Editorial January 6, 1962 Issue

The Office of Church Member

Ralph E. Wagers

When one is elected to membership in a Church of Christ, Scientist, or in a Christian Science Society, he occupies an important office—the office of member. This office involves priceless privileges, opportunities, benefits; it also imposes duties, obligations, responsibilities. For example, it is a privilege to participate in the healing and redeeming activities of a church or society. But this privilege carries with it certain duties which, as they are fulfilled, make one's membership a spiritually enriching experience.

One of the duties of a church member, and a very important one, is to maintain a spiritual sense of his identity as a child of God, completely at one with the divine source of his being, and in this way to recognize his inseparability from Truth and Love. A corresponding duty is to gain and maintain a spiritual sense of Church: what its purpose is, how this purpose is fulfilled in human experience, and what part an individual member plays in its fulfillment.

The true sense of Church can be only partially discerned intellectually. Really to understand what Church is and what it does, one has to identify himself with it. This means that one must seek to identify himself with such realities of being as spiritual understanding, spiritual sufficiency, and so forth, even though this means withdrawing from such preoccupation with the world as tends to interfere with spiritual growth and development.

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