Committed Church Membership

In Yours Lord: A Handbook of Christian Stewardship (A&C Black, 1992), pp. 96-97, Michael Wright offered an adaptation of A Short Guide to the Duties of Church Membership as a help for considering one’s own personal discipline. He suggests noting some specific intentions for the next twelve months to be kept in one’s Bible or a devotional book, for regular reference.

·         We have our unique part to play in the life and witness of our church.

What do you see your part being in your church now?

·         We have the opportunity to reflect the light and love of Christ in our lives.

How do you see you can do that in your activities, decisions and relationships each day?

·         We are invited to share each day of our life with God.

How do you intend to safeguard time to listen, love and share with him each day?

·         We are offered the Word of God in the scriptures.

How do you plan regularly to read and seek to understand the Bible?

·         We have the opportunity to share in worship and fellowship with other Christians each week.

How often do you plan to do this?

·         Christ invites us to his table, to be fed with the sacrament of his body and blood.

How often do you intend to accept this invitation?

·         Christ asks us to ‘always treat others as you like to them to treat you’.

How do you plan to express this in service of others?

·         Marriage is intended as a lifelong partnership of love.

How can you help to nourish this ideal in your own relationships, and how can you help others to do so?

·         Christ has a special love and protection for children.

How do you aim to nourish and protect the spiritual, emotional, social, educational, and artistic well-being of your own, and other people’s, children, and help them to know Christ’s special love for them, and to experience the joy of knowing him?

·         Christ invites us to store up treasure in heaven, rather than treasure on earth.

What proportion of your income will you decide to give this year, as an act of gratitude to God for all he has given you, that you may help to do his will on earth as it is in heaven?

Duties of Church Membership

At the request of the Church Assembly in 1954 Geoffrey Fisher and Cyril Garbett, archbishops respectively of Canterbury and York, produced 

A Short Guide to the Duties of Church Membership

All baptized and confirmed members of the Church must play their full part in its life and witness. That you may fulfil this duty we call upon you:

To follow the example of Christ in home and daily life, and to bear personal witness to Him.

To be regular in private prayer day by day.

To read the Bible carefully.

To come to Church every Sunday.

To receive the Holy Communion faithfully and regularly.

To give personal service to Church, neighbours, and community.

To give money for the work of parish and diocese and for the work of the Church at home and overseas.

To uphold the standard of marriage entrusted by Christ to His Church.

To care that children are brought up to love and serve the Lord.

Geoffrey Cantuar :

Cyril Ebor :

Published by the Church Information Board and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. S.P.C.K., London.

A report to the Church of England's General Synod in 1990, Receiving and Giving: The Basis, Issues and Implications of Christian Stewardship (GS 943), recommended that an updated version of this be widely used 'as a guide, rather than a requirement, for new and existing members' of the Church. In Yours Lord: A Handbook of Christian Stewardship (A&C Black, 1992), pp. 96-97, Michael Wright offered an adaptation as a help for considering one's own personal discipline.

Christ Church Virginia Water offers a Bible verse for each of the nine statements.