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When Should We Exercise Corrective Discipline?
Timing Is Everything
When a member is negligent in attendance for an extended
period of time. Discipline for non-attendance is necessary because refusing
to show up for months in a row is usually a mask that covers other more serious
sins.
- The necessity for removal from the membership rolls in this
instance arises even more fundamentally because of the nature of membership
as the local church's affirmation of the member's salvation.
- If a member simply discontinues attendance for months on end,
the church is no longer in a position to affirm the person's salvation.
- Without the ability or opportunity to observe continuing spiritual
fruitfulness, other members are simply not in a position to affirm a person's
salvation by granting them uninterrupted membership in the local church.
When the sin is of a nature that is scandalous even in the
eyes of the unbelieving community. This is the situation of the sinning
brother in 1Cor 5, who was committing a kind of immorality that even the pagans
of the day didn't normally commit. This kind of sin must be met with swift
excommunication (exclusion from communion and removal from the membership
rolls) until genuine repentance is observed with fruits to back it up.
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