There was a time among Deep South Baptist churches when church discipline was no big deal — it was simply assumed to be a biblically appointed means of church purity and church health. There was no need to call for a recovery of it.
To illustrate, John L. Dagg (1794–1884), Southern Baptists’ first writing theologian, concluded a chapter in his 1858 systematic volume on ecclesiology, Manual of Church Order, “It has been remarked, that when discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it.” There was no controversy, no pushback because a section detailing the biblical practice of church discipline was expected to appear in a systematic theology.
Similarly, around 1774, the Charleston Association — established as the first Baptist association in the South in 1751 — published A Summary of Church Discipline for use by its member churches. The Preface states its purpose: “To remove, in some measure, the ignorance of but too many church members, about discipline, was the principal motive for engaging in this work.”
Charleston’s Summary spends several chapters defining “a true and orderly gospel church,” setting forth the New Testament’s teaching on church officers, receiving church members, the “duties incumbent on church members” toward the elders and one another, before getting to a chapter detailing the biblical teaching on church discipline. It concludes with a chapter on a local body’s connection to the local association.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, and into the early 20th century, discipline was considered an irreducible mark of a faithful church among Baptists in the Deep South.
But in the 168 years since Dagg’s writing and the 252 years since the Charleston Association’s Summary, church discipline among Southern Baptist churches has become as rare as a best-selling disco album.
Where Did It Go?
In his excellent book Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church 1785-1900 (Oxford Press, 1997), Southern Baptist church historian Greg Wills shows persuasively that church discipline was a key part of church health among Baptist churches in the South until the early 20th century.
Wills uses Georgia churches as his base of research, but it’s not hard to imagine the congregations in South Carolina, with the state’s proximity to the Peach State, following similar patterns.
When and why did church discipline vanish almost entirely from churches in the Deep South? Wills gives several factors: “After the Civil War, Baptist observers began to lament that church discipline was foundering, and it was. It declined partly because it became more burdensome in larger churches” (Democratic Religion, p. 9, Kindle Edition). A drive for efficiency replaced the priority of purity, Wills writes:
“Many Baptists shared a new vision of the church, replacing the pursuit of purity with the quest for efficiency. They lost the resolve to purge their churches of straying members. No one publicly advocated the demise of discipline. No Baptist leader arose to call for an end to congregational censures. No theologians argued that discipline was unsound in principle or practice. No ‘freedom’ party arose to quash the tyranny of the redeemed. It simply faded away, as if Baptists had grown” (Democratic Religion, p. 10, Kindle Edition).
Over the final 50 years of the 19th century and at least two decades into the 20th, Wills argues, based on his deep historical research into church and association minutes, that churches began to engage in reform of the society, while largely leaving discipline in the dust:
“The more the churches concerned themselves with social order, the less they exerted church discipline. From about 1850 to 1920, a period of expanding evangelical solicitude for the reformation of society, church discipline declined steadily. From temperance to Sabbatarian reform, evangelicals persuaded their communities to adopt the moral norms of the church for society at large. As Baptists learned to reform the larger society, they forgot how they had once reformed themselves. Church discipline presupposed a stark dichotomy between the norms of society and the kingdom of God. The more evangelicals purified the society, the less they felt the urgency of a discipline that separated the church from the world” (Democratic Religion, p. 10, Kindle edition).
Leaving the 99 and Pursuing the One
One thing that is sometimes overlooked in discussions about church discipline — particularly those that frame it as odd and out of step with God’s love — is the immediate context in which Jesus’s discussion on discipline appears in Matthew 18.
Immediately before Jesus begins His teaching on discipleship in 18:15 — “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone” — the Lord tells His disciples a parable, the parable of the lost sheep. This parable illustrates powerfully the goal of church censure: bringing about repentance and restoration of a straying sheep.
In that parable, Jesus says, “If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (Matt. 18:12b–14).
There it is: the fundamental aim of church discipline. When one church member lovingly confronts the unrepentant sin of another — be it sexual sin, slander, gossip, anger, abusive leadership, or something else — the pursuing believer is going after the one straying toward a wilderness filled with peril. When an elder or elders meets with a church member or a church leader and calls them to repent and turn back from some serious sin, they are leaving the 99 and going after the one.
What happens when a sheep wanders away from the fold and into the wilderness and becomes lost from the fold? There are dangers galore: bears and other predators, livestock thieves, and worse. This is the task of church discipline: It is loving the sheep too much to allow them to wander off and fall prey to the devil, the world, the flesh where eternal dangers lurk. It is loving them enough to go hard after them, refusing to let the unholy trinity of the world, flesh, or the devil consume them.
Church discipline, particularly in a squeamish cultural moment, is often seen as mean-spirited, self-righteous or abusive. Discipline can be performed in a sinful manner, but heavy-handedness is not the method Jesus has in mind in Matthew 18. Church discipline, biblically understood and carried out, is difficult, but it is sometimes the most loving thing we can do for a fellow sheep that is straying into eternal peril — provided it is carried out with patience and compassion that fits the occasion, even in those times in which firmness is required.
For the Good of the Offender
Dagg, as did many Baptist churches, pastors, and theologians in the 19th century, understood discipline as an act in which local flocks and their leaders lovingly pursued their wayward sheep — even when discipline reached the ultimate stage of removal from membership.
“In excommunication, regard should be had, not only to the glory of God, but to the good of the offender. This appears from the words of Paul (in 1 Cor. 5:5): ‘For the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved.’ The happy result of this excommunication, the only one which is particularly recorded in the history of the New Testament churches, is a strong encouragement to the exercise of faithful discipline” (Manual of Church Order, p. 274).
In my years as a pastor, church discipline cases were the most difficult tasks I performed, hands down. But it’s always best to follow God’s Word in every detail — even when it’s difficult, even when we haven’t obeyed this part of His inspired revelation in decades.