July 19, 2018July 18, 2018 Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Why Churches Need Church Discipine: This is Church 101

Church discipline. These two words seem to be an oxyomoron. Church and discipline belong together just as much as hot goes ice or happy with grief. Christians should love sinners, extend grace, and shower out love. Discipline, rebuke, and excommunication appear to be terms reserved for the religous dark ages when knights lived in candle-lit castles and bathed twice a year. As early as 1900, evangelicals had began to distance themselves from this ungracious practice. They said, “[Church discipline] sounds punitive. Its savors of transgression, conflict and punishment.” Give us Jesus, love, and mercy. No discipline! Fastforward 115 years. Little has changed. Most churches never discuss or practice discipline. And those congregations that do occassionaly execumicate people often discipline those who recieved 25 year prison terms. Church discipline continues to be an evangelical oxyomoron.

But church and discipline do go together. The Greek word “παιδεία, discipline” is credited with producing righteousness in believers (Heb. 12:11; 2 Tim 3:16). To grow in Christ, believers must discipline themsselves. They must form their hearts into the image of Christ by studying the Word, by submitting to sound preaching, by attending Sunday school classes, and by joining a local church. As believers seeks after the things of God with the people of God, their minds will be filled with knowledge of God. This knowledge will shape their thoughts and desires which in turn will determine theirs actions, resulting in increased godliness and biblical living. The positive nature of church discipline could also be labeled formative discipline or discipleship.

But the process does not stop with instruction. As Jay Adams helpfully notes, Church discipline is, “education with teeth…that sees to it that the job gets done.” Discipleship, sanctification, and spiritual growth cannot happen apart from meaningful accountability… apart from discipline.

If the Christian who faithfully attends church and who regularly repents of sin is treated by his church in the same manner as the Christian who never attends church and who regularly gets drunk, the church indirectly promotes sinful living. Hiscox rightfully warns:

Let the school be controlled by strict, yet wise and kindly discipline, or the pupils will learn more of evil than of good.

Many churches are unmotivated, apathetic, and filled with vices because they neglect church discipline. They refuse to confront sin. They actually boast in their ability to tolerate sin as did the church in Corinthian. They claim that their failure to deal with the divorces in their congregation is a sign of wisdom. After all, who has the time or ability to discern who is right and wrong? These churches do not want to get sidetracked from the gospel, from evangelism, and from their growing kids ministry. We are so spiritual we ignore sin to pursue God. Talk about non-sensical thinking.

Yet the opposite is true. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:6,

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

When we turn a blind eye to sin, the sin does not go away and the church does not grow in holines. Unconfront and unaddressed sin makes nest and gives birth to new generations of sin, anguish, and controversy. If the church leadership winks at one divorce, more will come. If one example of greed is excused, the sin will grow and deplete the church’s budget. If the pastor refuses to address the members known gambling addiction and allows the man to gain influence in the church, to teach a Sunday schoo class, and to serve as a deacon, that gambler will sway the church towards error and foolish decisions. Unconfessed, unconfronted, and unrepented of sin destroys the local church.

Though church discipline seems counterintuitive to our human natures, the practice is needed. J.L. Dagg has prophetically warned:

When discipline leaves the church, Christ goes with it.

How Do We Do It?

If we see that a brother is sinning or has sinned, we go to him privately and encourage him to repent. If he repents or clears up the misunderstanding, all is good. The brother has been restored and won back. Our relationship is no longer broken. The rebuked brother has grown in his faith by putting off his sin and embracing righteousness afresh. If we love our brothers and sisters in Christ, we will confront them in love, seeking their spiritual well being.

But if he both admits to his sin and refuses to repent of it, we take another friend and go back to to the brother. We repeat the confrontation. If that confrontation does not bear the fruit of repentance, we take the matter to the church. Then the whole church should seek out the man and call him to repentance. If that does not work, then he is to be kicked out of the church. We expell the man desring him to come to grips with and repent of his sin. Leviticus 19:17 says,

You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.

Do you love your brothers and sisters in Christ? Go confront them!

Hopefully, most confrontation never moves beyond the first step of church discipline. The loving rebuke of a brother or sister should suffice a majority of the time. But when more actions is needed, the church must take it. The church must move forward with discipline.

Upon investigating and verification of the unrepentant sin, the church must be willing to excommunicate the former member, breaking off all familial, social contact with him. Paul tells the Corinthian believers to, “not even eat with such a one” (1 Cor. 5:11). God has already declared the believer to be worth of judgement. The church must follow suit and treat the unrepentant sinner as a sinner.

If she does not take actions, she allows the brother to wrongly believe that sin is tolerated in God’s eyes and acceptable in his kingdom. She encourages her other members to abandon the hard work of righteousness. And she proclaims to the world that redemption is a fraud, unnecessary, and unneeded. If believers never repent of sin, why should unbelievers?

The God of the Bible and of the church is a Holy God. He commands us, his people, to “Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God (Lev 20:7).” The true local church will strive for holiness and execomunicate all who love their sin more than Christ. Dr. Albert Mohler correctly concluded,

A church lacking these essential qualities, is biblically defined, not a true church.

Is your church a true church? Does it practice meaningful church discipline?

If you wish to explore the topic of Church Discipline more, I encourage you to grab copies of one of the books below:

May 20, 2018May 19, 2018 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:

Physical, regenerate church membership
The content and worship of true churches
Baptism
The Lord’s Supper
Purity and Discipline
Elders
Deacons
Congregational Rule

This-is-church-101

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

April 12, 2018April 12, 2018 Peter Witkowski Apologetics

Your Church Discipleship Isn’t Working

Discipleship. 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-unsplash Until liberalism stormed into the SBC in the late 19^th and early 20^th 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?