Membership here means people know your name and your business.
This church has stayed small on purpose. Past a certain size you begin to lose track of people, so when one of the churches in our fellowship grows to around a hundred and twenty it starts praying about planting another one rather than getting bigger. Being known is the thing membership sits inside.
- Come for a season first. When somebody starts visiting we are not trying to add a name to a roll. What usually comes first is an invitation to dinner.
- You do not have to be in a home group. It is not a measure of anybody’s spiritual maturity, whatever you may have heard.
- Read before you agree. Both creeds are printed in full on what we believe, along with what the church practices.
What membership means
Membership here is a commitment in two directions, and this page is where both are written down. From a member the church asks {what a member commits to, in the elders’ own words. The leadership was working on exactly this question in mid-2026 and this paragraph waits on the answer}. {And a sentence on what it does not ask, because people arrive assuming the worst and nobody corrects them.}
The half that usually goes unsaid is the church’s own, and the honest version of it is not a promise but a description. When somebody here is ill, or bereaved, or moving house, it is their home group that acts, and that is where the meal trains start. A person can slip out of a church of two hundred without anyone noticing; that does not really work in a room of twelve, and if you are not there for a week or two somebody will call. Everyone in the congregation carries responsibility for that, from an elder to the youngest member, and it is the whole body’s job both to correct a person and to restore them afterwards.
{A closing sentence or two from the elders on what membership is for, and why a small congregation bothers with it at all.}
How someone becomes a member
{This whole section waits on the elders, and nothing in the church’s recorded teaching can supply it. The steps, in order, in the plainest language they can be put in. First, the first step: who you speak to, and whether you speak to them or write. Then the second. Then the third. People decline things whose process is unclear, so if the list is longer than three, write all of it.}
{Whether there is a class, an interview, or a vote by the members, and what actually happens at each one: who is in the room, how long it takes, and what you are asked.} {And how long the whole thing usually runs from the first conversation to the end.} Nothing here should come as a surprise on the day.
{Who to speak to first, by name or by office.} Any of the elders will do on a Friday evening, or email info@tcfky.com if you would rather begin in writing than in person.
What if I am not ready
Plenty of people come here for a long time without joining. When somebody starts visiting, this church is not looking to sign them up or add them to a roll; it wants to get to know them and to be known in return, and that takes however long it takes. What usually comes first is an invitation to dinner, and after that to a home group, and neither of those is an agreement to anything.
Keep coming as long as you like.