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Membership

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 10 months ago

How Do I Become a Member of a Calvary Chapel?

 

You don't. There are no membership rolls, etc. The reason relates directly to the authoritarian structure of the organization. Even if there were membership roles, they would serve no purpose in the Calvary Chapel organizational hierarchy.

 

Churches that have membership do so for particular reasons. These reasons center on the management of the structure of the church, and include such issues as;

 

  • Who gets to vote in church elections for particular offices (elders, etc)? Usually a church has requirements for voting (for example: You must be an active member and have attended at least 4 times in the last 12 months, etc).
  • What's the Pastor's salary going to be?
  • What will the budget be for the next year?

 

At a Calvary Chapel, unlike an ordinary Protestant church, the members of the congregation have no control over any of those matters. Not only do you not control the pastors salary, you probably do not even know what it is. Some Calvary Chapels make the previous years budget public so you can determine how they spent your donations last year. The Calvary Chapel pew warmer has little idea where his tithe money goes when he gives to the church and can not even determine if the spending of the church is in agreement with his own views. Calvary Chapels are run much more like a Catholic church with the authority from above, than a typical Protestant church where the members are the ultimate authority. This authoritarian structure is what our Protestant fore-fathers fought against, and why the Catholic church lost it's hold on Christendom 500 years ago.

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