Becoming a member of First Baptist Church is something that we encourage people to pursue for a variety of reasons.  Here are a few:

1. We want to encourage people to enter into an accountable and responsible relationship with an identified group of people.  This is called the local church.  
2. Nowhere in Scripture will you find the phrase "church membership", but the idea of a connection with an identified group of people is all through the New Testament.  The Apostle Paul uses an entire chapter  to describe the connectedness of a local body (1 Cor. 12).   Individuals in the church had identified leaders and were accountable to one another (Hebrews 13:17; 1 Thes. 5:12-13; 1 Tim. 5:17).  Those who served as pastors had an identifiable group of people that they were responsible for (Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:2-3).  Our mechanism for creating this identified relationship is through church membership.  We believe it is biblical.