Peter Witkowski Discipleship

What is the Church?

Church. We know what it is right. We have been around, to, and in church. “Here is the steeple; Open the doors and see all the people.” We know how it goes.

Yet despite our great familiarity with the church, few of us can sit down and easily rattle off a definition of the church. We go to church; we may even work for a church, but we do not know what a local church is. We cannot confidently say this is church and that is not. And we need to be able to.

As Jonathan Leeman notes,

To claim interest in Christian fellowship or even in the church while paying little heed to church structures is like claiming to love family while paying no heed to the differences between parent and child or husband and wife.

The answer to the question, “What is a local Church?” is of monumental importance.

The Scriptures teach that,

“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5.25b-27).

Christ died for the Church. Christ came to call a people to himself who join together to worship God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. And if we hope to be with Christ in heaven we need to be with his church today.

So what is the true local church?

Does our college student have the freedom to exchange her local church for the solid BCM or Campus Crusade ministry on campus? Both preach the Word and have worship? Can we do church in our small group apart from the larger congregation? Is the ordinance observing church that preaches all roads lead to heaven a church? Does our small group have the right to excommunicate Steve from church if he refuses to stop embezzling money from work? Is church defined by size or by doctrine of by both? What is church?

I will answer this question over the next several weeks. I invite all those who live in the greater Amissville, Warrenton, and Culpeper, Virginia area to join the congregation of Amissville Baptist Church’s first seminar Bible study at 7PM. We will be discussing everything from preaching to baptism, to elders, seeing God’s plan for his people, his bride: the church.

If you cannot join us or if you want to keep studying in between lessons, I encourage you to follow along with us here at witkowskiblog.com.

And now to the definition: What is the local Church:

The local church is the spiritual, physical, and spatial assembling of God’s universal Church which consists of those who have and, will be, redeemed through Christ’s blood by the Holy Spirit according to the will of the Father. Initiated at Pentecost, The local church consists of baptized believers who have covenanted together to regularly assemble for the purpose of preaching and obeying the Word, worshiping God, administering the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, maintaining the purity of the church, and evangelizing the lost (Heb. 10:25; Mt. 28:18). The local church is led by elders, served by deacons, and ruled by the members.

We will spend the next 8 weeks unpacking our definition, by spending a week on each of the following topics:

  1. Physical, regenerate church membership
  2. The content and worship of true churches
  3. Baptism
  4. The Lord’s Supper
  5. Purity and Discipline
  6. Elders
  7. Deacons
  8. Congregational Rule

This-is-church-101

I hope to see you next Wednesday night at 7PM if not before.

Peter Witkowski Apologetics

Your Church Discipleship Isn’t Working

discipleshipDiscipleship. Seemingly every Southern Baptist Pastor and every evangelical minister, lay leader, and church member worthy their salt is all about this word. Discipleship books are popping of the selves of Christian books stores, conferences are dominated by the theme, and most every Sunday school vendor has launched some sort of new “Discipleship” curriculum that synthesizes discipleship principles into an accessible five to seven step program that promises to redefine you and your church.

The focus upon discipleship is extremely timely and needed. Today, only 1 of every three Southern Baptists attends church on Sunday. And only 39% of SBC members read their Bible every day. Mega churches such as Willow Church have and are continuing to radically adjust their programming because they discovered church participation does not equal spiritual growth and abiding faith. As Bill Hybles notes, “We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become self-feeders.” As a result of this mistake and of many others, SBC and evangelical churches often resembles the American culture which prizes self-actualization above all else. As Americans and Christians look within they do not find peace. They find narcissism. New York Times Columnist Ross Douthat comments that,

A nation of narcissist turn out to be a nation of gamblers speculators, gluttons, and gym obsessives, pornographers and Ponzi schemers, in which household debt rises alongside public debt, and bankers and pensioners and automakers and unions all compete to empty the public trough.

The same can often be said of Christendom. The evangelical, conservative church desperately needs revival and reformation. She can greatly benefit from rediscovering discipleship.

The focus upon discipleship is also needed because Jesus commands his followers to make disciples. In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus commands us to:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[b] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Christians are to make disciples. Christians are to be regularly teaching each other, investing in the lives of others, and sharing their faith. All who follow Christ have been commissioned by their God to make disciples. All Christians should be about the business of being discipled and discipling.

The church should champion discipleship. I am thankful for Bill Hull, Robby Gallaty, and the many others who have speared headed the discipleship movement. But in their zeal to disciple, the created a defective view of discipleship. Gallaty defines discipleship as, “intentionally equipping believers with the Word of God through accountable relationships empowered by the Holy Spirit in order to replicate faithful followers of Christ.”

The definition is good as far as it goes. It rightly priorities the relational nature of the Christian faith. But Gallaty’s and many others stop short of the historical definition of discipleship taught in the Scriptures and defended by Southern Baptists of old. The leaders of the modern discipleship movement divorce discipleship from the historical doctrines of formative and corrective discipline, making discipleship the property of the small group instead of the church. To teach God’s people the full counsel of God, the people of God have to deal with ecclesiology. They have to teach on and exercise the keys of the kingdom. The small group is the only one of many important cogs used by God to mature men and women into his image.

alex-gorham-341310-unsplashUntil liberalism stormed into the SBC in the late 19th and early 20th century, Baptist theologians seldom employed the word discipleship. The used the word discipline from which the English word discipleship derives. They believed two types of discipline existed: Formative Discipline and Corrective Discipline. As one might guess, formative discipline consisted of all the disciplines needed to mature or form the believer in the faith. Baptists affirm that the church forms disciples through covenants, the preaching of the Word, and small groups. Instead of being the impetus for discipleship, small groups are places where church members are encouraged to live out their covenantal commitments in light of their pastors’ teaching. Small group foster and aid the general discipleship process of the church but are not the discipleship process.  Mark Dever rightfully notes, the pastor’s “teaching of the Word is the core of the church’s discipleship ministry.” And the great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer concurs, writing that “the sermon remains the encompassing of spiritual care.”

As men faithfully expound the Scriptures detailing all the commands of Scripture, men and women hear truth, internalize truth, and then begin to make decisions based on the truth. Dr. D.Martin Lloyd-Jones notes that the goal of preaching is “to isolate the radical problems and to deal with them in a radical manner.” Preaching is discipleship. Church covenants are discipleship. Small groups are discipleship. And every element of church worship and life that proclaims the gospel is discipleship from the pulpit to the arm chair. In short, formative discipline is the process of forming believers into disciples through the accurate and intentional teaching of biblical truth. As the great Baptist theologian Edward T. Hiscox writes,

[edification and spiritual growth] are largely attained by instruction from the pulpit, the various departments of worship and the general activities of the Christian life.

Churches that have poor discipleship programs most likely do not have a faulty small group structure. They have a faulty preacher.

Discipleship, formative discipline, begins and ends with the local church.

Admittedly, even the most faithful of local churches will not produce perfect disciples. Though church covenants, godly preaching, and small groups should do much to promote the spiritual growth in the church, men and women are still very much sinners who are prone to sin. Matthew 18 clearly teaches the local church to be prepared for such failures. Men and women are commanded to confront those who sin and to call them to repentance. Most of the time such confrontations end well and the sinner believer is restored. But at times, the believer refuses to repent, the Christians must go back to the sinner with witnesses. And if that does not work, the believer must take the matter to the church. And if the sinner still refuses to repent, the sinner must be put out of the church.

Corrective church discipline described above can be likened to a school grade. Jonathan Leeman notes that the church should award A’s to those who diligently pursue Christ and to those who willingly repent of their sins, but hands out F’s to those who refuse to obey Jesus’ commands. If the church refuses to issue letter grades and if the church refuses to discipline men and women for unrepentant sins, the discipleship culture of the church will unravel. Anarchy will reign because obeying self is always easier than obeying Jesus. Hiscox prophetically notes,

The Church is the school of Christ; let the school be controlled with strict, yet wise and kindly discipline or the pupils will learn more of evil than of good, and anarchy and confusion will supplant good government.

Sadly a quick scan of today’s churches validate Hiscox’s warning. They are weak, feeble, wandering, sick, and lead by ungodly men and women because they have abandon elements of if not the entire doctrines of formative and corrective discipline. J.L. Dagg also hit the nail on the head in in 1858 when he wrote, “When discipline leaves the church, Christ goes with it.”

The discipleship programs in most of our conservative churches are broken because they follow Gallaty and Hull and others and only embrace one of the elements formative discipline, neglecting preaching and covenants and completely ignoring all the meaningfully elements of corrective discipline.

Brothers and sisters we do not need more small groups. We need men and women who are committed to the whole counsel of God and who are committed to preaching and living the Word, willing embracing all the costs and heart aches of church discipline. Until the churches of the SBC and conservative evangelicals begin lovingly and thoughtfully practicing church discipline, there will be no revival in America. I share Dr. Albert Mohler’s conclusion that,  “A church lacking these essential qualities, is biblically defined, not a true church.”

Are you ready to embrace both formative and corrective church discipline?

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Church Discipline Supports Parents

blog-spaceChurch discipline and children’s discipleship appear reside at the opposite ends of the local church universe. Talking to an adult about the embezzlement seems to have little relation to the preschooler pushing cars. But despite appearances, the two planets traverse orbits that often overlap. And if we neglect church discipline, we will do great harm to our children and by extension our youth.

Parents rejoice when they see their child come forward to make a profession of faith. The parents also tremble. Having grown up in the easy-believism culture that defined faith as walking an aisle and making a prayer, parents know that such faith can easily be faked. They have watched in despair as their friends strayed from the church into a life of sin and debauchery.

And yet, these unregenerate church members still possess the title of Christian. They can still walk back into their home church take the Lord ’s Table and use the church name without ever having repented of their sin. In the eyes of the church and in the eyes of the community, the wayward Christian who has fathered 25 children by 25 different women is just as much the church member as the senior lady who has collected 25 Sunday school attendance pins.

Such sentiment is often expressed in our local church vocabulary. When we learn that a lady hasn’t attended church over the last five years, we label her “misguided” or “nice” but stop short of calling her a sinner and calling her to repent. When our friend divorces his wife to chase after his younger secretary, we turn away in disgust and tell him to, “Straighten out his life,” but happily welcome him and the secretary into the church when they are ready without addressing their sin.

Once baptized, men and women are church members in perpetuity.

Functioning within this local church paradigm, parents are slow to affirm their child’s desire to follow Christ. Before baptism, the parent can enforce threats by refusing to allow their child to be baptized. But after baptism all recourse is lost. Once a member, always a member.

Christ clearly affirmed the perseverance of the saints. Once a man or women repents and believes, nothing can separate him or her from the love of God. But God does not teach the perseverance of church members.

Though the local church should strive to baptize only believers, she will make mistakes at times and baptize unregenerate men and women. Moreover, those who truly love the Lord are still being sanctified and will sin and need to be called to repent. Think of David, Bathsheba, and Nathan. God commands his church to practice church discipline in Matthew 18 and in 1 Corinthians 5. Baptism is not a blank check of admittance into the church. Those who join the church are called to be like Christ. And when they are not like Christ, the church must spring into action.

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. – 1 Cor. 5:11. 

The most important part of church discipline is the first stage of discipline. Personal confrontation. When we see a fellow church member in sin, we are to confront that brother for the purpose of seeing him restored. But how many of us have been lovingly confronted over our sin by our fellow church members? How many of us have heard Matthew 18 taught from the pulpit? How many of us have lovingly confronted another? If parents have seldom been confronted in love, they will probably struggle to lovingly confront their children about their sin.

And if the first level of church discipline does not succeed, we are to take one or two more Christians with us for the purpose of confronting the brother again. Again, how many parents have been a part of this process? How many parents have been confronted or have loving confronted another?

And if that fails, the church member should take the matter to the church. The unrepentant believer should be brought before the church. And if he still refuses to repent, he should be removed, excommunicated from the church. The church should declare that the unrepentant sinner is no longer a member of the church. Again how many parents and children have witnessed this process? How many parents and children have seen someone loving removed from the rolls because he or she refused to return to church or because he or she refused to abandon their sexual sin?

15 If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 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. – Mt. 18:15-17

If parents and children regularly lived and experienced all three levels of church discipline, they would have little to fear when their kids profess faith. Parents could regularly remind their children that faith is obedience and call their children to obedience. Children would see that church is not a light-hearted social club but a faith changing factory filled with the worship of God. Children would see that sin is serious and that the Christian life is a life of faith and repentance where people die to self and live for Christ. Church discipline helps families lovingly live out the gospel.

The local church must practice church discipline if she desires to empower parents to disciple their children.