Repentance, Discipline, and the Church (xvii)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the seventeenth posting in a series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches. The series began (here). We are still on the sixth criterion, which is, "The church is a holy people. When they sin, they repent of their sin. If [a professing Christian] should fail to repent, the church and its leaders lovingly enact biblical church discipline in hopes of bringing the sinner to repentance and to a reconciled relationship with God and his people."

A couple of observations: first, a holy people evidently can still sin. Their holiness is preserved or marked by the fact that when they do so they repent. Thus, repentance is an important characteristic of the church; local churches can't preserve their identity as churches without it. Although the so-called mainline or ecumenical churches don't normally emphasize the importance of repentance to this extent, it is also true in their congregations that the ability to give and accept forgiveness is extremely important. People, including church leaders including (especially) pastors, make mistakes and need to be able to ask for forgiveness when they do; equally important that have to be able to give forgiveness as well. (I should note that I've actually expanded on the idea of repentance, which in and of itself is only a feeling of remorse over having done something wrong. Having felt repentant, we need to act on our feeling, which leads us to seeking forgiveness).

Second, this sixth criterion points to the idea of church discipline and its role in preserving the holiness (purity) of the church. From the Reformation until the early 20th century, church discipline was a dominant mark of local churches. The sessions of Presbyterian churches, thus, regularly examined errant members and handed down punishments up to and including excommunication. Such things still happen, but they are rare, and the whole notion in the Presbyterian Church (USA) of our sessions, presbyteries, synods, and the general assembly functioning as "judicatories" has fallen into disfavor. The new PC(USA) Form of Government now refers to these bodies as "councils" rather than judicatories.

The need for churches to exercise disciple, however, continues to be significant.  Pastors and lay leaders from time to time continue to behave in ways that are hurtful to the "peace, unity, and purity" of the church.  While we no longer haul members before the session for personal moral lapses, it is important for the health of a church that it maintain a disciplined congregational life—i.e. that conflict is resolved in a Christ-like manner, that no one person or group dominates the church, and that hurtful behaviors are addressed rather than overlooked.  The goal of church discipline today is not the preservation of orderliness or conformity so much as the establishment of peace, a very different thing and much harder to attain or even, often enough, to gauge.