Equipping University

There is a great need for churches to realize the value of corrective church discipline for the health and vitality of the church. Churches must realize that corrective church discipline on earth is important because it is a small act of judgment that dimly points to God's final judgment in heaven. However, that relatively small act is performed with the hope that the sinning church member will come to repentance before God's final judgment ever arrives. This decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible sign of the failure of the contemporary church, which is no longer concerned with purity of confession or lifestyle, but sees itself almost entirely as a voluntary association of autonomous members with minimal moral accountability to God or each other. Without a recovery of biblical church discipline, the church will continue its downward slide.

This is not the way it is supposed to be. The people of God are depicted throughout the Bible as people of purity. As the chosen people of a holy God, the people of Israel carried God's own name and reflected his holiness in their life, worship, and beliefs. Israel was instructed in how to live a life that set them apart from their pagan neighbors. In the New Testament, the church of God is likewise described as the people of God who are visible to the world by the purity of their life and integrity of their testimony.

Individuals and churches usually commit one of two errors when contemplating church discipline. First, they might think, "This is a private matter. We have no business interfering here. After all, we are all sinners. Who are we to judge?" With this thinking, there is no corrective discipline at all and some might get uncomfortable with the "meddling" in biblically-based discipline. Second, some go to the opposite extreme and rush into judgment with the gleeful purpose of censoring and molding others to look just like themselves. In their harshness, they forget that the purpose behind all church discipline is to be redemptive and instead settle for "enforced conformity that never penetrates the heart." However, the process of implementing discipline in a church that currently does not practice discipline will be a slow, nerve-wracking, and mettle-testing process. It is wrongheaded to think that people will understand and accept church discipline because it is in the Bible. People will resist corrective discipline. People will resent the church "prying" into their personal lives. People will choose family allegiances and personal friendships over clear Biblical standards. We must never assume that people and other churches will understand or support the process or results. Yet do it we must because the Bible demands it and the church needs it.

There is a great need for churches to realize the value of corrective church discipline for the health and vitality of the church. Churches must realize that corrective church discipline on earth is important because it is a small act of judgment that dimly points to God's final judgment in heaven. However, that relatively small act is performed with the hope that the sinning church member will come to repentance before God's final judgment ever arrives. This decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible sign of the failure of the contemporary church, which is no longer concerned with purity of confession or lifestyle, but sees itself almost entirely as a voluntary association of autonomous members with minimal moral accountability to God or each other. Without a recovery of biblical church discipline, the church will continue its downward slide.

This is not the way it is supposed to be. The people of God are depicted throughout the Bible as people of purity. As the chosen people of a holy God, the people of Israel carried God's own name and reflected his holiness in their life, worship, and beliefs. Israel was instructed in how to live a life that set them apart from their pagan neighbors. In the New Testament, the church of God is likewise described as the people of God who are visible to the world by the purity of their life and integrity of their testimony.

Individuals and churches usually commit one of two errors when contemplating church discipline. First, they might think, "This is a private matter. We have no business interfering here. After all, we are all sinners. Who are we to judge?" With this thinking, there is no corrective discipline at all and some might get uncomfortable with the "meddling" in biblically-based discipline. Second, some go to the opposite extreme and rush into judgment with the gleeful purpose of censoring and molding others to look just like themselves. In their harshness, they forget that the purpose behind all church discipline is to be redemptive and instead settle for "enforced conformity that never penetrates the heart." However, the process of implementing discipline in a church that currently does not practice discipline will be a slow, nerve-wracking, and mettle-testing process. It is wrongheaded to think that people will understand and accept church discipline because it is in the Bible. People will resist corrective discipline. People will resent the church "prying" into their personal lives. People will choose family allegiances and personal friendships over clear Biblical standards. We must never assume that people and other churches will understand or support the process or results. Yet do it we must because the Bible demands it and the church needs it.

The SBC loves to tout that we are the largest denomination in the United States with 16,266,920 members in 44,696 churches. That sounds impressive until you read the next line on the annual report and discover that the average attendance in worship in those same churches is 6,148,868. This means that only 37.8% of all the SBC members attend worship services on any given week - a little more than two-thirds! Of course, it is possible that many are ill, at college, in the military, or have some other valid reason for not being in their home church. However, that cannot be the case for all the absentees. Every week, over 10 million Southern Baptists fail at the absolute minimum level of commitment for a church member. In the past, it was generally accepted that no church and no denomination had the right to consider itself healthy unless more people attend than were on the roll. This is the standard in churches all around the world today and by our great-grandparents in America's past. As we attempt to gauge the health of the local church, a major symptom to examine is the mark of biblical church membership. Church membership is a serious matter - much more serious than many Christians understand or believe.

There is no single statement in the Bible that says "Thou shalt be a member of a local church." However, such a membership is definitely implied in the very nature of the church and its practices. Church membership is the means by which we mark the boundaries of the church. The Christian life is not to be lived in isolation but with other Christians. Christianity is personal but not private. A Christian is depicted in the Bible as one who joins with other believers in a formal commitment to love and be loved by those with whom we regularly interact and desire to hold accountable and to whom we are held accountable. In this study, we will see several Biblical passages that indicate that the New Testament churches had membership lists of some sort. They knew who was a member and who was not. When people became a follower of Jesus, they joined themselves to their local church. They joined it! In the New Testament, there simply was no such thing as an unbaptized believer. There was also no such thing as a Christian who was not a church member.