A Wall-Street Journal Hatchet Job

Two weeks ago Alexandra Alter of the Wall Street Journal called me and interviewed me for at least twenty minutes about church discipline. Explaining that she had come across a Baptist Press article about church discipline while researching something else, she listened intently while I presented the biblical rationale and told specific examples. After all, Jesus only used the word "ekklesia" in two places in the gospels, both of them in Matthew. The first is Matthew 16:18, in which he speaks of the church's founding, and the other is 18:17, in which he speaks of discipline.

As an aside, I confess that I get aggravated when people who claim that we shouldn't speak out against homosexuality because Jesus never spoke about it directly simultaneously ignore the things of which he spoke clearly. Jesus spoke more about hell than any prophet. He layed out the procedure for discipline, even to the point of excommunication, which Paul echoed in 1 Corinthians 5. Discipline and preaching on hell were obviously priorities to Jesus.

So when the WSJ reporter called me, I explained its biblical basis, its practical application, and its obvious benefits. I reasoned that, if sin is indeed harmful, the cruelest thing we can do is leave someone in it. Confrontation must always be motivated by a sense of compassion and a desire for reconciliation. Then, to prove the point, I gave her the name and number of a man whom our church disciplined. His testimony is that he would not even be alive today had we not dealt with him as we did. Within the past week Ms. Alter called and interviewed this man and he told her the whole fascinating story.

The article is in today's Wall Street Journal, and it is completely one-sided and negative. The title appears variously as "Churches Expose Sinners" or "Banned from Church" and it characterizes discipline as ecclesiastical control.

The revival is part of a broader movement to restore churches to their traditional role as moral enforcers, Christian leaders say. Some say that contemporary churches have grown soft on sinners, citing the rise of suburban megachurches where pastors preach self-affirming messages rather than focusing on sin and redemption. Others point to a passage in the gospel of Matthew that says unrepentant sinners must be shunned.

Notice that she refers to "a passage in the gospel of Matthew," but does not tell her readers that the words are from Jesus. All of her examples of discipline are negative. She did not include a single example which she portrays in a positive light. For this reason neither Buck Run nor I are mentioned in this article because we had nothing but positive things to say. Even the subject of our discipline says the action was not only deserved, but necessary and restorative. Not one word of that testimony is included.

The article is tantamount to being against spanking because some parents abuse their children, or criticizing "time out" because some parents lock their children in the basement.

I have little doubt that discipline is sometimes abused, but frankly the greater and far more frequent problem in contemporary churches is that discipline isn't even discussed--regardless of what Jesus taught. What a shame that a publication the stature of the WSJ would countenance so unbalanced a presentation of the facts.