Book: 40 Questions about Church Membership and Discipline

Let us take a look today at the latest in the 40 Questions series from Kregel Academic. This one is 40 Questions about Church Membership and Discipline, and it’s by Jeremy M. Kimble. Kimble is an assistant professor at Cedarville College, and his background is Baptist. Southern Baptist, if you’d like to be precise.

40 Questions about Church Membership and Discipline (40QaCMaD) is 272 pages, trade paperback size, and all text. It is published by Kregel Academic, and the series editor for the 40 Questions series is Benjamin L. Merkle. I personally own several entries in this series and have appreciated all of them.

On to 40QaCMaD: First, the overall format of questions/answers is a good way to explore a topic. The primary drawback is that the same person provides the questions and the answers. That means the author is never stumped by a question and gets to dodge the troublesome ones.

Which, unfortunately, does happen in this work. I’ll start with the drawback, the missing questions, and then end on the positives. The missing questions deal with protecting against abuse in a church discipline system. While not advocating an excessive discipline, it is a legitimate question to ask: How does a church prevent its disciplinary system from becoming a tool of abuse? No guardrails are suggested, and in fact, the chapter on why some churches do not practice discipline seems to acknowledge and then dismiss the concern of abuse.

That being said, this book is still a valuable tool for understanding church membership. First, note that Kimble, the author, and Merkle, the editor, are Baptists. The assumptions underlying church membership and discipline include congregational involvement and independent local churches. Keep that in mind if you’re inclined toward a hierarchal church structure.

The opening half of the book is focused on church membership. The 20 questions involved cover everything from qualifications to benefits to responsibilities of church members. These are good, though brief. Keep in mind that whole papers and books are written about subjects such as what age a child should be a church member.

The second half, of course, then deals with discipline. This is also good and deals well with practical ideas about keeping the church on-course through discipline. It also deals with the specific question of handling church leaders who need discipline.

As with all books, the presence of footnotes is pleasing to the eye, so that I’m not flipping around trying to find the references.

In all, a useful guidebook for those considering what church membership should mean and how that relates to church discipline.

(Book received from the publisher in exchange for the review.)

Sermon Recap for August 20

Here is what you'll find: after each sermon title, there's an "audio" link that allows you to play or download that sermon's audio file. Then there should be an embedded Youtube Link to the sermon.

If you'd like, you can subscribe to the audio feed here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/east-end-baptist-church/id387911457?mt=2 for iTunes users. Other audio feeds go here: http://eebcar.libsyn.com/rss

The video is linked on my personal Youtube Page here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJBGluSoaJgYn6PbIklwKaw?view_as=public

Sermons are stockpiled here: http://www.doughibbard.com/search/label/Sermons

Thanks!

Sunday Morning, August 20

August 20 AM

Passage: 1 Corinthians 10:23-33

Context:

Letter to Corinth--a troubled church

Addressing issues of Christian liberty--what are we free to do as living under grace? While addressing the need for personal holiness in life.

Deal with backgrounds of idol-sacrifice-meat and such....

Overview:

Specifically dealing with questions of food sacrificed to idols but ultimately addressing how we decide what to do with our liberty: do we use it for our good or for God's glory?

Reflections:

Whatever you do--everything for the glory of God

Expectations:

Your work? The Glory of God--not your paycheck but the glory of God

Your family? Not for your glory and legacy, but for the glory of God

Your wisdom, your wealth, your influence....

Your vote. Your political power. Your freedom in this nation....

For the Glory of God.

August 20 Evening Service

Varieties of Gifts: 1 Corinthians 12

In Summary:

Spiritual gifts. Oh boy. Here we go, down the rabbit hole into strange behaviors that people blame God for—which are not spiritual gifts at all but just people acting strange. 

So, let us look at 1 Corinthians 12 and try to actually understand what Paul is talking about here, because otherwise we’re going to get deep in the weeds and have a very difficult time getting back. One portion of the context to keep in mind is that both letters to the Corinthians are clearly written to a church with a much higher level of dysfunction than is healthy. Ephesus had troubles and so did Rome, Thessalonica had its difficulties and Colossae its heresy, but Corinth seems to have had the most wrong at the same time. (Except maybe the churches of Galatia, but “better off than the foolish, bewitched Galatians” isn’t exactly high praise.)

Given that background, the summary of 1 Corinthians needs to be read as corrective prescription rather than a positive how-to manual. Each gift that is mentioned is brought up in a list, highlighting that it is one of many rather than exalting any particular gift.

The primary illustration of the chapter is the comparison of the church as a whole to a body—and the holders of spiritual gifts are likened to body parts. That’s an important thing to take note of: the gifts are not compared to parts of the body. The people who have spiritual gifts are part of the body.

You are part of the body of Christ. Not your spiritual gift—and you are not your giftedness.

In Focus:

To understand the rest of the chapter, cast a hard glance at the first 6 verses. 1 Corinthians 12:1-6 unlocks the concepts that follow. Here’s how:

1. Paul is concerned that the church not be ignorant of how God works in their lives—he contrasts this with how they behaved as pagans. An understanding of how God works will help keep the Corinthians from being led astray.

2. It is apparent that the oddities of behavior from paganism were bleeding over into the church, where there was not even clarity that the Spirit of God would never curse Jesus and that the Holy Spirit will always support that Jesus is Lord!! Whatever manifestation of alleged “spiritual gifts” the Corinthians were having, apparently some were cursing the Lord and claiming to be spiritual for it.

That’s nonsense.

3. The emphasis is placed on the unity of the church behind one Lord, Jesus Christ. The differences are in people, not in the Lord Himself. And whatever is different about us, we are to be unified in following Christ.

In Practice:

Practically?

1. Ignorance is not a virtue. Especially ignorance that does not discern between truth and falsehood. Learn the difference between Christianity and false religion.

2. Copying the behavior of the pagan world into the church is not a shortcut to anywhere worth going.

3. Whatever you think makes you special in the Kingdom of God, remember that it’s His Kingdom. Any gifts, talents, abilities that you have are from Him in the first place, so perhaps a word is in order about who has the right to tell you what to do with “your” gifts. The use of anything that is allegedly spiritual in a manner that disrupts the right unity of the church (note, right unity—unity based on the truth of Scripture, not false unity based on lies) is counter to the work of the one Lord of the church. If someone comes away from encountering your gift and your use of it and does not respond with “Jesus is Lord!” then you’re doing it wrong. End of story.

We have varieties of gifts in the church, true—but there is one Lord, and so one purpose for all of the gifts: the glory of God.

In Nerdiness:

We can’t get away from spiritual gifts without a couple of nerd terms. These are “cessationism” and “continuationism.” “Cessationism,” which is sometimes called “sufficientism,” views spiritual gifts in the Scripture as falling into differing categories and that some of those categories have ceased, or stopped. These gifts were used by God to affirm the truth of the words of the Apostles (big A Apostles, eyewitnesses to the Gospel…) Now that the complete, sufficient Scriptures are available, these gifts are unnecessary and therefore not given. 

“Continuationism” views all of the gifts as continuing through to today. This view holds that every spiritual gift seen in the New Testament should be seen in the church today just as it was then.

There are believers who take the text of Scripture seriously who fall on both sides of this discussion, and I have friends on both sides. The primary difficulty, to my view, is the purpose of some of the gifts—if their only purpose was to provide support to the “Word of the Lord” then they by necessity must have ceased—no one speaks today with that authority. The authority of an unmistakable “Word from God” is reserved to the inerrant Scripture, the Word of God.

And I find that the text of Scripture is complete and done—John speaks well in summary in Revelation 22 about adding to or taking away. However, if there were other purposes for those gifts, then those purposes may not be complete, and therefore the gifts would remain. It comes back to discerning God’s purposes.

The other thing that must be spoken of is “tongues.” This is a case of translators letting us down—if you look at the one place in Scripture where “tongues” are described in practice, Acts 2, then you see that “tongues” are other earthly languages. Therefore, “tongues” should be read as “languages” and understood as the supernatural gifting of the ability to speak in another language. 

Sermon Recap for August 13

Good afternoon!

Today, you'll find yesterday morning's sermon and last night's Peru trip slideshow. I'm still waiting on a good video cut of our nine baptisms yesterday, but those will likely get their own post.









The background music for the slideshow is Christy Nockel's "My Anchor." I first heard that song on the trip to Peru, and overall it spoke clearly about how to hold it together those couple of weeks.

Imitators of Christ: 1 Corinthians 11

In Summary:

1 Corinthians 11 contains some interesting and challenging passages. We get, for example, the culturally relevant (at the time) instructions about head-coverings and hair length. Most likely, one could write several pages trying to address that issue and how it works out in modern times. I would suggest that it also works out differently in differing cultures, but we will not thread that needle here and now. Grab a good, modern commentary on 1 Corinthians (I like the Teach the Text volume from Preben Vang) and consult a few experts.

The other primary theme of this chapter addresses the Lord’s Supper. Or, Communion, for those of you whose tradition uses that title. Paul addresses the habit of the Corinthian church when they got together for worship. At the time, it appears that the church had a significant problem with their worship gatherings. The church would gather, but then behave as if they were just there for themselves. Some of what we understand about the early church era’s worship services come from this chapter, as it is apparent that the church met for a meal and then observed the Lord’s Supper.

A major point that Paul addresses is this: the church’s failure to be truly together as they observed Communion led to God’s judgment on the church. How we behave as the body of Christ is important to Jesus—and He does not take lightly a group which reflects on His sacrifice by intense selfishness.

In Focus:
For a focal point, take the first verse of the chapter. Paul challenges the Corinthians to “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1). Now, first of all, we need to see that this sentence would close out 1 Corinthians 10 just as easily as it opens 1 Corinthians 11. That’s the beauty of a well-written imperative: it crosses boundary lines and links sections.

Throughout this chapter, it is evident that Paul’s concern is that the Corinthians put their effort into being like Jesus. This is true of the head covering issues—whatever the cultural issues affixed, the primary point is about identifying more with Jesus than with the world around them. The worship issues are about being focused on Jesus and not themselves. The Lord’s Supper is a marker of the cost of sin and imitating Christ will require being more like Him in that matter: counting the cost of the sin of others.

And the church is to imitate Paul just as he is imitating Jesus, rather than imitating anyone else.

In Practice:
What does this look like for us, then?

First, our heroes are defined for us. It is those who imitate Christ who we ought to imitate. Rather than pursuing a life just like this rockstar or that scientist, our life should be patterned on those who follow Jesus.

Second, this extends to how we interact with our culture—down to the nitpicking details of hairstyles and fashion trends. Now, I do not think this boils down into a simple to wear/not-to-wear list, but I think we have to think about whether what we do in relationship with our public appearance is imitating Jesus or not. Again, this takes some effort, otherwise the answer would be long hair, robes, sandals. That’s not the idea.

Third, this stretches our own interaction with others. How many of us are comfortable with our walk with Jesus enough to say “follow me?” Ultimately, it must reconnect to “as I follow Christ,” but really, are you confident that people will follow Jesus if they follow you? That’s a challenge for any of us to live up to.

In Nerdiness:
Okay, let’s take a quick pass at the hair thing: to deal with this, the best answers are going to be found in Corinth in the first century. That’s where you need to look.

Next, the Lord’s Supper: examining oneself does not mean guaranteeing you are without sin. It should be understood as examine your heart and purposes in taking the bread and the cup. Are you unified with the body? Are you humbling accepting God’s grace?

Then you are taking the bread and cup in a worthy manner. Otherwise, who ever could? None of us.

Sermon Recap August 6

Well, we had something go wrong with the video camera this week, so there’s no video to share. The audio came through fine, so that’s what we’ve got. There’s nothing in the way of outline, either, because I did it by hand this week.

Maybe next week I’ll have more blog-worthy sermons :)

Sermon Recap for July 23 and 30

Well, out of personal privilege, you're going to get July 30 first. Why? It's my sermon, that's why. Brad and Walter handled the Sunday I was in Peru, and theirs are here, too.

I'll go you one better: first you'll get the audio player, which I still haven't figured out how to configure to prefer one sermon over another, so you can click "next" to get to whomever you're looking for. If you, too, can't find what you're looking for, it's there. Run through all the fields in the player.





Now, on to the videos: