When I was a student pastor in seminary, I read through the minutes of the country church I pastored. A couple of things caught my eye. In the mid 1800s the church paid the pastor with a bushel of potatoes and two gallons of whiskey. Wow! It must not have been a Southern Baptist Church at that time.
The second thing that caught my eye was the practice of church discipline. I remember reading of one gentleman who was caught drunk and using bad language. He was brought before the congregation in their monthly Saturday business meeting, charged with his sins and “churched”. That means he was voted out of the membership.
Three months later he came back before the congregation, publicly repented of his sins and gave evidence of his reformation. The church forgave him and reinstated his membership in the church.
We don’t practice church discipline any more in a public fashion and it is my impression that few churches have any means of practicing church discipline privately. As pastor of a church I once became aware of a male member making inappropriate remarks to a female staff member. I took two deacons with me and confronted the man with his sin. He immediately confessed and agreed to apologize to the staff member and also promised never to do such a thing again. Later he came to me and thanked me for handling the situation as we did. As far as I know he never repeated his sin.
There are a number of people in the convention today who are concerned that our life styles as Christians are hurting our ability to reach the lost with the Gospel. They refer to the declining number of baptism and the fact that surveys show that Southern Baptists have a life style similar to the lost world. In fact some surveys have shown that in spite of our proclaimed family values, Southern Baptist divorce rates exceed the general population.
Do we need to do more as churches to uphold our stated values in the lives of our members? Should churches have minimum standards of behavior to which they hold their members accountable? Is it important to expect certain levels of moral behavior from our members? How should we enforce accountability to the church? Are there certain sins in the lives of it members with which a church should always deal? Should members be held accountable for attendance, giving and otherwise participating in the work of the church?
What do you think?
June 7, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Well since we are mostly known by the public at large as those who tell everyone else what they are doing wrong…
Makes sense that we ought to try to do right.
We have each member sign a covenant defining our relationship together, and if an area is not being adhered to, we begin the process of helping them with their commitments. And yes we have dropped people from our membership.
But know this, if you begin to push back against the traditions in your church and bring it to a biblical standard of morality, resistance will occur. Weddings are a classic point of attack. Do you perform a ceremony for those living together? Do you perform a ceremony where one party is not a believer?
We lost one family because the bride wanted to wait until after she had the baby and slimmed down to formalize the marriage with vows. Uh… not on my watch.
So my answer would be yes.
June 7, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Dave,
When I pastored a local church I would not perform marriages unless both were Christians and one was a member of our church (great opportunity for witnessing). Too many non-church members and non-Christians wanted to use me as religious window dressing for their ceremony. Sorry, my services are not for sale.
I asked those living together to have one of them move out until the ceremony or go immediately and have a civil marriage service.
January 27, 2008 at 1:24 am
Church discipline is outlined in the bible. Why do you suppose it is that we do not practice it?