At Trinity we are in the process of “resetting” by reviewing
and clarifying, and even rewriting practically everything in our
fellowship. It’s quite interesting when
you see so much confusion in the “Bible belt” about what church should be. The confusion should come as no surprise for
us simply because many pastors have not even sat down to think nor
teach about church. In the next few weeks we will be walking through and voting
on our new church covenant, and the importance of having such a document. Our
church culture longs to tell the world what is wrong, but we fail to even
clarify to the church body what is right. We condemn same sex marriage, and
certainly we should do so with clarity and grace, but when it comes to laying
out what a believer is accountable to other believers for, this is when many
people lose their backbone. Most have no problem dealing with the overt
sinfulness in our culture, but when it comes to issues of faithfulness to the
church body, confronting one another in sin, or expectations of the behavior of a
believer, we don’t like to deal with that issue because well…we sit by that
person. It is very easy to deal with the sinner we don’t know, but our cursing
the darkness while ignoring the believer in our midst screams inconsistency to
a lost and dying world. They see us preach against homosexuality but ignore
division and we wonder why we are not making an impact on our society. It is not the spiritual darkness of the world
as man is not more sinful today than ever before, but the problem is the church
is displaying less light than ever before. Much of that is because we want to
live in isolation, we want to communicate by text or email rather than face to
face. “Believers” don’t want their sin confronted but remain the on moral high
ground. When one church tries to hold members accountable you have too many
other “churches” all to willing to accept them without question in order to
increase their nickels and noses rather than keeping watch over their souls.
You have believers not willing to join a church until they get a visit with a
staff member but want to sneak out under the cloak of darkness or e-mail. Our
desire with our covenant is to make it clear that when I am a part of a church
family there are expectations. That if a
member is coming, or leaving our body there is accountability as a part of
their life at TBC. If they are coming to
our family, we will be up front and honest about expectations and not paint
some “bait and switch” tactic once they are members. If they are leaving TBC and have not dealt
with things biblically, we have an obligation to inform the next pastor/church
of their level of accountability while here. My original intent was to simply
write the “Why?” of a church covenant, however when I read this post by Dr.
Russell Moore I wanted to not only speak to the covenant but the undercutting
of the biblical standards by so called “sister-churches.” I hope this increases
the understanding of accountability among the brethren.
How Church Discipline Can Be Like Doctor Shopping
October 03, 2012
Law enforcement officials use the term “doctor shopping” to
refer to the way those addicted to prescription pain medications seek to avert
accountability. If you go to your doctor to ask for Vicodin, and your physician
refuses to prescribe it, you are doctor shopping if you then seek out multiple
doctors until you find the one who will prescribe the Vicodin. Sometimes an
addict will have multiple doctors going at once, all prescribing different
medicines, often those that are dangerous to mix. I’ve noticed the same thing
going on when it comes to church accountability.
The truth is, there’s a certain type of personality that doesn’t
want accountability, but affirmation. If one wants to divorce someone one
shouldn’t divorce or marry someone one shouldn’t marry or do something one
shouldn’t do, he seeks out a pastor’s “accountability.” When the pastor tells
him the opposite of what he wants to hear, he leaves and goes to find a pastor
or counselor who will. And this goes on and on.
This isn’t being shepherded. It’s the same old autonomy of the
self, that first manifests itself in the life-cycle of a child saying, “But Dad
said it was okay…” except now grown up into something with a far more
malevolent motive and a far more dangerous outcome.
Sadly, there are too many ministers of the gospel out there
willing to empower this sort of behavior. If you have a church member who has
been warned or disciplined by another pastor or church, you have a
responsibility to investigate what’s going on. True, it might be that the old
church spoke where there is no authority to speak, disciplining a parent for
not homeschooling, for example. But, even then, if you will give an answer for
the soul of this person, you bear the responsibility to find out what exactly
is going on.
If you’re the kind of minister who refuses to acknowledge the
discipline or accountability structures of other churches, you might simply be
more enlightened than those churches and leaders. Or you might not know what
you’re dealing with. And you just might be fighting against a word spoken by
Jesus himself, handing over an unrepentant soul to Satan, with the hopes of
ultimate repentance (1 Cor. 5:4-5).
Your affirmation of an unrepentant and fugitive-from-discipline
church member isn’t an act of love or mercy. It’s an act of hatred. You are
empowering the unrepentant to “bear the name brother” or sister (1 Cor. 5:11),
to assuage a conscience that should be convicted by the Spirit. If so, you’d be
better off just prescribing an addict another round of Percocet.
