In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Almost
all in-groups, public or private, have some form of disciplinary process in
place. At work, if you engage in behavior the company defines as “harassment”,
you will generally find yourself in front of a supervisor and a Human Resources
rep, either to be written up or dismissed. The NFL regularly suspends players
who don’t comply with its codes. Even Twitter will freeze your account for
expressing what it considers to be inappropriate political views. All of this
is standard procedure.
Tom: If you read
a fair bit of recent online commentary, you might be forgiven for thinking that
contemporary evangelical churches are the only institutions in existence that
have no self-policing mechanisms in place.
A Tragic Neglect
For instance, Wayne Jackson calls the lack of church discipline today a “tragic neglect”. He says, “There are countless congregations belonging to Jesus Christ across our land where
little, if any, discipline of the wayward is ever enacted.” Albert Mohler says, “The decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible failure of the contemporary church.”
What do you think, Immanuel Can? Is church
discipline on a major downturn? It seems to me there sure used to be a whole
lot more of it.
Immanuel
Can: Yes. I think the basic problem was identified
quite a while ago, by sociologist-of-religion Peter Berger: it’s the consumerist situation of the modern,
evangelical church. It makes discipline very difficult to put into practice.
Tom: What’s the catch, IC? You say it’s related to consumerism, which
suggests that Berger’s probably not just talking just about the fear of
lawsuits. Or is he?
IC: No. He’s taking
about how in olden days you had limited options for church. You lived in a
fairly restricted area, in which there was likely to be only one church of
whatever denominational persuasion within range. Thus, to be disciplined by that
church was enforceable and had minimal consequences for the church as well. But
in the modern situation we’re all transient. We choose our churches by personal
preference and have many within range. When we don’t like what one says, we
vote with our feet and go elsewhere.
Today, we might say, the local church has a revolving door. This makes enforcement of any discipline very problematic.
Today, we might say, the local church has a revolving door. This makes enforcement of any discipline very problematic.
Bring on the Lawsuits
Tom: Right. So when
people know something about the way they are living is likely to bring them
criticism or potentially cause them to be ostracized by Christians in the
church they’re attending, they scoot before anyone can tell them to scoot. No
blame, no shame.
But
if the sin is major — and I mean major in the 1 Corinthians 5 sense — you would think the church of which they are currently a member
would read them out anyway, wouldn’t you? Unless fear of being sued really is a
modern problem …
IC: Fear of being
sued is perhaps a reality, and perhaps increasingly so; but I think it’s not
very high yet. More pressing is the PR problem posed by appearing “harsh” in
indicting somebody for his/her sins. The perp will likely make a scene and
leave; but so will a whole lot of people who sympathize with him/her, or who
just feel uncomfortable with anything that appears “judgmental” in church
leadership. So a number of the consumers move off to consume a different
religious “product”, and the disciplining church takes the hit.
Taking Sides
Tom: Surely that whole
“taking sides” thing must have been a problem for first century churches as well. The
“insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers” in Crete were said to be upsetting whole households, which suggests there were people in the church there who didn’t know who to trust and what to believe,
and might have sided with the Judaizers if they were subjected to discipline.
But Titus was still supposed to deal with the troublemakers.
IC: Well, yes. None of the difficulties mean that the church can just
dispense with discipline. But we still need to recognize that obedience comes
with a cost, in this case; and in the modern context, that cost is likely to be
quite high.
Tom: Agreed. And too few of us recognize that the long-term cost of
disobedience is always higher than the cost of obedience. You almost need to
have had the experience to know that. Still, I believe there are a great many
Christians out there who are willing to pay whatever it costs to be on the
right side of these issues. What often causes disagreements within a church
about discipline, I think, is not so much fear of the consequences, but genuine
questions about whether the situation is being handled correctly by leadership.
IC: Especially in a
society that is omni-tolerant, has no clear conception of sin at all, and is
extreme on the idea that the individual’s conscience is the final arbiter of
truth and justice.
Blurred Lines and Questioned Judgment
Tom: Exactly. So something like purging a church of a sexually immoral
person, to use the language of 1 Corinthians, seems pretty clear cut. But
you might run into serious disagreement over whether a three-a-day craft beer
drinker is a “drunkard”. Some Christians would call that one a slam dunk;
others would say it’s borderline, or maybe even a non-issue so long as he’s not
out running around the streets in his underwear. Or what precisely is a
“reviler”? You or I might look at the Greek and feel pretty confident what sort of
behavior is in view. Convincing a whole church of that, though? That’s another story.
IC: Yes; because of
the things I suggested. There’s a perception that any insistence on standards
of conduct or rules of behaviour is judgmental or legalistic. And one of the
quickest ways for a local church to destroy its reputation is to be generally
characterized as one of those things.
Comprehension and Trust
Tom: Oh, I agree about
that. But beyond having accepted the world’s frame about judging sin, I think
there are two additional problems with discipline that the early church had
less of than we do: (1) comprehension, and (2) trust. The first is a
problem because, unlike the Bereans, we have accepted as normal a church in
which only the “pastor” and a few old-timers really study the Bible. In many
Christian households, you can’t find a single person who could pick up a Vine’s
or a concordance and figure out what is meant by “reviler”. Maybe — just
maybe — some eager young guy might think to Google it. That’s not as big a
problem if you have a church that trusts its leadership, but it’s very evident
that in our present environment, trust is either in terminally short supply,
or, oddly, is being extended where it shouldn’t be.
IC: Right on. And maybe you’ve hit on a key issue there. There’s little
recognition of need for church discipline if the believers themselves are not
capable of recognizing behaviors that the scriptures themselves condemn.
You’ve got to have a certain dexterity with your Bible if you’re going to know
when, how and why discipline is practiced.
Borderline Disorderly
Tom: I want to come back to a point you made earlier. One of the
problems I suspect elders have with reading out someone who is thought to be ‘borderline
disorderly’ or ‘arguably sinful’ in their conduct — especially if they haven’t
been attending recently or if they are related to someone else in that
church — is that, well … what’s the point? As you mention, such
actions come with big risks of causing vitriolic division and very little
upside. The elders know full well the troublemaker is going to be able to slide
right into another congregation if they want to, maybe even in the same
denomination or association of local churches. He or she may have already
done so.
IC: Well, at least
formalizing it removes the evil person from among you.
As in All the Churches
Tom: There is that. But that option to church-hop didn’t really exist in
the first century, at least at the beginning. Not necessarily because
letters of commendation were a universal practice — I think we can be fairly sure they were not.
But the apostle Paul uses expressions like “as in all the churches” in
several of
his
epistles, which suggests strongly that there was a body of commonly understood apostolic
doctrine and practice that would have made elders reluctant to admit to
fellowship a professing Christian who had been turned away elsewhere for
reasons of immoral behavior.
IC: It
was likely too early to have things like cults and denominations. At the time,
Christianity was new — so new, that it didn’t even have an official name except
“the Way”. In any case, it was certainly not a high-prestige belief-system that would
attract imitators, so one group is all there really was.
Tom: True. But today, the leaders of one local church may be quite
prepared to second-guess another church’s discipline even when they don’t have
first-hand knowledge of the circumstances. Maybe that’s virtue-signaling or
omni-tolerance, I don’t know.
Members in Transit
IC: Or just the fact
that there are so many and such diverse churches and denominations that they
don’t have regular communications, and cannot really know where anybody is
coming from. People are so transient — they come in one week, then not for
three, then back again, and eventually they’re just there all the time …
or not. There’s no clear moment at which the question, “Where are you from, and
have you kept up a good moral standing?” is evidently appropriate; so it never
gets asked.
Tom: Well, I have
noticed that some of the very large churches (like those of the Harvest brand)
do indeed address previous church discipline in their codes of conduct, but
that would only become an issue if and when an attendee applies for official membership.
If not, theoretically he or she could lurk in the second balcony of the third
campus for the rest of time breaking bread with the mixed multitude. Or maybe
not. I may not be giving them enough credit.
A Different Definition
IC: But since
membership is not required for merely attending Harvest, nor one
required by many other churches, that’s kind of a dull tool for the task. It’s
not biblical either — unless by “membership” one is speaking of the Body
of Christ, not some administrative list held by clergy, but I suspect you were
alluding to the latter, no?
Tom: Well, you and I
use “membership” to refer to our relationship to the Body of Christ generally, by virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit, but Harvest and others often use
it as shorthand for official association with their local branch.
Is discipline one of those church problems about which we have lots of horror stories and no real
solutions to propose?
IC: Well, let me
suggest something. I think discipline is likely to be less of a problem in
congregations that are small and personal, where people really get to know each
other, and in which keeping up the PR with the world is not the primary
concern. On the other hand, in a big, impersonal, ceremonial (rather than
relational) or program-focused church, I see no prospect of biblical church
discipline being practiced again, except in the most obvious and
extreme cases.
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