The audio of the message from last week’s Fusion Community gathering, “Toward Restoration: Addressing Church Discipline,” is now online. This was the most painful evening of my tenure as a pastor at NHC because I was required to discipline a friend. But God, as anticipated, is already showing how he has intended good in what Satan intended for evil.
Small groups were asked simply to talk through what I said with regard to Matthew 18:15-17 and related texts, and to discuss how they can implement these “10 God-Honoring Responses” to church discipline that I gave the community:
1. Pray
2. Do not throw a pity party
3. Do not gossip. Kill gossip.
4. Guys: Encourage
5. Girls: Honor the terms of discipline.
6. Learn that sin matters and is always discovered.
7. Check yourself.
8. Thank God for his preserving grace.
9. Cling to the Cross.
10. Believe new things are possible because of the resurrection.
Next Week: “How to Be Spiritual (even without crystals, yoga and body prayer)” : 1 Corinthians 2.9-13
I’m not part of Fusion per se, so I don’t really know much about this situation nor do I need to.
However, I was looking at the news this weekend and saw a story about the Japanese boy band star who was arrested for public indecency. Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about Tsuyoshi Kusanagi or this situation either. But I will say that the peculiar drive of this man to HUMBLY and MEEKLY apologize for his terrible mistake was an eye-opener for me.
http://www.asianbite.com/default.asp?display=2736
I realize that his apology may have been largely cultural, and may not have been grounded in Christian forgiveness. But the bottom line is that I don’t think that we (in America, or in the Evangelical church) are very good at mustering up this level of humility. We can learn from this man.
-brandon.b
By: brandon.b on April 28, 2009
at 2:31 pm
It’s encouraging to see a Christian community take sin and church discipline seriously and do it right. It’s been largely abandoned in the American church, and when it is done, it’s done improperly and with the wrong motives or intentions.
By: Darius on April 28, 2009
at 3:02 pm