👋🏼 Welcome to Southside Membership 👋🏼

What is membership❔

Membership is a formal commitment to a specific local church body.

• A key sign of spiritual and emotional maturity is the joyful acceptance of limitations. Despite wishing to be in many places with many people simultaneously, we must acknowledge our physical constraints. There are times when we feel a sense of loss due to these limitations, but they are a God-given gift that we should find joy and peace in.

Membership is also:

<aside> 📢 1. Public Representation: Because the church by nature is a fully accessible community and with gatherings that have an open door policy for all, it’s important for us to be able to publicly differentiate between who represents our church publicly and who may not.

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<aside> 🏛️ 2. Government recognition: In Canada, churches can maintain their status as registered charities and issue tax-deductible receipts for financial contributions. To keep this status, the church must have a formal membership that represents the charitable organization, with enough checks and balances to safeguard the integrity of the charitable contributions.

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Why Membership❔

Just as there might be many partners with whom we could build a life and family, the beauty of marriage lies in the freedom to choose one partner to invest our whole selves into. The same principle applies to church membership.

<aside> 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 At Southside, we celebrate the diversity of the local and global church and affirm membership in other local and global church bodies within and outside of our denomination. We admittedly have a strong bias towards our Christian & Missionary Alliance family because we think they're pretty awesome (and they might be watching 😉).

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<aside> ⚠️ You may find it surprising that we don't believe church membership is represented in scripture, and we don't suggest that becoming a member is a command of Jesus. However at the inception of the Church we are told that “those who accepted Peter’s message were baptized and about 3000 were added to their number that day.” Additionally, much of what we do weekly in a local church is not represented in Scripture. We don't live in 1st century Israel with its geography, politics, and technology, so we don't attempt to replicate exactly what the first-century church looked like in terms of governance and weekly rhythms. However, we strive to follow the wisdom of scripture for the church and acknowledge the value and principles that support church membership and denominational structures, despite their imperfections.

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Ultimately, we believe that formally committing to a faith community greatly enhances our chances of focusing on discipleship, utilizing and developing our spiritual gifts, pursuing reconciliation when we are inclined to conflict or avoidance, and ensuring our generosity is well-managed with robust accountability structures for everyone involved. All of this can contribute to the formation of the disciple and disciple-making process.

<aside> ➕ Additional Benefits of Church Membership

• A shared vision, mission, and goals guide us towards progress rather than stagnation or plateauing.
• Financial planning and annual budgeting become less of a guessing game each year.
• It assists us in meeting the Christian & Missionary Alliance's denominational requirements.
• Mutual commitment to each other strengthens trust.
• It ensures accountability for ourselves and others.
• We can trust collective decision-making to yield the best outcomes. </aside>

You may be asking at this point: Why should I become a member at Southside❔

• Firstly, like all aspects of the discipleship journey, membership is completely invitational. We believe the primary reason you should become a member at Southside is if you feel led or called by God to do so and you want to “throw your lot“ in with us. We want your commitment to this church family to be a decision between you and God for the season God has you committed to us.
• Furthermore, we encourage you to become a member because we value your presence! If you meet the requirements listed below and see Southside as a faith community where you and your family want to grow and serve, then we want you to know that we desire your membership.
• Another key reason to become a member at Southside is that it gives you a vote!