Accountable Christians

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?

God’s Call to …

All of those involved in ministry (should be all Christians) know the importance of being called by God. We often speak of being called to a church or being called as a pastor, deacon, teacher, etc. We know from experience that an assurance of our calling is sometimes the only thing that keeps us going.

Reading Ed Stetzer’s book Breaking the Missional Code helped me gain a new insight on our calling from God. Always the source of our calling must be God. It is he who calls us. Through the Holy Spirit we are gifted for ministry. Through the lordship of Jesus Christ we are directed to our ministry. Through God the Father we are empowered for our ministry (See 1 Cor. 12:4-6).

But under the lordship of Christ, what do we understand as the object of our calling? Are we called to a church, or to a position of ministry (pastor, deacon, etc.) or as Stetzer suggests, are we called to a people? Our sense of calling will greatly affect how we seek to fulfill our calling.

If our primary sense of calling is to a particular church then to be successful we can be tempted to be competitive rather than cooperative and can be tempted to seek out programs and methods rather than seeking out an intimate relationship with the Father. If our primary sense of calling is to a position then to be successful we can be tempted to depend upon skills and techniques rather than upon God’s enabling.

Our primary call is to an intimate relationship with the Father. It is out of the intimacy of that relationship that he will begin to reveal his plan for our ministry. Yes, we serve in a ministry role through a local church. But, do we serve the institution, the members or are we called to serve the community?

Scripture tells us that God loves the world. He sent his Son to seek and to save those outside a relationship with him (the lost). Jesus wept over the lost of Jerusalem. Have we spent enough time with him to gain his heart for our lost community? Do we have a weeping spirit for the lost of our community?

Missionaries know that to reach a tribe they must have a call from God to reach them. Then they must develop a love for the people to whom God has called them. That love for the people to whom God is calling us will help overcome the temptation for easy and cheap success through programs and methods borrowed from others.

Only when we know whom God is calling us to reach will we be able to begin figuring out how to reach them. Maybe we need to begin to pray, “Lord, who is it you have called me to reach?” When we know the answer to that prayer, the ministry journey is just beginning for real.

What do you think?