Amy Scott tells a story she heard from her husband in her most recent post. Her article is entitled Epidurals and other fun stuff. I don’t know anything about Epidurals but her opening story brought back an old memory. Here is the portion of her story that struck a chord:

There was a woman who was working on her roof in the middle of the day wearing trousers. She attends a church that prohibits women from wearing such things (Old Order Mennonite is my best guess), but she thought that pants were best suited for the task. Her husband was sick in bed, and it was up to her to mend the roof.

Well, two menfolk from the church go riding by and spy the woman on the roof in her trousers. The men promptly report her to the church leadership for discipline for her immodesty. The wise leadership absolved the woman, and in a beautiful display of wisdom, put the two men under discipline for not helping the poor woman while her husband lay sick.

My grand-father told me a similar story, which he claimed to be true, about a deacon in a local church who was one of the first in our town to own an automobile. The deacon was out for a Sunday afternoon ride when he came upon a couple of ladies, from the church, who were making their way down a long stretch of gravel road to visit a neighbor. The ladies had never ridden in an automobile and were delighted when the deacon pulled to the side and offered them a ride to their destination. Upon their arrival, each of the women offered the deacon a penny for the ride. The deacon refused but they insisted on helping out with the gasoline expense and he finally obliged them and accepted their offer.

The following week the deacon was surprised to learn that he had been presented to the leadership of the church under disciplinary charges for running a Jitney on the Lord’s Day. The man who referred the charges was my grand-father’s uncle. As it turned out, the uncle was disciplined for bearing false witness and slandering the deacon. He, the uncle, insisted that the deacon received a payment for services rendered while the deacon claimed it was just a gift.

My grand-father was never baptized and was never a member of a church. He claimed to believe in the Lord but I was left with the impression that this particular church squabble turned him from a desire to unite with a church.

It seems that churches go from one extreme to the other. Both of the above examples clearly represent the extreme that borders on legalism. However,  the extreme we face today has led us to the realm of license.  I once asked the elders of a church I attended how they practiced church discipline. They said, “sparingly, cautiously and with much anguish.” We must avoid the absurd when it comes to church discipline. On the other hand, it is absurd not to have the option in place as a safeguard against blatant and unrepented of sin that seems to rear it’s ugly head within the Lord’s Church.

Tom Ascol presented a Resolution on Integrity in Church Membership which is a must read. He has also written several other excellent articles on the need of practicing some form of Church Discipline.

May the Lord help us as we seek to Honor Him.

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