Jim of Brainwaves has some wonderful observations on church membership that are worth publishing in their entirety:

I long ago came up for a definition for "church": It is God's obstacle course. Survive twenty years and you're ready for heaven.

Thirty years ago, in my own assembly, they were walking women back outside if they dared to show up wearing britches. We've had people show up at administrative meetings and given the right to vote on pastoral election, then never darken our door again. Our present pastor was voted in some twenty-five years ago by one vote. One of the deacons, immediately afterwards, was so elated about the event, he declared "Let's take a vote to see if we accept the vote!" Women, by the way were not, at the time, allowed to vote. They were given that right within that first year after he was elected; then he and a head deacon sat down, rewrote all our church bylaws and decided there would be no more elections.

We grew along the way from a congregation of around 300, "catching" 150 on any normal service, to over 3,000, "catching" around 800 on any Sunday evening. The enlargement was mostly a matter of walking away from much old-time legalism (We still believe in most things. We just don't enforce it with a hammer as they enter the foyer.) People still, however, go out the back entrance at about the same speed as they walk through the front one. While we have "powerful" worship service, "politics" gets most somewhere along the way. To me, it's always reminded me of our government: The basic idea is a good one, but the minute you package it with someone at the helm and give it a board to regulate it, the human equation takes over.

It's all about Christ, not the Church. If, indeed, Jesus meant for the Body to be so constructed within an institutional authority, then the only purpose I have ever determined for it is the Old Testament adage: Iron sharpeneth iron. You grow as you go. You make it by focusing on Him.

You may wonder why I yet attend this assembly. It is where I was "birthed" and "planted" over 32 years ago. It is a good church. It is just not the same one I started out in...and that has both its "ups" and its "downs." My one daughter and her family yet attend there with us, and her two boys are enrolled in its school. I have many friends there, I yet believe in the pastor's heart, and I really see nothing else out there that's any different. It is "the Church". Above all that, however, I have heard no voice, no "prompting" by God's Spirit to do anything other than "hang in there" for now. And that is what's important: God's voice.

May He lead you in your search. Listen with your heart.