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The Protestant reformers named three "marks by which the true church is known": the preaching of the pure doctrine of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of church discipline to correct faults. Today, church discipline is feared as the mark of a false church, bringing to mind images of witch trials, scarlet letters, public humiliations, and damning excommunications. Does discipline itself need correction and redemption in order to be readmitted into the body of Christ? We have asked several experts from different (and sometimes contrasting) professional and theological backgrounds to explain how church discipline fell into disrepair and how it can be revived, so that the true church can fully embody the pure doctrine of the gospel once again.

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Mark Dever is senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist in Washington D.C., where he has been intentional about deepening the meaning of church membership and thus church discipline. He is the author of Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (Crossway). (For more on these topics see ninemarks.com.) Managing editor Mark Galli interviewed him.

What is church discipline?

When we talk about church discipline historically, we talk about formative church discipline and corrective church discipline. Formative discipline is all the teaching we do—the positive statements, the modeling, the instruction and sermons and Bible studies and books that we pass out.

Corrective church discipline is where we have to say, "Hey, Tom, I think you're wrong there." Or, "Sally, we need to switch groups because you're being destructive to that person." Or even finally, according to Jesus' teaching, "Mona, I know that you are claiming to be a Christian, but we've got to treat you like a non-Christian, because you won't stop lying. We love you, but you may not take the Lord's Supper because you're not following Jesus, as far as we can tell, and we beg you to repent."

You say in your book, "We need to be able to show that there's a difference between the church and the world." Some argue that the church is different not due to its holiness but because we accept each other's brokenness.

What's being said there could either be the essence of the gospel—in which case, I want to defend the gospel over against moralistic legalism. Or it could be an absolute dissolution of the church and its corporate witness. In that case, it's just an evil, evil thing to say. The fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 doesn't mainly talk about accepting each other's brokenness. We have the challenging tasks of being clear about grace—and the implications of grace in our lives.

Some people think the word discipline is the problem. But why do people react against church discipline yet seek the spiritual disciplines?

Spiritual disciplines can seem like a human-potential wellness campaign, only expressed in spiritual terms. Church discipline sounds like excommunication, which sounds judgmental. Many want their antinomian liberty, their freedom to have a life that's not known by others. They don't want to be open and honest with others; they don't want people inquiring about their lives. It's not just our modern, affluent, individualistic American culture; it's the sinful human heart. We desire to discipline ourselves only for those ends that we like. And we do not want other people to have that kind of authority in our lives.

So you don't think the problem is the individualistic or pluralistic nature of American culture?

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August 2005, Vol. 49, No. 8