Episode 62: On How to Prepare a Church to Practice Discipline
How can pastors prepare a church to practice discipline? In Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman discuss why you should prepare a church before implementing church discipline and flesh out five ways that pastors can go about it. They talk about how to determine if a congregation is ready to practice discipline and explain what to do when a church rejects church discipline even after being prepared.
- Why You Should Prepare Your Church Before Discipline
- How to Prepare a Church to Practice Discipline
- How Do You Know When a Church Is Ready to Practice Discipline?
- What to Do When Church Discipline is Rejected
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi, I am Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
And I am Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to this episode of Pastor’s Talk.
Mark Dever:
And I would say that right now I’m content and kind.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yes, you are. As you so often,
Mark Dever:
Particularly toward the end of the day when you stop by
Jonathan Leeman:
Nine marks exist to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for building healthy churches. Learn more ninemarks.org.
Mark Dever:
Pastors talk.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s what we’re going to do
Mark Dever:
With Jonathan Leeman
Jonathan Leeman:
And Mark Dever.
Mark Dever:
What are we talking about this time, Jonathan?
Pastors Should Not Practice Church Discipline
Jonathan Leeman:
You once wrote an article on why pastors should not not practice church discipline. First sentence, don’t do it. You said that’s the first thing I tell pastors when they discover church discipline is in the Bible. I say don’t do it, at least not yet. Why this advice Mark?
Mark Dever:
Because I’ve seen guys get wowed, surprised, and wowed by the Bible’s teaching on church discipline and be saddened by their own church’s disobedience and then feel resolved,
Jonathan Leeman:
Convicted, and resolved.
Mark Dever:
They must immediately change this and become faithful on this point. And I think the suddenness with which the decision is made and often the solitariness of the decision in the pastor’s mind and heart alone is not accompanied by the kind of wisdom and patience that would lead a pastor to teach sufficiently and to woo and win while one waits for the congregation to join him and therefore a congregational explosion ensues and often the ending of the man’s ministry.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. So you’re telling ’em to go home and disobey the Bible?
Mark Dever:
Telling ’em to continue to do what you’ve been doing as you teach them to obey the Bible.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, so I want to think through all the things.
Why You Should Prepare Your Church Before Discipline
Mark Dever:
So you need to teach before you do.
Jonathan Leeman:
Good. Well, okay. That’s where I want to camp. I want to think about all the things you need to do before you practice church discipline and just define our terms, church discipline, correcting sin. Often when we talk about that
Mark Dever:
We just mean the final step.
Jonathan Leeman:
Final step
Mark Dever:
Of excommunication,
Jonathan Leeman:
Telling the church and then removing them from membership as well as the
Mark Dever:
Church removing them from membership,
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. As an act of excommunication.
Mark Dever:
Have you all had to do that yet in your new little church that’s been going since February?
Jonathan Leeman:
No. Do you want to follow up on that? No. Gratefully no. You say in that article first a pastor needs to encourage humility in the church before he practices discipline. Why did you start there?
Mark Dever:
Well, because it’s very easy for church discipline or excommunication to be misunderstood as a kind of will of a person over someone else. And there just has to be great clarity that this is being done humbly and being done in confidence in God and love and charity for your neighbor.
Not any kind of exercise of selfish will to power. It’s just all I’m trying to do is love you and frankly in a way that’s hard for me and inconvenient and difficult for our church family.
Jonathan Leeman:
You say second that a church or a pastor should make sure the congregation has a biblical understanding of church membership before practicing discipline. Explain that.
Mark Dever:
Well, otherwise it’s like you’re building a gate when there’s no fence, you want a fence around the property. That’s the only thing that makes the gate necessary. If there’s no fence of membership, then the gate is absolutely irrelevant. So yeah,
Jonathan Leeman:
They need to understand there’s an in before they understand that there is an out. Exactly. Just yesterday I took a photo of a yard with a gate and no fence.
Mark Dever:
Look at that. I’ve done that before in northwest DC.
Jonathan Leeman:
Look at that.
Mark Dever:
There it is, man. That’s like churches that would-
Jonathan Leeman:
Isn’t that crazy?
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
How to Prepare a Church to Practice Discipline
Jonathan Leeman:
You should stick that online with this interview or something, right? Okay. Third, you say pray that God would help you model ministry to other Christians in your church through your public teaching and your private work with families and individuals.
What’s that all about? What preparing your church for discipline. Pray that God would help you model ministry to other Christians in your church through public and private work.
Mark Dever:
There has to be a sort of an inter-traffic of lives where you’re actually involved in someone else’s life and they’re involved in yours. And that’s understood.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re not living-
Mark Dever:
Separate, discrete lines,
Jonathan Leeman:
Anonymous lines except for 90 minutes on Sunday.
Mark Dever:
Exactly. Exactly.
Jonathan Leeman:
There’s a culture of discipling here, hospitality, and interaction. Then this public act of excommunication makes sense. Apart from that, wait, wait, wait. What are you jumping into my business for?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, exactly. So if you go back the way you started out with the guy who has resolved, I’m now going to start practicing church discipline and the church has no history of members being involved in each other’s lives, let alone in each other’s business. That’s just going to be wrenching
Jonathan Leeman:
Too much, too fast.
Mark Dever:
So you need to first just begin by naturally having each other over for lunch or dinner and getting to know each other’s families.
Prepare Your Congregation Through Your Constitution and Covenant
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Fourth, prepare your congregation’s written constitution and covenant.
Mark Dever:
Well, the expectations that the congregation has and the instructions about how we’ve agreed we will do things are going to be really important for this having as little a chance as possible blowing up.
So if we all clearly agree it’ll be done in this order, there’s this step, this step, this step, this step, then this is the right thing to do. If you can agree on that in principle before there is a specific, that’s got to help the congregation, and also the expectations of involvement in each other’s lives should be clear in the church covenant in the way you talk about how we will help each other to bear our burdens and sorrows.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think having it in the Constitution also helps matters of informed consent informing people of their consenting unless they are tempted to sue the church, it just seems to show integrity. We’re going to let them know before you join what you’re joining. I recall a number of years ago, capital Baptist changed its constitution to make it clear that the church retains the right to, I dunno the exact language, but basically retains the right to withhold a resignation if the process of discipline has begun.
Mark Dever:
And it’s particularly important you have rules like that and they’re clearly agreed on if this is going to be an act of the congregation if it’s just an act of the pastor or even of the elders, it could be perhaps a little easier, a little more streamlined. But if you’re going to understand Matthew 18 to mean the church is the one that needs to do this, the assembly needs to do this, then you need to have those kinds of rules clearly laid out.
Jonathan Leeman:
The fifth thing that you say to do before you discipline is and finally in your pulpit ministry never tired of teaching what a Christian is. Whatcha getting out there?
Mark Dever:
Well, when you’re putting somebody out of the church, you’re saying that they are not giving sufficient or convincing evidence of being a Christian. So you need to constantly be laying before them what the gospel is, what a Christian is, so that just like you know what a counterfeit is, the real ones so well when they’ve just been schooled every Sunday on what the real one is, then they could see, see that’s not the same thing. See, this is what a Christian is. Now look at this. See, that’s not really like a Christian is.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. I appreciate it, I think you taught me to do this. I forget
Mark Dever:
The cool hand motions I just used and nobody can see because doing this in audio instead of video.
Jonathan Leeman:
That was lovely, but I was just keeping it to myself. Is in the context of a membership interview, you say, what is the gospel? And then a follow-up question is something like, okay, suppose you have a friend and he calls himself a Christian, yet he’s living with his girlfriend.
What’s wrong with that? Ask that person who wants to join your church to kind of work through the nature of repentance.
Mark Dever:
I would say I did that in most membership interviews.
Jonathan Leeman:
And do they have a concept of repentance? Yeah, I think that’s crucial. If you have a church that believes in easy believism, just believe, not repent, and believe or Jesus’ savior but not Jesus’, savior and Lord, they’re going to have a harder time understanding church discipline at all.
How Do You Know When a Church Is Ready to Practice Discipline?
Mark Dever:
Oh yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
So a robust view on that. So to read you to yourself, Mark, you say you’re ready,
Mark Dever:
Feel it’s been too large a portion of your life doing that,
Jonathan Leeman:
Reading you to yourself.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
I don’t know. They do it that often. Do it
Mark Dever:
All right. I don’t know. I dunno.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re ready when I often take your words and
Mark Dever:
Twist them, reappropriate them,
Jonathan Leeman:
Take credit for them.
Mark Dever:
Well, there it is.
Jonathan Leeman:
I do that all the time.
Mark Dever:
Well, amen. As we all do.
Jonathan Leeman:
You know you’re ready when
Mark Dever:
Your
Jonathan Leeman:
Leaders understand it, agree with it, and perceive its importance. So brother, pastor, if your elders aren’t on the same page as you,
Mark Dever:
You’re not ready to do it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Goodness gracious. No, you’re ready. When your congregation is united in understanding that such discipline is biblical, we know that You’re ready when your membership.
Mark Dever:
And just to be clear on that, it’s not saying necessarily united in that particular
Jonathan Leeman:
Instance,
Mark Dever:
Instance of it, but that the practice itself is biblical and the way you’re doing it by general principles is correct. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re ready when your membership consists largely of people who regularly hear your sermons. Explain.
Mark Dever:
Well, because it’s possible for people to be members of a church, and yet they haven’t attended for years, and so they don’t really know what’s going on in the life of the church. They haven’t been instructed by all that teaching.
You’ve been very carefully done, which is why in my first couple of years here, one of the main things we did was get rid of members, not people who were coming, telling ’em not to come, but people whose names were on our roles and we would try to track them down and talk to ’em and see if they believed the gospel and were going to some other church or join some other church.
Jonathan Leeman:
You can’t discipline with integrity when you’re doing that.
Mark Dever:
Right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Wait, wait, wait. You’re going to keep me accountable. What about that member 500 who’s not been here for?
Mark Dever:
And there’s also the possibility in abusive kind of situations where members who haven’t come in yours will come back to the church while they’re still members and have all those rights, but they haven’t been sitting under the teaching and then vote to do the wrong thing. So you’re kind of taking care, you’re cleaning the roles before you have the election.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Our brother Mike Laer experienced that.
Mark Dever:
He certainly did.
Jonathan Leeman:
And you’re ready when a particularly clear case comes along in which your members would fairly unitedly perceive that excommunication is the correct action. Explain.
Mark Dever:
Well, I think what I was trying to get at there was it’s possible for you or me to perceive sin in ourselves or others that pursuing public discipline will not actually be very useful in dealing with. So some people tend to think of excommunication as the sort of ecclesiastical equivalent of capital punishment. It’s the
Jonathan Leeman:
Removal from the body.
Mark Dever:
The terminal degree is the PhD. The highest punishment is capital punishment execution, highest church punishment is excommunication. It’s not really like that. It’s more like a certain strain of medicine that will deal with a certain strain of disease.
It will deal with this kind of thing. Well, so it may be your pride is more significant than Tom’s embezzling, but we’ve got proof of Tom’s embezzling and he is evidently not repentant for it, whereas your pride is a more debatable thing and could actually divide the body if we try to excommunicate you over pride.
So I think you need something that’s clear that the body can perceive and that’s why it is so often sins like adultery where the facts are not in dispute. I don’t think the congregation functions really well usually in being asked to become a kind of court of law to determine facts. I think we don’t want to do that at all.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think of Jesus in Matthew 18 verse 16, where he says, A matter must be established by two or three witnesses which tells me that this thing needs to be outward and clear and nondebatable. Your very points as I understand it, you’re also saying this point that if this is the first time you’re moving towards public discipline, better adultery than non-attendance, things that your church is going to more easily agree on if this is sort of the first steps out, are there ever cases mark that are egregious enough that you would say to a young pastor whose church is not ready for that?
No. You need to ignore everything I just said and you need to move ahead. This is a hill to die on. It’s your first year in the church, but you can’t ignore this. You got to go.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Believe it or not, I’m not sure because if you’ve gone to that church, you’ve just gone there, they’ve just voted to call you there. That might be a good statement of them beginning to publicly re-own the doctrine of the Trinity.
So rather than excommunicate all the Unitarians from the deacon board right now, you may realize they’ve taken a significant step toward recovering orthodoxy. So as crazy as it sounds, Jonathan, I’m not sure I can answer that question in an abstract.
I’m sure there would be times when I would tell you to go ahead and do it, but there might be a surprising number of times where I’d say, I think I see the strategy you have here to bring them in and then trap them and win. Because I’d like to see this testimony of this recovered for the gospel. I would encourage you to do that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, you just told me two things. Number one, you told me that there is a category that exists that you can’t stay here as a pastor, need longer if this continues and you must act like that category is there.
Mark Dever:
Oh yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
But you also told me you’re pretty pliable and you would encourage people to be young pastors to be pliable and recognize that these silly, hurting, broken, immature, whatever, sheep, just give them time and stay there even though you think you got to say something. Well no, you don’t always get to say something right now.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Don’t insist that the 6-year-old does algebra.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Basically,
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Again, I know I’ve observed this in these pastors’ talks before, but I am struck in reading first and second Timothy with how many times Paul says patiently or be patient or with patients or that idea is clearly prominent in his mind as he writes to young Timothy.
And I find that so I mean, you’re just in your forties right now, so you’re probably just beginning to do this where you’re beginning to notice how prominent a theme patience is as you speak to the majority of humans that are of course much younger than yourself. And I think the longer you go on in this and the further you get away from most humans in your age, which is just increasing every day, every day, I think that theme of patience will become more and more prominent.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Well that’s pastoral, isn’t it?
Mark Dever:
It is. It’s the nature of pastoral ministry,
Jonathan Leeman:
Not just a truth teller, but a patient shepherd who gently leads. Amen. What about if you are the only elder, would you encourage a guy to wait around until he’s got, other elders?
Mark Dever:
Well, I know a very complicated case or a complicated but very sad case where I was dealing with that earlier this year with a friend elsewhere, and he was the only elder in his church, and it was a pretty clear case, but because of the explosive nature of the case, I asked him, I said, listen, is there anybody else in the congregation you think is ready to be recognized as an elder?
And he said, well, there are two or three guys who I think could be so only. I said, Brother, I think I would tell you to hold off on this even as explosive as it is just to hold off until you can get those two or three guys in there and then to act on this.
Jonathan Leeman:
Why that advice? Because
Mark Dever:
This had to do with the current senior pastor and his wife and she part,
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m sorry, was it the senior pastor talking to you or another?
Mark Dever:
No, it was another pastor
Jonathan Leeman:
In that church
Mark Dever:
And the senior pastor had to step down.
Jonathan Leeman:
Oh, I see.
Mark Dever:
So my friend was becoming the senior pastor and the only recognized elder, and because the wife particularly was not sung repentant, I could see this becoming full of recrimination. And he said, she said so quickly and wasn’t clear that the former senior pastor was going to be useful. So I just thought if at all possible, you need to put this beyond being able to be seen as a him versus her. You need to have the elders as a whole come to the same understanding of this. They’ll prevent you from making mistakes.
They’ll see things you don’t see as an individual and then lead the church in this. It’s just if you’re about to go through some hard choppy waters, if you can have a plurality of men where all of their credit pooled together is sort of used by the church’s ballast, I think you’ll find that serves the church. Well,
Jonathan Leeman:
The general principle is plurality keeps things from being perceived as a personal vendetta.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. It’s oil on the water. It pushes things down. It helps
Jonathan Leeman:
Aside from all the wisdom that those brothers bring.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. That’s right.
What to Do When Church Discipline is Rejected
Jonathan Leeman:
What if you have a church that seems recalcitrant even after being taught and prepared that, no, we just don’t do this, pastor? That’s just, they’re kind of stuck. That seems unloving. We’re not going to go there. We can’t do this.
You’ve been laboring here for years. You’ve been teaching here for years on discipline and membership and they get membership, but they’re just not ready to do this. What do you do? Does that pastor stay at that church or does he leave?
Mark Dever:
Well, I think at some point I think that would be the kind of thing I would leave over. But again, I’d need to know the specifics.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s an awfully big decision to leave. Is it that important to practice discipline?
Mark Dever:
Oh yeah, yeah. It’s hugely important.
Jonathan Leeman:
Just unpack that a little bit more for us. Like, yes, I would leave a church over this. I’m assuming that’s not most guys’ intuitive reflexes. Why is that your intuitive reflex?
Mark Dever:
I think of the thing that Robert Murray McShane said that’s in his memoirs and remains that Andrew Bonar did. And if you’re looking at this one reprint I have is on pages 104, 105. McShane said, when I first entered upon the work of the ministry among you, I was exceedingly ignorant of the vast importance of church discipline.
I thought that my great and almost only work was to pray and preach. I saw your souls to be so precious in the time so short, that I devoted all my time and care and strength to labor in word and doctrine. When cases of discipline were brought before me and the elders, I regarded them with something like abhorrence.
It was a duty I shrank from. And I may truly say it nearly drove me from the work of the ministry among you altogether. But it pleased God who teaches his servants in another way than man teaches to bless some of the cases of discipline to the manifest and undeniable conversion of the souls of those under our care.
And from that hour, a new light broke in upon my mind and I saw that if preaching is an ordinance of Christ, so is church discipline. I now feel very deeply persuaded that both are of God, that two keys are committed to us by Christ, the one the key of doctrine by means of which we unlock the treasures of the Bible. The other key of discipline by which we open or shut the way to the ceiling ordinances of the face, both are Christ’s gift and neither is to be resigned without sin.
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen. We’re protecting the gospel, we’re protecting our preaching, we’re protecting the sheep through discipline. And if you finally can’t go there, it’s going to be tough to do those things in that church.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Any other thoughts, brother, on preparing your church for the practice of discipline before we sign off?
Be Prayerful About Church Discipline
Mark Dever:
Be prayerful. The evil one will really not want this to happen because when you do this, it starts making the, it’s like knocking the last bits of plastic off something you’ve had in a plastic mold that’s been made. And now you’re going to have a very clear idea of what a Christian is, and he really doesn’t want that to happen.
Jonathan Leeman:
He wants it still gummed up. Oh
Mark Dever:
Yeah. So there will be more than average opposition to this generally, and you want to be prayerful about that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen. Thank you, brother. Thanks, man.
Subscribe to Pastors Talk
Pastors Talk
A weekly conversation between Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever about practical aspects of the Christian life and pastoral ministry.
Subscribe and Listen to on: