Part 1 | Part 2
Thinking a lot about what the borders of church discipline should be -
especially when thinking about an organic, "blurred boundary" type
church community, like The Lab. Here are, I think, some of the key
questions we need to be asking about the boundaries of discipline or
accountability or whatever within an organic-shaped church community.
1. Does membership need to be more clearly defined?
A fairly standard response to this kind of problem would be to choose
to create a multi-tiered approach to church membership. I think that
this is the way the church has tended to work using "covenant
membership", electoral rolls etc. so that there is room for "visitors",
but the core church membership still has a way to "opt in" to church
discipline.
However, if we are searching for a bottom-up approach to discipline,
recognising that rather than coming under the umbrella of the church's
pastoral responsibility, we desire community members to engage in a
discipline process together, then this seems less useful. Also the
negative impact of creating a double standard for living ("if you were
still visiting us rather than being a covenant member then it would be
different but…") and beginning to create an us vs. them ethos don't
seem that great.
If our approach to discipline is going to be based on relationship
rather than structure, then the way in which we set the boundaries to
that discipline needs to be the same.
2. Can we trust the community to organise discipline itself?
It seems to me that there will almost always be one awkward person
who needs to pass judgement on the rest of the community, and cause
problems. So, is a more bottom-up approach to discipline simply an
opportunity for them to go wild and give everyone else hell? The
problem with this kind of judgement is that it is happens outside of a
close, valued relationship – and so if we take accountability or
discipline out of the context of relationship, we hit problems. So we
need to make sure we promote accountability alongside relationship -
the two words need to appear together within the same stream of
thought, rather than seperate.
Of course, on the other extreme is when there are members of the
community who don't manage to build those relationships where there can
be accountability. Is this where the leader needs to step in and nudge
the process along?
3. Is accountability enough or is there a place for firmer, more solid, discipline?
I'm thinking here along the lines of the Anabaptists use of "the
Ban" as a last resort method of discipline – asking members to leave
the community for a period of time to sort themselves out. My
understanding of this increased after our first bit of work on the
Alway estate – thinking about preserving the distinctiveness of the
Christian community as we take on mission. I began to think if there
would ever be a time when we would need to make use of "the ban" to
preserve our own distinctiveness when it came to work in the community
- asking someone to take a time-out if they were acting in a way which
would undermine that distinctiveness. Perhaps it is this missional
reasoning that caused the Anabaptists to use this method of discipline,
rather than from a sense of self-preservation or something else.
Is simple accountability, with an occasional "we're disappointed in
you" enough or does there need to be a more concrete "punishment"? Or
this simply because as the church we have tried to wimp out of a
confrontational edge to accountability in order to provide more
incentive for people to opt in?
4. Rather than a system of church discipline, how can we be
producing a culture or environment in which healthy, accountable,
disciplining relationships can occur?
The most obvious answer seems to be "small groups" – however whilst
I know these can be great and really positive, I wonder whether there
is a less systematic way in which we can create this kind of
environment? Some quick thoughts…
- Church involving less front-driven time and more time building
relationships. If we are serious about relationships then should our
main church meetings be more about getting to know the people around us
and less about following whatever is happening from the front?
- Talk about it a lot. Think I mentioned this to do with building community here.
- "Be" community don't "do" it. Be dis-organised about small groups and social activities. Allow space for relationships to grow?
There's a quick update on my thinking so far this week anyway.
Continuing to take time to reflect on it all as time goes on so will
probably find myself blogging about it again sometime soon. Handed in
my fieldwork portfolio on Friday, so feeling quite relieved at the
moment. Have my end of term assignment due in two weeks, and then am
done for the summer. Finally feel like I'm getting there. Looking
forward to having time to catch up with reading and blog more before
the start of the new academic year in September.
Oh, finally, pray for the person who pinched my car radio aerial last
night that they enjoy making good use of it – slightly inconvenient,
luckily not too costly to replace though.
