Discipline

9:46am

A few excerpts from The Deliberate Church –Mark Devers

(Quotes from the book are in italics)

Neglecting corrective discipline can be deadly for a church.

Most of us can think of at least one church whose corporate testimony has been tarnished by neglecting to properly discipline an unrepentant member who has sinned in publically scandalous way.

There are several bad things that happen when unrepentant sin is overlooked:

1) The cancer eats at the Body and inevitably damages the innocent

2) The public testimony of the Body is harmed

3) Those caught in the wake of the sinner can be harmed for years

4) Children who are old enough to understand the problem can be impaired for service

5) The sinner remains unrepentant, continuing to damage both himself, his family, those in the Body, and those outside the Body

Sin needs darkness to grow—it needs isolation disguised as “privacy,” and prideful self-sufficiency disguised as “strength.”

The church needs to be a web of meaningful spiritual relationships in which people are engaging each other in casual conversation, spiritual conversation, mutually encouraging and sanctifying discipling relationships, mutual accountability and small groups.