What is church discipline?

Question 09055.

Church discipline is the process by which a congregation lovingly confronts a member living in serious, unrepentant sin, with the aim of bringing that person to repentance and restoration. That last clause is the one everybody forgets, and forgetting it is why the practice has such a grim reputation.

Most British congregations have quietly abandoned this. It feels harsh, it is horribly uncomfortable, and there are enough historical horror stories to make anyone cautious. I want to make the case that abandoning it has cost us more than we realise, and to show what the New Testament actually prescribes.

What Church Discipline Is For

Begin with purpose, because a process without a purpose becomes cruelty. Church discipline exists to restore the person. Galatians 6:1 could hardly be clearer: if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Restore is the word used elsewhere for setting a broken bone.

It exists secondly to protect the congregation. Paul warns that a little leaven leavens the whole lump, and unaddressed sin in a body does spread, partly through imitation and partly through the corrosion of watching leaders do nothing.

And it exists to protect the honour of God’s name before a watching world. When a church tolerates in its members what even unbelievers find shocking, as at Corinth, the gospel itself is discredited. Paul says the sin there was of a kind not tolerated even among pagans.

The Process in Matthew 18

Jesus lays out four steps and they are deliberately graduated. Go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. Most cases should end here, and a great deal of what passes for concern in churches would evaporate if people obeyed this sentence.

If he does not listen, take one or two others along, so that every charge may be established by two or three witnesses. Then, 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.

Notice the restraint built into the design. Every stage exists to give the person another opportunity to repent, and every stage should end the process if he does. Church discipline that begins at step three, or that skips straight to announcement, has abandoned the pattern its Lord gave.

What Sins Are Involved

This is where discernment is required, and where the practice has most often gone wrong. Church discipline is not for every fault, and a church that pursued every sin would never do anything else, since it consists entirely of sinners.

The New Testament cases are of a particular character. Sin that is serious, that is persistent, that is unrepented after confrontation, and that is public or becoming so. 1 Corinthians 5 lists sexual immorality, greed, idolatry, reviling, drunkenness and swindling. 2 Thessalonians 3 addresses idleness that had become disorderly. Titus 3 addresses the person who stirs up division after repeated warning.

What is not on any list is disagreement with the leadership, failure to conform to cultural expectations, or matters of Christian liberty. Romans 14 exists precisely to stop churches disciplining each other over food and days, and it is worth reading before any process begins.

The Goal Is Always Restoration

2 Corinthians 2 is the follow-up to the Corinthian case and it is rarely quoted. Paul says the punishment by the majority is enough, so now you should turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. He urges them to reaffirm their love for him.

That is the outcome church discipline is aiming at, and any process not aiming at it has become something else. Even the final step, treating someone as an outsider, is not a permanent exclusion but a change of category intended to help him feel the reality of where he stands.

Paul says of another case that the man was delivered to Satan so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. The severity is real. So is the goal, and the goal is his salvation.

How It Goes Wrong

It is only fair to name the abuses. Church discipline has been used to silence people who questioned a leader, to control congregations through fear, and to punish sins that leaders were quietly committing themselves. The shepherding movement of the 1970s produced a generation of casualties, and some of the churches that practise this most zealously are the ones I would least want a struggling believer to join.

It goes wrong when the process is rushed, when confidentiality is broken, when the church announces before the person has been given every chance, and when there is no route back. It goes wrong when it is exercised without grief. Paul says the Corinthians should have mourned, and a congregation that carries out discipline briskly has misread the mood entirely.

It also goes wrong when it is applied unevenly, which is the failure people notice most. If the church disciplines a poor man for drunkenness and says nothing about a wealthy member’s dishonesty, everybody sees it and nothing said afterwards can repair the damage.

The Cost of Not Doing It

Neglect has its own price and we are paying it. Where church discipline never happens, membership means nothing definable, because there is no circumstance in which it could be lost. Where it never happens, sin in the congregation is handled by gossip instead, which damages far more people than a proper process ever would.

Where it never happens, believers in serious sin are left undisturbed, which is not kindness. If someone is walking towards a cliff, silence is not respect for their autonomy.

And where it never happens, the world learns that the church’s standards are decorative. Every scandal that breaks in the press about a congregation that knew for years is the fruit of a decision, taken quietly and repeatedly, to say nothing.

Doing It Well

If a church is to recover this, some things must be in place first. Teach it before you need it, so that the congregation understands the purpose rather than discovering the process during a crisis. Have a defined membership, since discipline without a boundary is incoherent.

Move slowly. Most situations need months of pastoral work rather than a procedure. Involve as few people as possible for as long as possible. Never let a leader act alone, and never let the process be driven by the person who is most angry.

And build the way back into the plan from the beginning. A congregation that knows what restoration will look like is far more willing to begin, and the person under discipline is far more likely to return. My article on discipline and restoration works through what that return should involve.

The Wider Sense of Discipline

I have been using church discipline in its narrow sense, meaning corrective action towards a member in serious sin. The word carries a broader meaning too, and losing that breadth is part of why the narrow sense feels so alien to us.

In its wider sense, discipline is everything a congregation does to form its members: preaching that corrects as well as comforts, teaching that shapes conscience, the ordinances that rehearse the gospel, and the ordinary daily work of believers speaking truth to one another. Hebrews 12 uses the language of a father training a son, and says that all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. That is the frame in which the narrow sense belongs.

A church that does the wider work well will rarely need the narrow. Where people are being taught, known and gently corrected week by week, most situations are dealt with long before they become cases. Formal church discipline is what happens when all of that has been tried and refused, which is why a congregation that finds itself reaching for the procedure often should ask what is failing further upstream. See Hebrews 12:11 on how correction is meant to feel and what it is meant to produce.

Discipline and the Leaders Themselves

Any account of church discipline that leaves the leadership out has already gone wrong, and this is the point at which most abuses become possible. Paul gives Timothy a specific instruction about elders, and it protects both directions at once. A charge is not to be received except on the evidence of two or three witnesses, which guards a minister from rumour. Those who persist in sin are to be rebuked in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear.

In the presence of all is a deliberately public phrase, and it is applied to leaders rather than to ordinary members. A congregation where the discipline flows only downwards, from leaders to people, has inverted the pattern. If anything, the New Testament expects more scrutiny at the top, not less, because the damage a leader can do is greater and the reluctance to act is stronger.

So the question to ask of any church that practises church discipline is simple. Has it ever been applied to someone in leadership? If the honest answer is that it never has and never could, then what is happening is not discipline but control, and the members would be wise to notice. The NET Bible notes on 1 Timothy 5 are useful on the force of Paul’s instruction here.

Confidentiality and Gossip

One practical matter decides whether church discipline builds trust or destroys it, and that is how information travels. A process that leaks is not a process. Once a congregation learns that a private pastoral conversation may be repeated at a leaders’ meeting and then discussed in the car park, nobody will ever confess anything to anybody again.

The graduated steps exist partly to control this. At each stage only the people who need to know are involved, and the whole church learns of it last and only if there has been persistent refusal. Anyone tempted to share a matter more widely than the stage requires should read Proverbs 11:13 and think again. Church discipline conducted with a running commentary has already failed, whatever verdict it reaches.

And the flow of information should be explained in advance. People are far more willing to be honest when they know who will hear it and why. My article on signs of an unhealthy church touches on what happens where that trust is absent.

So, now what?

If you are watching a fellow believer walk into something that will wreck them, Matthew 18 gives you your instruction and it is the first step, not the third. Go to them yourself, alone, gently, before you mention it to anyone else. That conversation is the hardest thing in Christian friendship and it is also the most loving thing available to you.

If you are on the receiving end of correction, sit with it before you defend yourself. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. What if the person who spoke to you last month was right?

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.

Galatians 6:1 (ESV)