This morning we were thinking about church membership and what it means in a Baptist context.  As part of this we noted two views on the 'believing-behaving-belonging' relationship, which I asserted were unhelpfully polarised as an 'either/or' of Modern/Postmodern worldviews.  Instead we ended up with two types of belonging, inter-related and on some sort of continuum or cycle or process.

There is the open-handed, open-hearted, fuzzy-edged belonging that says 'come and share our journey' and there is the deeper, more risky, more demanding belonging that enters a covenanted relationship to 'walk together and watch over one another in the footsteps of Christ.'  The creative tension of encouraging commitment and welcoming looser participation is part of what church is about.

And the three B's?  I have a feeling that each informs the other and that any linear model is missing the complexity of their inter-relationship.  My folk have some thoughts on this to play around with (if they so choose) so it will be interesting to say what they deduce.