Timely post from Jonathan Leeman in preparation for my upcoming Missional Ecclesiology class taught by Gregg Allison of Southern Seminary. Church discipline is a difficult concept for many people to understand, especially at churches where membership and convenanting together means very little. It’s easy to be too firm, and easy to be too light. Here are some of Jonathan’s thoughts as to how pastors practice church discipline incorrectly.

1. They fail to teach their congregation what church discipline is and why to practice it.
2. They fail to teach about and practice meaningful membership. This involves cultivating a culture of personal discipleship and involvement in one another’s lives in which people transparently confess sin to one another. This also involves failing to adequately teach what membership is, as well as having a clear list of who is a member of the church and who is not.
3. They fail to teach their congregation about biblical conversion, especially the need for repentance. A congregation that doesn’t understand the role of repentance in the Christian life will have difficulty understanding why they need to discipline someone who is not repenting of sin.
4. They fail to teach new members as they enter the church about the possibility and circumstances for church discipline.
5. They fail to teach new members as they enter the church that the church may not grant a pre-emptive resignation from a person trying to avoid discipline. That misses the point of Matthew 18:15-20. Also, the nature of a church covenant requires the church’s consent to both enter into and leave the membership of the church.
6. They fail to ensure the church’s public documents (by-laws, constitution, articles of incorporation, etc.) address the procedures of church discipline, thereby exposing the church to legal risk.
7. They fail to follow the steps of Matthew 18 or 1 Corinthians 5, depending the circumstance. In a Matthew 18 situation, for instance, they fail to begin the process by confronting sin privately.
8. They don’t give adequate time to the process of moving through the various steps of Matthew 18. For instance, they move so quickly from step to step, that they don’t give the sinner adequate time to be reasoned with and shepherded toward repentance.
9. They call for the congregation to act too quickly. For instance, they fail to insert any time in between “tell it to the church” and “if he does not listen to the church, treat him as a pagan or tax collector.” Except in situations of a public scandalous sin of a 1 Corinthians 5 variety which do call for immediate removal, leaders should give the congregation time to both digest the information and to pursue the unrepentant sinner themselves.
10. They treat the processes of church discipline entirely as a legal process with little consideration for shepherding the unrepentant individual’s heart.
11. They give little attention to the differences between kinds of sinners and how that might affect how long we should bear with a pattern of sin before proceeding to subsequent stages of discipline (see 1 Thessalonians 5:14).
12. They forget that they too live by the gospel’s provision of mercy, and therefore prosecute the discipline from a posture of self-righteousness. Other mistakes follow from this wrong posture, such as an overly severe tone and stand-offishness.
13. They fail to truly love the sinner…
14. …and beg the Lord for his or her repentance.
15. They demand too much from a smoldering wick or bruised reed. In other words, they stipulations for repentance and restoration are too high for this one who has been deeply enslaved in sin’s grip.
16. They fail to properly instruct the congregation on how to interact with the unrepentant sinner, such as how to relate to them in social situations and how to pursue their repentance.
17. They fail to invite the discipline individual to continue attending services of the church so that they might continue to hear God’s Word (except in situations where the unrepentant sin is a severe threat to the church). Also, they fail to inform the church that everyone should hope for the disciplined individual to continue attending.
18. Putting the responsibility for leading discipline entirely on the shoulders of one man, the senior pastor. Doing so will tempt individuals in the church to accuse the senior pastor of personally vindictive. Such a charge is harder to make when a recommendation for discipline comes from an entire body of elders.
19. They fail to have sufficient elder involvement in the congregation’s life, such they are unaware of the state of the sheep. This failure of formative discipline will inevitably weaken the church’s ability to do corrective discipline well.
20. They fail to teach God’s Word on a weekly basis.
21. They allow the congregation to approach the case of discipline with a wrongful spirit of retribution, rather than with the loving desire to warn the unrepentant sinner about God’s ultimate retribution to come.
22. They pursue discipline on non-biblical grounds (playing cards, dancing, etc.).
23. They pursue discipline for any other reason than for the good of the individual, the good of the church, the good of the onlooking community, and the glory of Christ.

Then feel the weight of the responsibility by reading this list compiled by P.J. Tibayan, one of my brothers in Christ and a fellow Re:Train student. Thankfully, the Spirit equips us and it is not our own ability that makes us worthy.

One of the things that I really struggled with while at New Life Church was feeling like it was more like a campus ministry than a church because I believe a necessary part of a church is some form of formal membership, which determines the people for whom the leaders will give account someday. That tension between church and campus ministry is one often faced by churches, and students, in a college town. How much does a church resign itself to the transience of college students by not calling them to real membership? How much does a campus ministry separate college students from seeing a full view of the diversity that the church is called to model? How do churches, and campus ministries, challenge students to grow spiritually and equip them with the tools to find, and serve in, a local church after graduation? All of these are questions for which I have no clear answers. Pastor J.D. Greear of Summit Church in Raleigh, NC has some excellent insights on this debate, as well as a clear call to post-graduate missions work.

A church that doesn’t disciple internally and externally isn’t a church. Period. That said, what does discipling look like? I spent some time writing a paper on it for our first Re:Train class that I will eventually post someday. For now, enjoy these thoughts from Jonathan Leeman on discipling and friendship for pastors

1. Pastors have busy schedules, and frankly they cannot afford to become good friends with everyone whom they disciple. Still, we can generally expect that the discipling relationships which occur in the context of a friendship will have the highest impact. In other words, the amount of time I spend drawing near to a brother (immanence) will directly affect how far I can draw that brother toward Christ (transcendence)—all things being equal.
2. Drawing near to a younger brother in the faith doesn’t mean telling him everything about my life. Questions of his maturity and trustworthiness will help to answer how much I can wisely tell him about my life to assist him in the path of discipleship.
3. At the same time, I need to make sure it’s not my own pharisaical aspirations of looking impressive to the younger man which keep me from drawing near and being transparent.
4. After all, at the heart of what we want to teach younger Christians is the glory of the gospel and the pattern of a gospel life. If the younger Christians around me never see me demonstrate confession, contrition, and repentance, how can I expect them to learn it?

Ed Stetzer writes from Taiwan about why missional churches don’t do global missions but seem more interested in local work

1. In rediscovering God’s mission, many have only discovered its personal dimensions.
2. In responding to God’s mission, many have wanted to be more mission-shaped and have therefore made everything “mission.”
3. In relating God’s mission, the message increasingly includes the hurting but less frequently includes the global lost.
4. In refocusing on God’s mission, many are focusing on being good news rather than telling good news.
5. In reiterating God’s mission, many lose the context of the church’s global mission and needed global presence.

Ed then offered four principles to consider when putting the “missions” in “missional”

Recognize it is God’s mission, and we need to be passionate about the mission as He describes it. We don’t own mission and it is not ours to define. A church vision statement is fine, but God’s mission is better and bigger. Our first task is to submit to God’s mission.

Evangelicals have understated the call to serve the poor and the hurting and need a stronger engagement in social justice. This sounds counterintuitive if we are seeking to remedy the loss of concern for articulated evangelism. But social engagement entails relational engagement, and relational engagement entails opportunities to share the gospel. The successes and experiences in our communities should awaken hearts and minds to global needs. We just need to maintain the reason for social justice: the glory of God in the worship of Jesus.

Share God’s deep concern about His mission to the nations– that His name be praised from the lips of men and women from every corner of the globe. Feel the Great Commission in your bones. Ask God to turn your heart to those you cannot see. As Paul did, develop ways to “struggle personally” (Colossians 2:1) for those far away.

Churches that are serious about joining God on his mission will obey his commands to disciple the nations. The end product of missional endeavors should be a thriving Christian ready to produce more thriving Christians.

He closed with a great exhortation to never separate the Great Commandment from the Great Commission

It appears to me that many missional churches are missing the Great Commission in the name of being missional. That makes zero sense. It is a huge (but historically common) mistake.

If we are truly interested in being missional– in joining God on His mission– our efforts should actually reflect His stated mission. We are bound to the Great Commandment as the fullest human expression of God’s love. But the Commandment is not hermetically sealed off from the Great Commission. Rather, the Great Commission provides the what of mission, while the Great Commandment provides part of the how. Answering the age-old question of “Who is my neighbor?” should result in the desire to “make disciples of all nations.”

When I heard that Brian McLaren was going to observe Ramadan I was blown away. It is blasphemy for Christian to participate in a practice that is worship of a false God.  USA Today wrote an interesting article about the controversy. Nice to read Al Mohler and Mark Driscoll proclaiming the truth. I do want to quibble with part of the article, though. Eric Gorski, the author write

There is disagreement among evangelicals about whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God

That’s a fast statement. You can’t be an evangelical and believe that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. You can’t even be a Christian and believe that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Christians believe that God eternally exists in three persons – God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit and Muslims do not believe this.

As the emerging and liberal church seek to be more palatable to the world, this is the kind of heresy that is bound to increase. May we be bold to proclaim the truth.

“Good” is in quotation marks because I have fundamental problems with multi-site related to the nature of preaching, the necessity of the sacraments, and the need for the local church to be governed by the leadership of that particular local church. One thing that multi-site may be good for, though, is getting people to think through 1) What is the church? and 2) Do we really take what we see in the Scripture as authoritative? These are important questions that were alluded to by this article on Leadership Network’s blog. As multi-site continues to grow because it’s “successful”, will people really take a look at it to see what should stay and what to be jettisoned?

In the article, Dave Ferguson of Community Christian Church is asked what’s on the horizon for multi-site in America. Here are his responses:

More new sites will be launched by sites other than the original site.  In other words we will see new sites reproducing new sites.

Sites will be launched not based on the competency of the mother church, but on the strengths and needs of the community where the new site is started.

There will be less of the “We use video” vs. “We develop teachers” battle and more multi-site churches will use both video and in-person teaching.

A lot more campus pastors will be female and there will be evidence that they are more effective than men in this role which will bring some controversy.

Multi-site churches will think in terms of launching a region with multiple sites and not one new site at a time.

Online churches ill not just have one site, but they will also have multiple sites!

The churches that are effective in reproducing new sites will be the churches that are most effective in reproducing missional communities.

Number 4 is especially interesting. I had never thought of it before, but because the campus pastor position typically doesn’t preach a lot and is more focused on congregational care, will churches open that role to women because they are more “nurturing” despite the clarity in Scripture that the role of elder/overseer be male-only (1 Timothy 3:2)? We shall see. I’m especially excited that our next Re:Train class is Missional Ecclesiology and we’ll be talking through some of this stuff.

If you want to read more on multi-site, check out this 9Marks eJournal.

In anticipation of being assessed as a church planter, I wonder how I will respond if my “grade” on the assessment indicates that church planting isn’t the most appropriate ministry for how God has made me. Maybe I’m better suited to pastor or replant an existing church. I don’t know, but I’m definitely praying about it.  This post from Scott Thomas on the Acts 29 Network Blog provides helpful thoughts when Envisioning a Replant.

1. Envision what the worship gathering could be (Acts 2:42-47).
   • Attitude of body during worship
   • Music
   • Prayer
   • Teaching
   • Communion
   • Children
   • Exaltation of God
   • Incorporation of arts
2. Envision what the evangelism could be (Matt. 28:18-20; Acts 1:8).
   • Who can you reach immediately?
   • What attitudes toward evangelism need to change?
   • Where or how could you boldly make an impact with the gospel?
   • What steps of faith need to be taken to reach the unchurched and the unsaved?
   • How could your youth evangelize?
   • How could households evangelize together?
   • What worldwide impact could you make as a body (i.e. foreign missions)?
   • How are you going to be an eternal value to your community?
3. Envision how education and discipleship could be effective (Acts 2:42).
   • How will it become a passionate pursuit of the body (“continue steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine,” Acts 2:42)?
   • What resources (people, qualities, gifts) do you have in place to launch greater disciple-making?
   • How will the fathers and heads of households (single moms, etc.) be trained to be the priest and spiritual head of their homes?
   • How will the older men and women teach and interact with the younger men and women? (Titus 2)
   • Will the age groups be segregated (children, youth, singles, college, married, etc.) or will they be integrated into the body?
   • What role will small groups play?
   • What training will be needed to help develop disciples who are passionately pursuing Christ?
4. Envision an Acts 2 commitment to fellowship (Acts 2:44-45).
   • In what ways will the body seek to meet the needs of one another (spiritual, social, financial, physical)?
   • What attitudes need to change to be sacrificially generous with time, money and resources for the encouragement and edification of the body?
   • How will the body serve one another actively and responsively in an unprompted way?
   • What will the membership requirements be? How will it communicate a covenantal commitment?
5. Envision an effective youth and children’s ministry.
   • Will they be integrated into the church ministry? If so, how?
   • How will families be strengthened through the student ministry?
   • How will the youth be encouraged and trained to evangelize their friends?
   • What role will the heads of households play in the student ministry?
   • Who (person or groups) will lead the youth and children’s ministry?
   • What facility changes are needed to communicate the value of children and youth?
   • What other positions of leadership need to be filled to be effective?
   • What leadership development with the students will be put into place?
   • What programs or customs need to be extracted from the youth and children’s ministry to avoid distractions from the ministry goals?
6. Envision an equipping staff (Eph. 4:11-13).
   • What changes need to be made with the staff (paid or volunteer) to meet the church’s goals?
   • Are the staff members doing the ministry or leading people to do the ministry? If they are doing the bulk of the ministering, how will they develop the body to do the work of the ministry?
   • Are you over-staffed or under-staffed to meet both financial obligations and the development of lay people (taking responsibility for ministry)?
7. Envision a body not reacting to finances to determine God’s call (Matt. 6:24).
   • How will faith in God calling a body to reach out to the community and world be weighed against financial responsibility and stewardship?
   • If mortgages or debts exist, how will they be paid off in a realistic way over a reasonable time period?
   • What attitudes or practices about money and finances need to be changed?
   • Is a budget in place? Is it a true reflection of the church’s giving and spending (balanced budget)?
   • What expenses can be cut immediately to be redirected toward the church’s mission?
   • Is the body (especially the leadership) making decisions based on finances or on God’s calling?
   • What creative ways can you generate more income without sacrificing resources, biblical principles, or expending paid personnel?

I’ve always struggled with pride. A guy that I played baseball with in high school called me the most arrogant guy he had ever met. I don’t think it’s true, but it’s a criticism that still stings to this day and one that I work hard to fight against. When people ask me about character flaws or struggles, I always mention pride/arrogance because I want people to “know that I know” and not let me off easy when I am proud. There’s no room for pride or arrogance in the life of a disciple of God and I am working against God when I seek glory, attention, or point-of-place for myself.

With that background, a recent post on the Acts 29 Network blog was especially appropriate. Acts 29 recently “added the measuring of arrogance and pride as a piece of the assessment process at the advisement of J. Allen Thompson, church planting consultant for Redeemer Church Planting Center. Allen calls these ‘stallers and stoppers.’”.

Allen calls the first staller/stopper “Self-Centered.” It is displayed by arrogance, betraying trust and being unethical. The measurable aspects of arrogance, according to Thompson’s research, are the following:

1. Takes criticisms of ministry programs personally.
2. When under tension is cold and aloof making others feel inferior.
3. Seeks to be the ultimate authority in the ministry.
4. Tends to be abrupt and impatient in manner.
5. Tends to live a parallel life from spouse.

I look forward to my assessment at the November Acts 29 Boot Camp, Lord willing, and I am praying that through the Holy Spirit’s power in my life, I will be able to fight against being self-centered. I greatly covet your prayers in this process.

Parakaleo is a gospel-centered ministry that exists to strengthen the gospel spreading impact of church planting
by coming alongside church planting movements and church planting couples.
Through coaching, connecting, caring, and celebrating they facilitate training,
encouragement and care of church planters and their spouses. They recently conducted research about the greatest sources of satisfaction or stress for church planting wives. Here’s the list

Six Primary Sources

1. The Husband
2. Support System (often lack of other contact with church planting wives)
3. Sabbath Rest
4. Reliance on Christ
5. Boundary Ambiguity
   1. Role Ambiguity (what is church planting wife’s role)
   2. Emotional Ambiguity
   3. Physical Ambiguity
6. Physical health

Eight Secondary Sources

1. Changed lives
2. Commitment and sense of call to church planting
3. Family Time
4. Raising kids
5. Church growth
6. Expectations- from/of self and others
7. Finances

Use of gifts and abilities