On Interacting After Church Discipline (Pastors Talk, Ep. 254)
How should you interact with someone who has faced church discipline? In this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman start the conversation by discussing Biblical instruction on how to interact with those who have been excommunicated from the church. They emphasize the importance of loving them while not undermining the church’s actions and how to instruct members during church discipline. Leeman and Dever talk about family obligations after church discipline and share stories of restoration after excommunication. They finish by discussing the importance of equipping pastors to have these hard conversations to create a healthy church.
- Biblical Instruction for Interacting After Church Discipline
- Family Obligations After Church Discipline
- Instructing the Church When Removing a Member
- Restoration After Church Discipline
- Equipping Pastors to Practice Church Discipline
Related Resources:
Books: Church Discipline, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love
Podcast: Church Discipline: A Difficult and Necessary Task, On Church Discipline, On How to Prepare a Church to Practice Discipline, History and Discipline of the Local Church (with Greg Wills)
Journal: Church Discipline: Medicine for the Body
Articles: A Church Discipline Primer, “Don’t Do It!!” Why You Shouldn’t Practice Church Discipline, A Biblical Theology of Church Discipline
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, this is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
This is Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
Welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to help pastors build healthy churches.
Mark Dever:
If you want to know more, go to 9Marks.org.
Jonathan Leeman:
Or if you want to give, go to 9Marks.org/talk.
Mark Dever:
Jonathan, is it true that this ministry is not a for-profit ministry?
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s very correct.
Mark Dever:
So it is supported by individuals and churches?
Jonathan Leeman:
Mostly. There’s a few other places, but yeah.
Mark Dever:
How would a church financially support 9Marks? Where is that in your budget? It’s not a salary.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, that’s right. We encourage churches to think about using their missions budget to that end, insofar as a lot of what we do is around the world and building healthy churches. And what is missions, but churches planting churches across borders?
Mark Dever:
Instead of sending their money to get the gospel to some place in New Guinea, send it to DC, so we can pay for book reviews to be written?
Jonathan Leeman:
I’d like to say it’s all part of the Great Commission, and you want to do both.
Mark Dever:
All right. I actually think there’s a good argument for supporting it from Great Commission kind of funding because a lot of what we do is overseas and what we do, we try to strengthen the local church. And if a church becomes healthy, it will be a mission-sending and mission-supporting church.
Jonathan Leeman:
I was listening to somebody describe various culture war things going on and it was in the context of the Christmas party, the 9Marks, the end of the year we do with our volunteers, and so forth. And you were reading some encouraging email that some pastor had sent to us saying, “Hey, thanks to you guys, I’ve learned to think about membership and discipline and polity and elder-led congregationalism.” And I thought to myself, what a strange little ministry we are. Like who…
Mark Dever:
You’ve written most of it, man.
Jonathan Leeman:
Who goes and talks about that stuff? What’s the deal? And it occurred to me because I was reading it in the context of another prominent evangelical in his kind of culture-warrior ministry, and I’ll just leave it that vague. And I thought, you know, in a way, those things and a recovery of a better understanding of both authority and the Christian life together and in these covenanted assemblies.
Mark Dever:
Christian freedom, the gospel.
Jonathan Leeman:
This is how we are among other things addressing the culture war. We’re trying to say, hey, Christians, this is actually the most important stuff. The gospel and your life together in the gospel is the most important thing for you to be thinking about for eternity’s sake, most crucially. But then also… You know, being the kind of neighbors that we want to be in this world’s sake.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, we’re trying to help build space that will cultivate the person being honest with themselves and before God and with others, where coercion is not really possible and where genuineness is essential for true spiritual life and true spiritual growth. And there’s not a false economy for appearance in a healthy church or at least there should be a minimal reward for mere appearance.
The encouragement in a good church is there for people who truly are seeking to please the Lord, are themselves grateful for what the Lord has done for them and they’re not trying to fundamentally in fear of man posture to get somebody else’s approval. And it strikes me that much that is coercive in our society is ignoring what an individual really thinks.
They just want them to behave certain ways. And in Christianity, it’s odd. We really value the individual as an expression of the image of God. And we really want to persuade people that what the Bible says is true.
And we want people in and of themselves genuinely to think that, not to merely think that they have to think that, they should think that, they must think that, or certainly not, they can’t think that. But that they honestly themselves do think there is a God.
They do think we’re made in His image. They do think men and women are of both equal value, but we do think people of different races are of equal value before the Lord. And we just go on and on and on.
And a good, healthy church should encourage that kind of space where honesty cultivates the individual conscience, the individual sense of accountability to God, and a kind of genuineness that encourages a human flourishing we want to build a culture that captures and allows to go on and that we think as culture, as governments become more coercive, they are inherently cutting against some of the most important aspects of the image of God in us. And it’s belittling and it’s just sad and in some sense it’s comic, you know, in that it just ends up making poor imitations of human beings as God meant us to be.
Jonathan Leeman:
Paul has a line in his letter to Philemon where he says, “I could command you, but I would prefer to appeal to you.” And I’m thinking about your language there of forced. The new covenant, born againness, regeneration, the Holy Spirit in us works by…
Mark Dever:
Changes our desire.
Jonathan Leeman:
Changes our desire such that we can not command, but appeal. And creating a culture and society and group of people for whom they are living together in that way. Everything you just described to me all feels like, okay, that’s a bullet point list of conversion.
This is what conversion is. All of those things you were just talking about. And that’s why we’re here to talk today about church discipline.
Mark Dever:
Well, that’s part of how you make sure the conversion is real.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. In our last episode, Mark…
Mark Dever:
But surely we have talked about, just one of 140 times on this podcast. Here’s 141. We surely do not need to talk about it again.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, last time we talked about criteria for discipline. Remember that? We talked about outward, serious, unrepentant, kind of those three criteria. What I want to see…
Mark Dever:
And are those the same three you lay out in your little red book?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
Biblical Instruction for Interacting After Church Discipline
Jonathan Leeman:
What I want to think about with you right now is the question of how do you talk to people, treat people with, not fellowship, what with people after they’ve been removed from the church, right? So let me read a few passages.
These are the ones that I think instruct us and maybe you can think of others. But here’s three, Matthew 18:17. “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.”
Here’s another one, 1 Corinthians 5:11. “But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one.”
And then here’s the third one, Titus 3:10. “As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice have nothing more to do with him.” So again, we’re looking for biblical instruction on how do I interact with the person, Joe…
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
…who’s just been removed from membership in the church as an act of discipline, as an act of excommunication. Can you think of other passages? Have I basically covered them?
Mark Dever:
I think you’ve basically covered them. Now, there’s a lot more richness in Scripture that we can reflect on. So, for example, in 1 Corinthians 5, when we think of what’s going on there in that passage, Paul specifically says that this discipline is taking place so that the flesh will be destroyed but the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
That’s 1 Corinthians 5:5. So that’s our goal in making a clear statement to the person who’s lost in sin and to the congregation about that person is not anything negative to them ultimately, even if it’s the destruction of the flesh.
That’s the flesh not of the body, but that’s the flesh in the sense that the sinful desires to rebel against God. So that the spirit may be saved. So that’s what we’re looking for, the spirit being saved.
And so in that sense, I think there’s tons of scriptures we can go to that are behind that. I think of Luke 15:7, “Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance”.
Joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. Or I think of the way Jesus summarized his own ministry in Luke 19:10 after he interacted with Zacchaeus.
Jonathan Leeman:
Have you been preaching Luke lately?
Mark Dever:
Not this part of Luke, but yeah. When he’s interacting with Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus repents, and he says in Luke 19:10, “For the son of man came to seek and to save the lost.” So everything we do in our public and private ministry, including church discipline, is for that saving of the spirit, Paul’s language, is rooted in this language of Jesus, son of man who came to seek and save the lost.
Or chapter 15, where you have the great parables of recovery and repentance in heaven. Repentance means joy in heaven. So that’s what we’re managing for. And I think the little variety there was, even in the different verses you read from different places in Paul, over exactly how you do things, I think what you’re doing, I think the common thread is you’re treating them not as if they are Christians, but you’re treating them as people you want to be Christians.
And that you are helping to call them to that. So I can think of a person our church has excommunicated who has come along regularly to our services. He’s still come to hang out with me.
Sometimes he’ll be reading and talking and I happily speak with him about things including his soul. I don’t treat him as a non-Christian. I mean, sorry, I don’t treat him as a Christian.
I have introduced him to other people around me as someone who we’ve excommunicated, and who we love very much. And he knows if he’s around me, he will be…
Jonathan Leeman:
Literally, in the introduction, you’ll say, “Here’s Joe. Joe is removed from our church.”
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
What does Joe do at that moment?
Mark Dever:
Oh, Joe knows I’m going to do that. And he accepts it and still wants to come over and hang out.
Seek Redemption and Joy
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. Okay, so the animating principle here is to seek the person’s redemption.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
The animating principle is a desire for joy.
Mark Dever:
Heaven’s joy, yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
But I still… Okay, help me grapple for a moment with these phrases that we get from…
Mark Dever:
Yeah, you have to interrupt.
Jonathan Leeman:
…not even to eat and have nothing to do with them. Is this shunning?
Family Obligations After Church Discipline
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I think it’s not treating them as you would if they were Christian. So when it says they have nothing to do with them, let’s say that a wife has a husband who’s been unfaithful and he is not repentant and he’s been excommunicated.
Is the wife to no longer have marital relations with him? Is the wife to no longer share a house with him? Is the wife to no longer serve him in any way, do his laundry, encourage him for his day, cook a meal, say a kind word to him?
I don’t think Paul’s intends any of those things. I think what Paul is intending is saying, look, you don’t have anything to do with him as a member of the church. You don’t treat him, you don’t for a moment let him think that yes, he should come to the Lord’s table.
He should regard himself as a Christian. There’s no illusion like that. But instead, everything that the wife does is, yeah, she’s still fulfilling her obligations as a wife, as she might to an excommunicated father, an excommunicated son or daughter. But she is not doing anything that will make him think he is okay with the Lord.
Jonathan Leeman:
And while it’s clear to me that the wife of the excommunicated husband, the son of the excommunicated father, should continue to fulfill the family obligations. Hopefully, people can nail that in their minds.
Family obligations are not dissolved by end of the church relationship. What if it’s not a family member though?
Mark Dever:
Well, yeah. So this friend dimension, he’s like come in and spend time with me. If he were continuing to maintain that he was a Christian or he was okay with God, I think would be hard for me to even do what I’ve done with this one person I’m mentioning.
Because then my social participation might seem like an endorsement of what he’s saying. But this person maintains that he was in the wrong, that he wants to repent, that he wants to be right with God.
So he’s kind of accepting our discipline, accepting the reason for it, and he’s working with it. Yeah, if they were resisting that then I’m not sure how I could… I would just want to be very careful that nothing I’m going to do is going to seem like an endorsement to him of his position.
I think that’s what Paul’s doing. He doesn’t like to go on his normal with someone like that who is in unrepentant sin.
Jonathan Leeman:
We use the word fellowship very informally, but you do not want to engage in any kind of fellowship with him that would undermine the church’s action.
Mark Dever:
Exactly. Exactly. Make it seem like it’s not that important. It doesn’t make that big a deal.
Jonathan Leeman:
You disagree with the church or those people don’t know, whatever.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, nothing like that.
What is Shunning?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. What is shunning?
Mark Dever:
I use the word shunning in considering how I know certain religious groups. I’ve seen it happen among Buddhists, among Hindus, among certain Christian kind of groups like Amish, some other conservative Mennonites, where when I have baptized somebody from a Hindu family or a Buddhist family, they are, or Jewish family, they are treated as dead by the relatives. And I don’t think Paul is calling for that here.
Jonathan Leeman:
Have nothing to do with them. Again, you’re limiting to the domain of church relations as such.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
And with such a person…
Mark Dever:
Because I’m of the way Paul is continuing the wife of the unbeliever to continue to relate as a wife to that unbeliever, saying that union is not unholy, but it’s holy. So I’m thinking the same thing.
Jonathan Leeman:
And Paul’s phrase, with such a person, do not even eat, we assume at least the Lord’s Supper, maybe larger concepts, ancient Near Eastern hospitality in which you are bringing them and kind of affording a fellowship.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
You don’t want to do that, but it doesn’t mean you don’t show up at Starbucks and have a conversation.
Mark Dever:
Right. And if they are showing repentance and it’s just not yet been confirmed by the church, then no, I’m happy in eating with them in that sense and drawing them along in fellowship and talking to them about Christ through that, but not in any way that’s going to affirm their sin.
Jonathan Leeman:
It occurred to me you’d made a big pastoral distinction, I think, a relevant distinction when you said this guy in your study is moving towards, is confessing his sin and seemingly moving…
Mark Dever:
If he were resistant, I could not do that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. That changes the game.
Mark Dever:
Then I would be doing what Paul’s forbidding.
Instructing the Church When Removing a Member
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. So what do you say to your church? How do you instruct your church when you’re removing… Do you instruct your church and how when you are removing the person?
Mark Dever:
We do. We will normally have… And we do this sometimes apart from any removal. We’ll just occasionally have a brief period of instruction in the member’s meeting in which we will read through a few of these passages.
We’ll point out the different phrases. The fact is Paul’s not saying exactly the same thing. It’s sort of like there’s this area that’s somewhere in here where you want to be. And we resolve the differences by saying, like, it’s just not treating them as if everything is normal or everything is okay.
And then we happily field some questions from the congregation. They may have, how do you treat such a person? And we encourage them to have individual conversations with elders if they have further follow-up questions.
Jonathan Leeman:
You tell the church the person can continue to attend.
Mark Dever:
We not only tell them that, we tell the person who’s communicating that that’s in a normal situation, that that’s what we want them to do. And I would say unless they’ve moved away or we’ve disciplined them for non-attendance, if it’s for anything else, we have very often seen them continue to attend.
And we have, from time to time, we just did this a couple of members meetings ago, seen someone that we’ve disciplined even years past come back repentant and make a statement and be voted on by our congregation and affirmed for membership in our church or some other evangelical church. So it’s a joy seeing these kinds of repentance.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, a friend of ours disagrees with our approach here. He would instruct his congregation that the person should not come and that they should have very little to do. How would you respond?
Mark Dever:
Well, I’d have a lot of sympathy with them. If they’re trying to underscore the seriousness of the action, I agree entirely. But I would just say, if you’re going to treat them as a tax collector and a sinner, at some point when it appears they’re beginning to repent, you don’t hold off everything until they’re baptized.
You want to encourage them in that. And furthermore, you think their hearing the Word is gonna be part of how they come to repentance. So if they are willing to hear the Word preached and willing to make themselves accountable enough at least to be seen regularly and known regularly in that gathering, and particularly where everybody knows what’s going on and where they’re not allowed to the privileges of membership, the Lord’s Supper, that seems all to the good.
So I would understand why somebody would think that. Yeah, I would just practice it a different way. I would pray for the effectiveness of their approach.
When Should Someone Not Be Permitted to Attend Church?
Jonathan Leeman:
Are there exceptions to your counsel in terms of when you’d say somebody should not attend?
Mark Dever:
Yes, we’ve had that once or twice when someone is physically threatening people. We’ve had that. I can think of a couple of examples or maybe more, one, two, three, maybe three times in 30 years.
Jonathan Leeman:
I know of one where there is a restraining order.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, because that was entirely apart from an action of the church. An individual did that because this person physically assaulted them on the sidewalk.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’d be surprised. A number of times I’ve had pastors call me and ask the question, what do I do with the member who refuses to comply with the church’s instruction in regard to the person who’s been excommunicated? So again, Joe has been removed. Bob is lifelong friends with Joe.
Mark Dever:
He’s playing video games with him, going hunting, acting like nothing’s wrong.
Jonathan Leeman:
And you talk to Bob and say, hey, Bob, we removed Joe. He’s like, well, you know, he just, he doesn’t want to do it.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you then excommunicate Bob?
Mark Dever:
That’d be much harder. I mean, that would be a matter of, that’s a more of a bit of judgment in what’s enough compliance, what’s too little. It would certainly be instruction and prayer. Instruction to that member what he should not be doing.
Jonathan Leeman:
Bob, you’re actually working against the church, the very difficult and loving job the church just did. Why are you trying to undermine us, buddy?
Mark Dever:
Well, I understand you’re not trying to do that, but I’m just letting you know that I fear what you’re doing is undermining that. And that’s why I think Paul has these kinds of pretty severe phrases littered throughout his letters exactly to prevent people from doing exactly what you’re doing.
Restoration From Church Discipline
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Any good stories of restoration?
Mark Dever:
Oh, thankfully, yeah. I mean, I can think of one, two, three, just immediately come to mind. One of them is a very recent one, a couple of others. One having to do with the immorality of a guy and a girl, another having to do with a marriage that broke up and the guy being repentant.
Yeah, just good accounts of people. Usually, it’s over the years. Well, I can think of another one of our friends in Indonesia who emailed me just this last week, wished me a Merry Christmas, and told me he tries to have his Muslim neighbors over.
Jonathan Leeman:
Oh, wow.
Mark Dever:
…to share the gospel with them. That was what, 20-plus years ago.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s amazing. I didn’t know you were still in touch with them.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brother, it’s so encouraging to see the way the Lord, again and again, will use these small and hard faithfulnesses just for long-term benefit. So this was one brother I’m referring to, Jonathan and I were on this elder board, I assume, at the same time back then.
And we saw somebody professing faith down on the mall and came to our church, was baptized, and was involved. And then a very difficult situation. We ended up excommunicating him for some deception he was involved in.
It was very hard. Another local church, an Anglican church, decided to take him into membership, but they were very respectful of us and what we did. They understood why we would do that.
They just disagreed. We were fine with that. We could see how they were taking their line on it. Anyway, the guy ultimately proved to be repentant. He wrote us thanking us for our faithful love toward him.
Anyway, now it’s like 25 years later and he emails me from time to time from Indonesia where he is back in his home country now and he is from a Muslim background that he tries to Christmas have neighbors over and he was having a hard time doing it this year. So he just emailed me thanking me again for the church’s faithfulness and asked me to pray for this evangelistic outreach.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s amazing.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, so sometimes I think pastors fear like off I do this we’re never gonna have a relationship with the person again. That’s not in my experience people know we’ve like been over backward to try to love them Nobody nobody wants to excommunicate somebody or discipline somebody it’s hard work and all of us who do that we’re all sinners we’re all just thinking man if you turn the lights on every sin in my life you’d definitely find something that would just be like this is terrible why that sinner, not this sinner?
The Lord is kind in the way he allows us to help each other follow Christ and if we’re willing to pay for that socially the Lord again and again shows his kindness in bringing visible results to encourage even little ones like us. To be able to keep following along even through what looks like a very hard path.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s almost as if the Holy Spirit is wiser than us and knows what he’s revealing for his good reasons.
Mark Dever:
So true.
Jonathan Leeman:
And we can trust his word.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Maintaining Relationships With the Excommunicated
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, so to sum up, you’re not saying a relationship with the excommunicated person ends. You’re saying it dramatically changes.
Mark Dever:
Well, in some cases…
Jonathan Leeman:
And should show up in the way we…
Mark Dever:
Yes, in some cases it could end. I want to be clear. If that person, particularly if that person is unrepentant, it may effectively just have to end. That would be the significance of Paul’s language, though, the severity of Paul’s language.
But by God’s grace, in many of the cases we’ve seen here, if they’re non-attendance, we just don’t see them, we don’t interact with them anymore. So that’s just, yeah, that’s just a different kind of thing.
But if it’s the case for some kind of pronounced sexual immorality or just something they’re not repenting of, but then when they’re confronted like this, they say they’re repentant. And yet we need some time to confirm that.
Then there’s a lot more that we may be able to do to help Slash confirm that. You’re the dude who’s written the book on this.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m going right back in my mind to one of the ones I’ve told the story on is one of our first ones, somebody for a lifestyle of sexual immorality. He was clearly unrepentant. He told him God told him it was OK. And he was a jogging buddy of mine.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I remember. I remember sitting in the hallway here at church talking to you about it.
Jonathan Leeman:
That relationship effectively ended.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
God told me it was okay.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. And here’s an example of the guy not repenting at all.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
He thought what he was doing was right, and you knew from scripture it was wrong.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Mark Dever:
Well, yeah, that’s gonna be pretty much a sheer break.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. With the family member.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
The person who is utterly convinced it’s okay, so the mother of the son decides he’s going to pursue a gay lifestyle. That mother still loves that son as a son, fully, completely, and doesn’t make the sheer break that you’re describing.
Mark Dever:
No, I think in that case, well, you still have a responsibility as a mother. I think in that case, you want to make sure the son knows, and in that case, I’m pretty sure he does know what you think scripture teaches. And then you want to continue fulfilling your role in his life as his mother.
Jonathan Leeman:
It occurs to me that’s a really hard line to walk between the rock and the hard place there. How many parents have you and I heard of, at least I have, I assume you too, that when their son or daughter did choose a certain alternative lifestyle, their own changes, their own perspectives changed because they didn’t know how to walk that line.
That’s what we’re calling people, especially family members, is to walk that line between on the one hand, I’m saying no to that, I’m not going to undermine the church’s action here, but I’m going to continue to love you as your family member in some form or fashion. Any other final comments, Mark, on…
Mark Dever:
Well, that’s why I just want to press you for a second, because you’re the one who wrote a book on this, and you have several things on it, but the little red one has been so popular. It’s been used a lot.
If there’s been a recovery among English-speaking evangelical churches of church discipline as a practice, that’s in no small part because of you. Do you feel guilty about that?
Jonathan Leeman:
Number one, I might dispute the premise. I’ve published a book, yeah. I hope my work on this topic and your work on this topic is helping Christians recover the idea right where we began our conversation.
The Holy Spirit, when we’re born again, really does change people. He really does create a new life. And if there is no evidence of new life, we should say, something’s off here. And church discipline is insisting on at least the first steps of change.
Mark Dever:
So we somehow have to conceive of this in our own minds and hearts as part of love.
Jonathan Leeman:
100%.
Mark Dever:
Love to God and love to the person who has been lost in sin and love to those that that person is misrepresenting Jesus to.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, if we look just like the world, that’s not loving. If we’re saying you can continue to remain enslaved to your sin just like you were before, that’s not loving.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, agree.
Jonathan Leeman:
But we do have work to do on the topic of love.
Mark Dever:
Well, and that’s why even things like church membership numbers that are so different than attendance are so unloving. If you say you have 400 members, you only have 170 people coming, what are those 230 people doing?
What are they out there communicating with? Your church’s approval means to follow Jesus. And you don’t even know what they’re doing. They may be living very anti-Christian lives, and yet your approval is on them, and they are representing Jesus with your sweatshirt or your t-shirt on them.
And that’s where I think, pastor, you’ve got to be thinking seriously about who are we sponsoring and approving of publicly as representatives of Christ.
Jonathan Leeman:
The funny thing is if we’re talking about any other organization, whether the NBA or the American Bar Association…
Mark Dever:
They’re going to be all over this.
Equipping Pastors to Practice Church Discipline
Jonathan Leeman:
This is precisely what every organization and every company does. But for some reason, we have a hard time with it as Christians. And therefore, I think one of the huge things we need to do is equip pastors to have the kind of conversations we’re talking about.
Mark Dever:
It’s because of those sources I mentioned in Luke. You know, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost or the wonderful parables in Luke 15 of finding the lost coin or the lost sheep or the lost son, the prodigal son, the joy that comes in heaven with the repentance.
It’s because we are familiar with that recovery as a very Christian theme. And sometimes the fact that that recovery may have a kind of negative preface to it, we’re not as…It’s like young parents having to figure out the discipline of their children is a loving thing to do.
By the time it’s your third kid, you probably got that down. But with your first child, when are they really understanding more than my dog did? Now. Okay, they’re getting all of that. Clearly, they’re understanding.
When do I in any way constrain their action, let alone punish them? How do I understand this is part of love? I mean, parents have to think this through. And the Lord has kindly left us kids so that we get examples of this in our own experience.
So hopefully, if you’re a teacher, if you have employees you have to work with to change, and certainly as pastors of churches, you’ve had analogies in other parts of your experience to see how a negative thing can be part of a positive overall goal.
Jonathan Leeman:
Piper has a little riff on standing in the church nursery and observing that those kids who are never disciplined by their parents turn into brats. They turn into self-entitled, my word, little narcissists, that when you discipline a child and you create boundaries, you say the universe is bigger than just you and your desires.
You actually have to account for other people and larger things than just yourself and your desires. And to fail to discipline that child is so unloving and does not create what you want to.
And so yeah, we get that practice there and it applies to the church too, I think, right? Discipline is good. Discipline is loving. Any final comments on how to have those conversations?
Mark Dever:
Just lots of resources for you on the 9Marks website. If you go on the website, and look under discipline, you’re going to find examples of things and shorter articles that are written more specifically.
There’s an article I think that I wrote very early on that’s really important for you. If you’re just thinking about this and you’re becoming persuaded, I have an article called, Why You Shouldn’t Practice Church Discipline.
That you really, want that to be one of the first ones you read. Because it’s going to warn you that you really shouldn’t practice church discipline.
Jonathan Leeman:
Slow down.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Like stop and let’s think about this very carefully before we start to do this.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. I was about to close it up. I’m going to take the tangent. Are you feeling more of the burden of guys taking… I wonder why you point that article out right now. Are you feeling the burden more of guys taking some of the things we talk about and going too far more than you did say 10 years ago, 15, 20 years ago?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, because Jonathan, you’ve been putting out books like nobody’s business, and not just you, but lots of folks have been with 9Marks logo on it. And there’s no doubt that there are churches around the country, around the world that are listening and agreeing.
They’re seeing what we do in scripture. And because of that, we get more and more stories of things not being done well. So I just want to go like, guys, guys, there’s some warning labels on this medicine as well.
Jonathan Leeman:
Here’s a gas pedal, but here’s also the brake.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Thanks for your time.
Mark Dever:
Thank you.
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A weekly conversation between Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever about practical aspects of the Christian life and pastoral ministry.
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