Abuse of Authority or Church Discipline?

Someone on the Compuserve Religion Forum has posted a reference to an article about churches starting to try to discipline their congregations.

I’m not going to try to summarize the article. Suffice it to say that the most extreme example involves a pastor calling the police to arrest a woman for trespassing. Her crime? She was attending church after having been expelled from the fellowship. In her case, the reason was for complaining about, and taking action against the church leadership.

I have multiple reactions to this. First, while a certain amount of church discipline is suggested in order to maintain some sort of integrity, the place where we have most needed it is precisely where it’s not happening–in the leadership. In fact, some of these cases occur where members are holding the leadership accountable. In fact, I think that there is much too little involvement of the membership in general in actions of the church. I have known of a number of actions by church committees of churches where I’ve been a member that should have been made more public, and members should have complained loudly!

I once even preached a sermon on the “ministry of complaining,” calling on members to call up the appropriate committee chairs and other leadership and let them know what they thought needed to be done. Such a ministry of complaining, of course, needs to be constructive or else it isn’t a ministry; it’s just complaining.

But on the other hand there’s a simple point that seems to be missed by many people in these discussions. Church is a voluntary organization. Here in the United States nobody is actually forced to be a church member. There is always a simple solution to the problem of a church that is obnoxious–find another one. I’m certain I could find dozens of churches even in our relatively conservative community that would take in the shunned adulterers and never notice the difference. The complainers might be harder to place! Nonetheless, I would imagine that there is a pastor somewhere within a 20 mile radius who shares their disgust with their own pastor and would be happy to have them.

The problem with my happy solution is that there are many spiritually vulnerable people, and there are pastors and church leaders who will exploit them. One of the great dangers to individual faith is getting a glimpse of the church organization in action, or more often inaction. An hour or so of church committee can make me want to attend bedside Baptist on a weekly basis. In churches that have been around for a few years there will be members who are entrenched in their positions and who know how to manipulate the system. They are just waiting for a new pastor or a new member who has some innovative ideas so that they can shut them down.

At the same time (making another hairpin turn in thought) there are numerous churches where people are friendly and non-judgmental. The problem is that many times people have attended a particular church for a very long time and it has changed around them. Finally they find themselves strangers in a church they have attended all their lives. That is an extremely difficult situation, and I sympathize.

But there is no way to guarantee reasonable and rational behavior on the part of any church organization, and it only gets worse when people feel that they have God’s authority behind them. I don’t see any way to guarantee someone’s safety or comfort in this situation. A private organization, whether religious or not, has a certain right to set its own policies. The only right of the individual member, other than as provided for in the bylaws, is to take their body and their tithe elsewhere.

I would recommend that when you have a pastor who places a great deal of emphasis on how he cannot be questioned, and the leaders cannot be challenged, you should look for another church. There is a theology around that treats the pastor as “God’s anointed” and makes him above question. That is a dangerous theology and a dangerous practice. A pastor should be held accountable by the membership in all cases, and by the denominational structure in a church that is part of one. Such accountability should be essential.

While I have many complaints about denominations in general and mine (United Methodist) in particular, there are also many positive things that can be said about the organizational structure. For all the complaints we may have about candidacy and assignments, we generally have less of a problem with pastors decided they are God in their individual churches. We have better trained pastors generally, and when something truly goes wrong, there is someone to go to above your pastor.