Church Discipline and Baptist Identity: Is This Where We Are Headed?
About a half mile south of where I go to church, there is a church called "Old Paths Baptist Church."
I don't know much about them, other than the fact that their name compels me to run the other direction. I've been on the old paths before, and I am not anxious to go back.
It kind of reminds me of the current latest movement among some people in the Southern Baptist Convention. They are suggesting that at the annual meeting next month, the SBC adopt a resolution on what some have termed a "regenerate church membership." For those of you who don't know what in the world that means, they are suggesting that in order for you to be a member of a Southern Baptist Church, you ought to be a Christian. And not just any Christian. A true Christian. Who has been baptized the right way. And who does everything the right way, which is, of course, the Baptist way. After all, Jesus was a Southern Baptist, right?
Now to begin with, I'm not sure why the SBC needs a resolution recommending that their churches only admit people who are believers. To me, that would go without saying. However, there is the issue of numbers, which the SBC is obsessed with, and how the numbers have been skewed over the past several years. Anytime the SBC issues a press release, they are quick to point out that we have 16 million members, and are the largest protestant denomination in the world. Those of us who know better are aware that in any given church, on any given Sunday morning, you can't find half the members. It would take six months of blog articles to explain the reasoning behind that, so we will just let 'er lie for now. Maybe the SBC should adopt a resolution apologizing for fudging the numbers all these years.
Many of the people who are pushing for this resolution are part of a movement called Baptist Identity. They want to officially define what it means to be a Baptist. And of course, they want to use their own narrow, exclusive definition. I don't know a whole lot about Baptist history--just what they taught at Falls Creek one summer, and a class at seminary (both of which I slept through)--but it seems to me that this is the first generation of Baptists to have such a silly, stupid notion as to think that anyone can definitively identify what it means to be a Baptist. Baptist are, and always have been, as different from each other as can be, and trying to herd them all into one corral is like trying to herd, well, cats.
Part of this resolution on regenerate church membership, and the Baptist Identity movement that goes along with it, is the issue of church discipline. I first heard of church discipline actually being carried out when a friend and fellow pastor confronted a church member who owned a movie theater that was showing R-rated movies. I'm not sure how that worked out, but once, as a pastor, I confronted a church member who was beating the crap out of his wife. I can see that. Church discipline has been around for a long time, but we haven't heard much about it until fairly recently.
Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal did a story on it. They talked about a Baptist church whose pastor actually called 911 in the middle of a church service, and had sheriff's deputies come and arrest a 70-something year old woman, and take her out in handcuffs, for trespassing, because she had been ex-communicated from her church for, get this, gossiping about the pastor. If I had every church member arrested who gossiped about me when I was a pastor, then the jails would be filled with a lot of Baptists right now. Here is a link to the article in the Journal, if you're interested.
The problem I have with church discipline is the extent to which it is carried out. I mean, where do you draw the line? Gossip can certainly destroy a church, and the devil knows how to use it well in order to derail the things that God is doing. I have gone to people who are prone to gossip, and confronted them privately and gently, and asked them why they feel compelled to speak negatively of others. But if I were to try to put them out of the church for it, I would have some problems, because their sin is of no lesser or greater consequence than my own.
My question is where does it end? Many of the pastors I have known are overweight. I was overweight for many of the years I served in vocational ministry. If I had tried to put a person out of the church for, say, drinking alcohol, how would that have gone over? After all, every time the word "gluttony" appears in Scripture, it is mentioned in the same sentence as drunkenness. So to me, that means that being a glutton and being a drunk are just as bad. Pastors, if you are thinking of putting someone out of the church because they drink, you might take a look at the length of your waistband before you do it. I went to seminary with men who acted like second graders in class--they exhibited no respect for instructors. I knew men at a Baptist university who regularly spent the night at their girlfriends' apartments. Today, they are pastors. Many pastors struggle daily with lust, anger, pride, pornography. I know of no pastor in the world who does not struggle with sin. It is a part of their daily lives because they are human. It seems like it would be really hard for a man prone to struggle with sin to publicly accost a church member over their own struggles.
I've been a Southern Baptist for 36 years, with the exception of three years when I attended a United Methodist church. One of the things that I vividly remember as I was being raised a Southern Baptist is the emphasis on a doctrine known as "the priesthood of the believer." If you're not familiar, this doctrine states that every believer is a priest unto his or her own. You don't need another individual to take your concerns to the Lord, you don't need another individual to interpret Scripture for you. If you are possessed by the Holy Spirit of God, you are free to study, grow, and interpret the Bible on your own. Those days seems to be going away quickly. More and more, we have people, usually clergy, who seem to believe that they alone have the power to decide what it means to be a Baptist. And those who do not fit their definition are subject to being put out of the church. It is a shame.
Maybe the most sad thing about it is that increasingly, people just don't care. As Baptist leaders grow more and more narrow in their focus, and as young leaders have grown frustrated with the process, they are dropping out. Moving to other denominations. Becoming independent. They're doing their own thing, which is the antithesis of what the SBC has always been. It is out ability to cooperate with those from whom we differ that has made us so effective at reaching people around the world. Now that cooperation is becoming a thing of the past. Many people I know who are still Baptist are just barely hanging on.
It kind of reminds me of when we were kids at recess, and during a game we would get into an argument, and no one was willing to compromise, so the teachers made everyone sit out during recess. We wanted so much to win, that everybody lost. That is where the SBC is headed.
So sad. I think the SBC will eventually implode.
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I hope you're wrong, Howie. However, I don't think God is nearly as concerned with preserving the SBC as many in the SBC are. If we continue to be prideful, judgmental, and unwilling to repent when we're wrong, the SBC will most certainly implode. Or worse.
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