Teaching Church Discipline in a Church Plant : 9Marks
Every church is full of people in the pews that are in a lifelong struggle with sin. We will wrongly admit false converts. And true converts we get caught up in sin. Basically, your churches will have both Judases and Peters on its membership roster.
Church discipline is like home exercise equipment. Everyone has it lying around. But few actually use it. When several families and I planted a church in 2015, we didn’t want to let any equipment God gave us for strengthening his church go unused. Knowing that church discipline was going to be a tool we’d have to use, we wanted to make sure we were prepared to use it.
Furthermore, Christians view the local church like the “g” in lasagna. No one really knows why it’s there; we just know it should be there. This is why many Christians don’t understand church membership is a necessary component for Christianity. Pastors must therefore connect the dots of repentance, faith, and the church for them. Then discipline begins to make sense.
A good membership process isn’t about trying to find mature Christians, it’s about creating informed Christians. We should inform people about anything that might make them feel uncomfortable, or things Satan may use to tempt them to abandon the commitment they made to Christ.
What we did: We were explicit about discipline and left plenty of times for Q&A in our membership class. Then we had a one-on-one meeting with the prospective members before they join, in which we’d ask how they were processing our teaching on discipline. We want to treat our membership process like leading a caravan of cars: drive slow enough to make sure everyone is keeping up; constantly check on people who are lagging behind.
3. Preach hope not merely what should happen next.
What we did: When we talked about discipline, we never talk about what happens next without talking about what we hope will happen. If you only preach process, people will lack the courage and motivation to do the hard work of discipline. But if you preach hope, it won’t make the task any easier, but it will give people the courage to know their obedience isn’t in vain.
What we did: In practicing discipline in the life of our church, we always make it a point to debrief afterwards—especially with people who seem to be the most bothered (remember, we’re leading a caravan of people, and we want to go slow enough to check on the struggling). Not only do we debrief, but we pray continually to make sure we’re being consistent in order to avoid perceptions of partiality. Where apparent contradictions exist, it’s important to be forthright in our communication.
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