Did Jesus teach or require church membership?

How about this?:

Jesus taught the universal church.

Paul established the parameters of the new testament assembly of believers.

Jesus taught obedience to the leaders of the Jews. He said that they sat in Moses seat. He taught "do as they say, not as they do".

He also taught baptism.

He instructed the disciples to teach add more disciples and to teach the new believers to observe the things He had taught THEM.

He taught communion.

Many who have difficult experiences at a church likely will downplay the importance of "Christian community". However the NT certainly gives us examples of functioning churches (assemblies) and teaches us how to organize (elders, deacons, etc) and get along with each other. And, of course the sacraments are celebrated with believers.

But Fred makes a good point. If we do not understand basic salvation which is the same for every believing individual (that is being in God's family, the universal church) then the visible gathering is somewhat of no consequence. A true assembly of believers is just such... believers.

As to membership, I suppose different organizations have their different traditions surrounding this. Our church does not have a membership roll, but considers all who are part of God's family to be in the "true church". And so we preach, teach, fellowship, celebrate the sacraments with those who "believe" and marry & bury those of us and those who need help in the community.

I do not think that membership is required to be part of a christian community. We went to a church for 10 years and were totally accepted without any pressure to become members. Only they wanted Mr calledoutPTL to be a deacon and being a member was required to for that. We were baptized (by immersion) there but that didn't make you members. Later on we became members PS: Mr calledoutPTL didn't feel God was calling him to be a deacon so he refused at this time. calledoutPTL