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EPISODE 136: Compelling Community chapters 9 and 10

Date: 11/9/2022

Chapter 9: Addressing Discontentment in the Church

  1. On page 154, Dever writes, “So often, threats to church unity don’t come from offenses against one another, but disappointed expectations and perceived rejection.”
    1. Emotionally Healthy Discipleship – unspoken expectations; unrealistic expectations; not agreed upon expectations
    2. How have you experienced disunity in the church due to disappointed expectations or perceived rejection? Both as an elder and as a member of the church.
      1. Catalyzed ministries and expectations of staff.
        1. Some great activities are going on, but we can’t make the litmus test of others’ commitments to fellowship, or discipleship, or love to be based on their involvement in one thing. “If only everyone was as committed to ____ (my thing) as I am.” “If the staff and elders were really committed to ____ they’d be doing ___ (my thing).”
      2. A few recent personal experiences:
        1. Expectation that I and pastor Ben would be attending an event. 
        2. Individual definitions of what it means for me (Josh) to “love you” when I say, “God loves you and I love you too.”
          1. One person means that I come up to them to say hi every Sunday.
          2. Another it means I give their kid a fist bump
          3. For someone else it means I look them in the eye from the stage.
          4. For someone else I love them if I give them a hug.
          5. And so on. Those are just examples of the kinds of things I’ve heard from folks. And I want to do my best to show you love in a way that matters to you. But it’s impossible for me to do that on an individual personalized basis every week. My Sunday morning will be spent checking off a list. And it sets me up to eventually disappoint you.
          6. And I hope this is obvious, the primary way as the pastor of Gateway that I demonstrate my love for you (individually and corporately) is by my faithfulness to preach God’s Word to you. 
  1. On page 167, Dever makes two important statements, “Use every departure as an opportunity to reexamine your ministry, but never assume that every departure is a mark of failure.” And, “But in every situation, your job is to shepherd them to the best pastures they can find.” People will always be leaving the church. How can we most effectively care for people as they make that decision to leave?
    1. We all naturally lean one way or the other when it comes to people leaving the church. Do you lean more towards “So and so has left…we must have a problem” — meaning “we’ve failed” — or — “So and so is leaving because they just don’t get it” — meaning an “unwillingness to examine our ministry”?
    2. As elders, we’ve reached out to quite a few folks who’ve left the church — especially in the last few years. Folks leaving is something every church in the US is dealing with.
      1. What are some ways that we — the elders of Gateway — have tried to shepherd folks as they’ve left? For the folks who are with us, they might not know what we’ve done to try and shepherd those as they leave.

Chapter 10: Addressing Sin in the Church

  1. On page 171, in talking about the prevailing attitude of our congregation toward sin in our lives…
    1. Is it a culture that encourages honest, grace-filled conversations about sin and struggle? If so, how have you seen that in general? 
    2. If not, what do you think prevents us from being able to do that?
  1. In helping our congregation learn to love each other in confronting sin by applying Matthew 18:15-17, Dever says that our first response to someone who is complaining about someone else is to say, “‘Before you talk with me, have you talked with “so-and-so”? (p. 174).
    1. What do you like about this response? 
    2. Is there anything that you disagree with in this response? If so, what?
  1. LISTENER’S QUESTION: When is it appropriate to “tell it to the church (whole assembly)”? What are the considerations Gateway uses to follow Matt 18 and determine that? What forum do we do that in? Does it matter if the sin/issue is from a very involved member/staff/elder/deacon vs. a new member who is “lesser known”? “If we manage this conversation with the congregation well, it will do wonders for a culture of grace-filled honesty about sin. But if we manage it poorly, we will do untold damage” (pg 176). How true!…Also, I’m not aware of us ever publicly addressing sin in the 14 years we’ve been with Gateway but maybe I’ve just missed it every time?
    1. Congregationalism vs Presbyterianism difference
      1. CHBC is congregational
      2. Gateway is Presbyterian
      3. The big difference is that the congregational model would require much more to go before the whole congregation as the whole congregation makes the final judgment call on the discipline. This doesn’t mean that Presbyterians don’t ever present things to the entire congregation, just that a congregational church governance would require nearly everything to be brought before the congregation. Whereas in Presbyterianism, the elders (collectively) decide on the disciplinary action.
      4. Also, our Book of Order (our church constitution) has an entire section that’s called the Book of Discipline if anyone would like to know the exact procedure we’re to follow as an EPC church regarding church discipline. You can find a downloadable version of the Book of Order on the EPC website (epc.org) for free.
    2. So in our governance model, we bring things to the whole assembly when the sin affects the whole assembly.
    3. Matthew 18 shows us that bringing something to the whole assembly is the last resort. Often, before we ever get to that step in the process, the individual has either repented or left us. And that — leaving because we’re trying to help them turn from sin — is where things get really messy in the world we live in. It’s why, no matter what we say about membership and being connected to each other, sin has its way of making none of it seem to matter when we’re caught in sin — the person just takes off.
    4. The only guidance we have about “does it matter who the individual is — elder/deacon/staff/etc…” — is in 1 Timothy 5:19-21 (NET) “Do not accept an accusation against an elder unless it can be confirmed by two or three witnesses. 20 Those guilty of sin must be rebuked before all, as a warning to the rest. 21 Before God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, I solemnly charge you to carry out these commands without prejudice or favoritism of any kind.”
    5. Have we addressed sin publicly?
      1. Yes and no. Meaning, to my knowledge, and at least during my time at Gateway, we’ve never had an all church meeting to talk about a member’s sin.
      2. We have had situations where we’ve gathered specific ministry volunteers and leadership together when the individual under discipline was a part of that team and it would be obvious to everyone that something was going on with them and after many attempts of following Matthew 18 with the individual. The idea being we gather all worship ministry volunteers, or all kidway volunteers, etc…because of something going on. We’ve done this a few times since I’ve been at Gateway, but if you don’t serve on one of the ministry teams where this has come up you wouldn’t have known about this happening.
      3. We’ve also had sin issues that were made public to the whole church (could be via social media or legal documents or on public domain sites) that required us to make a response to the whole church. In one instance we did respond to the situation in a public manner and got some backlash from folks who thought we were gossiping when we were responding to an already made public situation.
      4. Personally, I’ve had people that we were trying to help deal with their sin accuse me of all kinds of things from leading a cult (twice!) to locking them up in a hotel room. (I actually paid for their hotel room out of my own pocket so they could safely sober up.) 
      5. Sin is messy and trying to help someone in their sin — which is what discipline is — leaves you looking like you’ve been dealing with a mess. Even years later.