There is, perhaps, no more controversial concept in Christendom than church discipline. Well, that is perhaps, next to eschatology. Or maybe Calvinism. But church discipline is up there regardless. The Wall Street Journal recently featured an interesting article about the resurgence of church discipline, which they called an “ancient practice.”

And of course, they chose to highlight an episode which makes the entire process appear to be little more than a judgmental spirit and local church politics gone awry. They showcased: “71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension.” One Sunday morning, Mrs. Caskey found herself escorted out of Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan by a state trooper and a county sheriff’s officer while “One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs” (here the 911 call). As the article notes:

The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey’s real offense, in her pastor’s view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he’d charged her with spreading “a spirit of cancer and discord” and expelled her from the congregation. “I’ve been shunned,” she says.

The article goes on to say:

Her story reflects a growing movement among some conservative Protestant pastors to bring back church discipline, an ancient practice in which suspected sinners are privately confronted and then publicly castigated and excommunicated if they refuse to repent. While many Christians find such practices outdated, pastors in large and small churches across the country are expelling members for offenses ranging from adultery and theft to gossiping, skipping service and criticizing church leaders.

The practice of church discipline is difficult any way you look at it and we must beware that when situations such as Mrs. Caskey’s arise, they will become the poster children for how mean-spirited and judgmental those “hypocritical Christians” can be, “pretending they don’t have any sin while judging everyone else.” I fully admit that I do not know Mrs. Kaskey, nor the pastor of Allen Baptist Church, Jason Burrick, but I feel fairly safe in suggesting that there was a better way to handle that situation.

The reality is that is that church discipline, though the focus of this article, is not common and rarely understood. And yet, J.L. Dagg, in his Manual of Church order (read it here) said: “When discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it.” I wonder how many of us would share this sentiment? In thinking through these complicated issues, there are at least a couple of things to consider.

• Church Discipline is Biblical

The place to start is the Bible. The idea of church discipline is not man’s idea but God’s. The obvious place to begin is with God’s zeal for holiness. Leviticus 11:44a says: “For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.” The church is the people of God and the Bible reminds us that we will be known by our purity and integrity. 1 Peter 2:9-12:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation

God’s passion for holiness is to be transferred to and mimicked by His people. In light of this, Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 compares sin to leaven, warning that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?” In light of this, he admonishes the Corinthians church to “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened (1 Corinthians 5:7).” Paul tells the Corinthian church to “clean out the old leaven,” meaning that they were to put the unrepentant sinner out from among them.

• The Attitude Should Not Be Judgmental and The Goal is Restoration, Not Shunning
  

Paul was building on previous instructions from Jesus Himself. This is crucial because when many hear of church discipline, they indeed think of nothing but harsh judgmental spirits. But Jesus gave us the pattern and intent of church discipline in Matthew 18:15-17:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Notice that Jesus says, that the goal of the one on one meeting is the restoration of the person in question. This establishes the heart of the entire process. The goal is never excommunication, but that is a possibility. The heart is one of brokenness and the key is that the issue under examination is one of unrepentant sin.

We all sin, that’s not the issue. Church discipline is not the pretension that “you have this sin while I have none.” But, when confronted by a brother or sister about our sin, the ideal is that we recognize it as sin and we repent. Notice, the person in Jesus’ scenario and Paul’s admonition, has willfully chosen to continue in their sin, even after being confronted. The issue, as we’ve seen, is holiness and the goal is restoration.

I once heard it said that church discipline is only properly administered with tears. This is something that most miss, as testified to by the Wall Street Journal piece. We have done a poor job communicating the intent, heart, instructions or purpose of church discipline, escorting old women out in handcuffs does little to clarify matters.

In the church’s quest for purity, we are left walking the tightrope balance of not tolerating sin (first in ourselves and then in others) with compassion and a humble boldness. When we show the world handcuffed elderly women, should we be surprised that they see this process as harsh, vindictive and judgmental? We should not expect them to understand when it is practiced appropriately! How much more the case in situations like this.

Much of this signals the fact that we are living in a time that many within the church are once again, openly and quite imperfectly, wrestling with the question of what it means to be the Church in a fallen age. But as we do so, we must remember that the world is watching. As is our Lord.

• Read the Wall Street Journal piece
• Read J.L. Dagg’s Manual of Church Order online
• Read Nine Marks of a Healthy Church by Mark Dever