This is the Faith Debate, a theological roundtable grab bag with the Mixed Master as the Master of Ceremonies and the Good Doctor. Is there a doctor in the house? One of the characteristics of a man of God is in John chapter 15 verse 13 and it says, Greater love is no one than this that he laid down his life for his friends. The Faith Debate is on the World Wide Web at WFMD.com, keyword Faith. Sponsored by Hilo, Auto Sales, and Tire Bros of Frederick. I guess I can say I live with that verse. I don't mean to sound depressing, but I live for that verse on a daily basis. For all of my friends, and even strangers. It's just the way I feel. The day I would just get to lay down my life and die to save someone else. That's why I wanted to join the military. Get to lay down my life for my country so that we could enjoy our freedom. In this corner, weighing in with a Master of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary, Mixed Master, Troy Skinner. In this corner, weighing in with a Ph.D. from Westminster Theological Seminary, The Good Doctor, Jace Broadhurst. But there's something that we seem to miss when we read that verse. And it's not saying that you necessarily have to die for your friend for it to be after that verse, for you to be like that after. Your friend. When was the last time, I don't know, you were at school, and they're picking on this one kid instead of just ignoring it or walking away or walking up there and telling them how they're wrong and just trying to insult them back just to defend him? What if you walked over there and, in a metaphorical sense, threw yourself under the bus? I have dreams about it, I have thoughts about it all the time. There's an example of why we need to have churches that ascribe to the remarks of a true church so that we don't get just some of our theology and thinking right, but that we actually follow through all the way to the end of our thought without taking a veering left turn into hyper-patriotism and wishes of death so that I can prove that I'm willing to lay down my life for my friend in high school. It's nutty stuff that's out there. Anyway, this is the Faith Debate. The good Dr. Jace Broadhurst Pastor of Poolsville Baptist Church. Hello, everyone. Good morning. That's his voice. And we're also joined by another good doctor, Peter De La Santina, who is the senior pastor at Nealsville Presbyterian Church in Nealsville, Germantown. Good morning. Is Nealsville its own town? You know, Neals, the family is buried in our cemetery. So Germantown would have been called Nealsville. They just saw all those Germans living out there. Let's just call it Germantown. That's what happened. OK, so Nealsville isn't actually a thing. Well, Neil's. That's correct. It's like you made it up. I don't think I can trust anything else you say. Yeah. Good one. It's only taking you four weeks of shows to catch on. It shows you how well I know the area. I just figured it was some small little burg I never heard of. Who let this guy in? No, I never heard of it because it doesn't actually exist. Fake news. 20701 Frederick Road. Germantown. Germantown, Maryland. It's just down the road. We get across from the milestone. How does anybody even find you? Your Awakenings, that's all you need to know. It's the church in Nealsville, you know, they can never find you. GPS gets totally confused recalculating. So anyway, we were talking about church discipline last week. This is the fourth in a series of shows on similar topics, talking about the marks of a church and the three marks, the word properly preached, the sacraments rightly administered, and the church discipline rightly executed or enacted. So the 12 reasons that churches don't practice church discipline. This is also from the internet. And I'm just going to whip through a few of these because they're fun. So, and I think you guys will, you can all chime in like, yep, that sounds right. Or this thing on the internet is totally bogus. These are the reasons that churches do not practice discipline. Number one, they don't know the Bible's teaching on discipline. And therefore it's a topic that pastors choose to avoid. seems likely to happen they've never seen it done before so they're ignorant to it uh... they don't want to appear judgmental ding ding ding judge not lest ye be judged right most misused verse in the bible probably the church has a wide open front door meaning it's a really easy to join which makes it really hard to enact discipline uh... the church the pastors have had a bad experience with discipline in the past Is that true, really? if they haven't done it then you know what it looks like how many bad experiences could be a pretty happy when i hear this is all the problems in one church while this is a this is lots of don't go to this church now this was interesting the church is afraid to open pandora's box because i mean if they have discipline one person they'll have to execute discipline on all the people right or yeah or how much discipline when you are meddling and and and and and and and and and and and uh... see they have no guidelines for discipline This might be something we could explore in a little bit more detail in a second, but some sub-questions that relate to this. What sins is discipline necessary for? You know, for what sins? At what point does the church leadership choose to make these sins, private sins, public? Because that would be part, because you're excommunicating them, that becomes a public declaration of what's going on, right? It's interesting. Maybe we'll swing back. You fear being seen as legalistic? And churches can become legalistic, so you've got to be careful of that. Churches don't enact discipline because they hope the transfer growth will fix the problem. This is my favorite on the list. Shuffle it off to somebody else. Chase is like, you know what, why don't you just go over to Pastor Pete's church for a while. I've sent several people his way. That's what you were doing. Let him deal with it. That'll solve the problem. And this is probably the most profound item on this list of 12. Leaders are sometimes dealing with their own sin. And so to discipline others would bring conviction on themselves. So that's all. Yeah, that brings me back to what Pete was saying before that we're just, we're all, we're all messes. Yeah. And coming to other people that are messes and just trying to remind them of grace and the need to walk in an upright fashion. Now based on, just real quickly before we get into a larger topic, I want to make sure we have time for, and we've talked, I think last week, I'm pretty sure we covered it well enough, the kinds of things where the leadership of the church would step in to provide some discipline. But the second thing that I threw out there is an interesting question. At what point is it appropriate, right, righteous, to make a private sin public? At what level or what kind of sin or what circumstance? Let me ask you this way. have you had in your years of being a pastor a situation where you've had to say you are no longer seen as a member a a community member of this church and in our next members meeting we need to let everybody know this is what's going on have you had that situation yes no yes i've i've have had that conversation along with other elders uh... with individuals but we haven't been announced it to the whole church uh... hasn't had to get to that point where we announced the whole church Yes, we have. So that's not, okay, that's interesting. I mean, word gets out, but I guess I mean, calling a meeting, let me explain to everyone what happened in this. That's a big aspect of this, the way it's communicated, if it's communicated well or not. And usually it's handled in a way, in my experience, that it's fairly private. A big aspect of determining what your question, your first question was, is the impact that it has on the community, the family unit, if they're a family, and the whole community. To what degree does it need to be addressed by the whole congregation being a part of it? Okay, so they would just kind of disappear from your church's, you know, family life as a church kind of thing, and people would kind of scratch their head and say, well, whatever happened to Joe? He disappeared. No, I'm saying it's happened, the communication has happened, but not, you asked, congregation comes together and we announce it in a direct way. I don't think I've had that. Have you had that? We're going to talk about Joe and... So the difference between our churches is you have a very Presbyterian government and ours is kind of a mix of that plus congregational. So in order to become a member, you have to be voted in by the congregation. In order to not become a member, you have to be voted out by the congregation. So, at a member's meeting, not in a worship service, we wouldn't necessarily... we have not, anyway. I'm not sure. That's not your opening illustration. Right. But yes, we have had to come to the congregation. And those can be for as simple things as, you know, they don't attend church anymore. So, you know, they've basically said, we don't want to be a part of your church anymore. And so we have to come and we have to say, look, they've decided they don't want to be a part of this church anymore. They're not coming anymore. They've shown us this. So, you know, it's the elders, our thought that they should know, and we've talked to them about it, we've gone to their home, we've had discussions with them, we've pleaded with them, but they're just saying, you know, I just don't consider it that important, I'm not going to come anymore. And so eventually, and there's a long process, usually it's, usually I think perhaps too long in our church, might take over a year. for us to get there, where we would come to the congregation and say, we love this person. We would call you to call out to them that they need to be here. They need to be a part of our congregation. And if they still don't, if they are unrepentant in that area or whatever the area is, then yeah, we would ask the church to, we would recommend to the church that they would, dismiss them from the membership and that case though they're they kind of excommunicated themselves you're just acknowledging the decision that they've made they decided to leave and that's in that example that you that's probably ninety nine percent of the examples you know even with the no adultery or something that were the you know the husband or the wife refuses to get back together usually they've stopped attending right law a long time ago and most the conversation like you were saying last week was that relationship you know i've ended up in their home just trying to have conversations with one of the other or both perhaps ur Yeah, and those conversations among the elders of the church, but I thought where you started was the sharing or airing this out among the whole congregation. The reality is, in my context, I don't know about your experience, but I'm usually the point person on these issues of discipline, of coming to someone I'm usually dragging an elder to, can you help me out? Let's go in on this together to handle it. People are confiding in me as a pastor or one of the other pastors, and I'm trying, I'm working on, how do we bring the elders to the table so that we're really following up? that idea of being under shepherds. We have the good shepherd we're following. Christ is our shepherd. He's the head of the church. He calls us to be under shepherds, to care for the flock, to care for the sheep. But do you sometimes feel like you're flying solo when you're dealing with a discipline issue, someone struggling with something or maybe getting into Yeah, I mean, at that level, you know, again, there's these steps and I don't think there's like, okay, step one, step two, step three. I don't think Matthew 18 is quite that. I don't think it's supposed to be taken that way. But there is a movement towards, you know, a more private conversation, a discipling to eventually bringing it to the entire church. So somewhere in there, you know, I'm going to be brought into that situation probably. And yes, I will bring, hopefully, some more elders who will come along. Our church is, and I'll say this with any kind of elitist, it's relatively healthy in that regard, that my elders want desperately to appeal to those people. They want to show their love to them. So they will get into the mud with me. But it's never... I just wonder who people are hearing this. They keep hearing the word discipline. Maybe they didn't hear last week. We're not talking about something that, you know, like we're there to beat them up or to bring the whips or chains. We're there just to show that we love them like crazy. And that's part of the discipleship, the discipline process. And we've spent now, this is, thank you for reminding me to remind our listener that, you know, this is, we're now three and a half shows into kind of a theme, talking about identifying the marks of a true church, which is going to lead up to what we're now going to transition to in a second about when it's appropriate to leave the church if the church isn't meeting these standards of the marks. The marks being the word rightly preached, the sacraments rightly administered, and a church that practices discipline. And we've been spending some time explaining what discipline looks like. And some people self-discipline, they leave. I mean, that's kind of a sarcastic, weird way of putting it. And let me ask you if any of this feels familiar to you as reasons that were given why these people stopped going. I'm not being fed. Church is getting too big or it's getting too small, maybe. I don't agree with everything that's being preached. My needs aren't being met. unresolved conflict in the church. And they just can't deal with it, so they're finally just gonna... Are those biggies? Yeah, we need to talk about each one of those, don't we? I mean... Well, let's break it down. What about music? I don't like that the music has changed. The spirit isn't present. I sense the spirit isn't here. Yeah, that's good. I mean, that's bad, but it's a good example. It's an appropriate act of... I've outgrown this church. I'm just too mature in Christ. Oh, wow. And they're spoon-feeding. Oh, that's daggers to the heart right there. You ever heard of that one? They've outgrown your church? You're just spoon-feeding them? There's no meat here? Changing the carpet, or I'll let you guys know, at Nielsville, we just installed a screen in the sanctuary. It is beautiful, by the way. Thank you. It took only a decade to get there. These are all reasons why people give. But if somebody gave a reason like, you know, you're preaching a false gospel, or the teachings are not biblical, or you're denying that Jesus is God in the flesh, or you're not practicing discipline or rightly doing the three marks of the church, or you're not dealing with discipline at the leadership level, your elders are misbehaving and you're not doing anything about it, Those would all be reasonable reasons for somebody to consider leaving the church, right? Or at least enter the conversation and say, look, you're not preaching the gospel. Unless you start preaching the gospel, I gotta leave. That's fair, right? Not only reasonable, but necessary. To that, to the extent that you're saying, yeah, if the teaching is unbiblical or heretical, Galatians 1, 7-9 speaks to that, that there's a gospel that's being preached that's contrary to what we see in scripture. if the leaders are allowing or tolerating doctrine to be twisted and turned, if there's a lack of church discipline, if it's just apparently clear that there aren't biblical standards being held in a church, or if there's outright hypocrisy, these are all legitimate reasons to consider leaving. I think it's really important to consider leaving. Because all of those things in our mind, like, these are all heresies, right? These are all In our minds, where we are at that time, we think they're not doing a good job, I need to leave, or they're not doing a biblical job. And I think people just disappear, or they come and they write a horrible letter that says, you're not doing all these things, and then they're gone. And that's one of my big concerns as a pastor, especially as a discipling pastor, as someone who loves his sheep, his congregation. These are friends that I built a relationship with too. that they wouldn't even, they wouldn't even have a conversation. They wouldn't even, they would just disappear. Like, I might be able to convince them, or I might, like, they might be wrong, but I might be too. They may actually call me out on something and I'd be like, my goodness, I didn't know, I didn't even think about that. You're absolutely right. I need to tell the congregation I'm a sinner. I messed this up. I can fix this. If they're theologically astute enough to recognize those kinds of problems, then they should be mature enough to then be an adult and come directly say, hey, this is the problem I have with you. gentle, humble dialogue. And have an opportunity for restoration and for correction. Maybe the pastor doesn't realize it. Pastors aren't perfect. I haven't mentioned sin in the last 17 sermons, really? Troy, your listeners are driving to church maybe today or staying home in protest. There are probably some folks that are struggling with these questions right now. They're probably pastors in their study, getting ready or on their way to church, wondering Are they going to come back to church? Is that couple going to leave? So this is a really, really important practical thing to understand. Do not leave your church without going through a process that we're about to explain to you in great detail. Troy, starting with a lot of prayer. So if you identify what you think is hypocrisy, or let's say there's some sort of unaddressed abuse going on, or there's money issues, like they're not properly accounting for their money, if you know what I mean, and they've pressed through and they're trying to do it the right way, at some point it is okay, we're gonna get through the process in just a second, but to address Jace's point, at some point it is okay to walk away. Yeah, right. In fact, it's more than okay. At some point, it's necessary to walk away. So you do have permission after you've gone through the process, and that process would look like what exactly? After you've gone through the process, it's so key to understand Well, it begins with prayer. It begins with coming to the Lord and really laying out these concerns and trying to understand, because I think oftentimes when people have left my church, there's the presenting issue, there's lack of this ministry, family ministry, or music, or whatever. It's the presenting issue, and then there's the real issue behind that. You go to the doctor, what's ailing you? I have this cough. Okay, let's take a look. Let's listen to your heart. What's happening? There's something going on deep inside. Let's get to that. I'd say first and foremost, you need to go to the leadership, directly to pastor or elders with your concerns in a humble way. Help me understand. This is what I'm hearing and seeing. Can you help me understand? You gotta go there before you talk to anyone else. Will that be a place? I would love that. I would, if someone actually did that, like, I don't know that anybody's ever done that. And coming to me. And a lot of people left the church. My father-in-law, famous story of our family lore, when I thought about going into ministry before I became a pastor, talked about going to their pastor with my mother-in-law setting up an appointment and sharing his concerns and saying, help me understand. And it, they worked through this process with this pastor and the pastor said, you know, you're the first, you're the first member of our church to come to me first. He said, you didn't talk to everyone else. No, I came to you. I think that's the biblical model to start with. Yeah. I think that's beautiful. And before that, as you've been praying, as you've been searching the Scripture and seeing, are these concerns—do these really meet those criteria that you laid out? If they haven't, then I need to work it out on my own. I'm not going to lay all this on a pastor, because he's doing the best he can. But if it does reach that point, I want to come to him. So start at the top, and really start at the very top first by going to God in prayer. Go to the Lord in prayer. And then, go to the top of the leadership in the church and confront them directly and give them an opportunity to respond, and if necessary, they could correct their ways or they could at least explain their ways and maybe persuade you that, oh, I guess I had that wrong, that what my leadership is doing is right. And then, if failing that, then it's, if that is exhausted, you walk away. Is that what you're saying? Well, I think there are more things. We're talking about the idea of there's concerns this person has about the teaching or the direction of the church. There could be other reasons that are legitimate where you may leave. It may be a desire for different teaching. It may be a desire for a more convenient location. It's just too difficult to get there. It may be, I have different needs for my family. But those aren't leaving in a huff. And those are the kinds of things that if you share them with the leadership, the leadership might actually share your heart on that and say, you know what? You probably should go to a church that's closer to your house. You probably should go to a church that's more closely aligned with where you are theologically. So we're not knocking heads all the time and creating a disruption and lack of unity. Most leaders, most pastors, well, I hope, I pray this is true, are more concerned with the kingdom than they are with their particular church. You know, my little tiny, this is my empire. That's not how most of us think, I hope. We want the kingdom of God to grow. And if we need to let someone go for the betterment of the kingdom, you know, you can't drive 45 minutes here. You got six kids. You need to stay where you're at. There's a good church there. Why don't you try this one or this one? These guys are great people. that will lead you and take care of you and, you know, mentor. So I think pastors, sometimes I think that people don't want to come to the pastor because they're afraid that, you know, they're going to offend them, that this is their thing. We're happy to let people go if that is what God is calling them to do. And we only have like a minute left. I just want to ask a big macro question here. All these things we've talked about on the personal level, they play out on the larger denominational level too. We know about the famous fights. The Episcopal Church a few years ago was really in the news with the homosexual ordination issue that caused a big split in that church. go back to the 70s. I mean, you're a Presbyterian. The PCUSA birthed the PCA back in the 70s because of a divide over some of these kinds of questions. Maybe, maybe not. It's going through that now, the PCUSA is going through a real tumultuous time, right? Our church is in the disaffiliation process. We're nearing the end of that divorce and that separation to move to a different denomination. So that's like a whole other conversation, I guess. But all the same principles apply is the point, correct? Very much so. Similar, just different levels and different kinds of hierarchy to deal with. Although for a Baptist church, you're independent. I'm not sure what that means. Yeah, no one's quite sure what that means. Yeah, we're autonomous, but we have a close affiliation with a cooperative body. Pastor, we've got good news and bad news. Good news, we had that prayer meeting, you talked to us about bad news, we voted you out. That's right, that's exactly right. Sounds like a scene from that Facing the Giants movie, where the coach overhears them going to kick him out, remember? It's like a Baptist environment. Anyway, thank you so much, Pete, Dr. Peter Della Centina from Nealsville Presbyterian Church, Dr. Jace Broadhurst from Poolsville Baptist Church. I'm Troy Skinner. This is The Faith Debate. Our sponsors, two of them, Hilo Auto Sales and Tire Pros of Frederick. Thank you so much for listening. God bless.