meant to be connected and function as part of a unified body.
Church Discipline:
The ability to practice church discipline, where members are held accountable for their actions, is also seen as a feature of a local church community.
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Google, why isn't church membership Biblical?
Some say that church membership is not biblical because:
The Bible doesn't specify a membership process
The Bible doesn't require a specific process for joining a church, except for water baptism.
The Bible doesn't command increasing membership
Jesus and biblical writers don't command churches to find, make, or sign up members.
The word "membership" doesn't appear in the Bible
The word "membership" is a creation of religious leaders.
Membership creates division
Membership creates two classes of people within the church, insiders and nonmembers.
The structure of church membership is man-made
There's no compelling biblical justification for the structure of most church membership implementations.
The congregation can vote out elders
This can lead to "authority inversion" where the elders are subservient to the congregation.
However, others say that the Bible does provide a foundation for church membership, and that local church membership is one way to make visible the distinction between the church and the world.