Does membership in Gateway Church include or imply membership in the EPC?
Yes. But for 99% of Gateway’s members, being an EPC member will mean little difference than just being a member of Gateway. Here’s why.
Gateway’s Church Constitution is the EPC’s constitution. As a local church, we don’t have separate governing documents from the EPC. The parts of the constitution that are denominationally focused matter little to those who are members in a local church and aren’t officers (elders or deacons).
As far as the EPC goes, members of local churches are simply a statistic for the denomination, indicating how many members are part of our denomination overall. Even non-members are included in our denomination’s statistics, as local EPC churches also report our average worship attendance, which is then totaled to produce an overall denominational worship attendance figure.
If you’re wondering, “But what about the 1%, those for whom being an EPC member will make a difference?” Beyond church officers, such as elders, who have rights and responsibilities at the denominational level, for the average church member, being a member of the EPC gives one confidence in knowing that they have a denomination to which they can appeal if they believe that the leaders of their local church have done something unbiblical. There’s a layer of protection, beyond the structure of the local church, for all members. Hopefully, this is a rare situation (thus my 1% analogy). Still, it should reassure members that the purity and holiness of the church matters, not just to the local church, but to the denomination of which they are part.