Church Calls 911: “And we need to, um, have her out ASAP”
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Mon, January 28, 2008
- Viewed 49
- (9) comments so far
The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey’s real offense, in her pastor’s view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he’d charged her with spreading “a spirit of cancer and discord” and expelled her from the congregation. “I’ve been shunned,” she says.
Her story reflects a growing movement among some conservative Protestant pastors to bring back church discipline, an ancient practice in which suspected sinners are privately confronted and then publicly castigated and excommunicated if they refuse to repent. While many Christians find such practices outdated, pastors in large and small churches across the country are expelling members for offenses ranging from adultery and theft to gossiping, skipping service and criticizing church leaders.
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.
Causing Disharmony
Watermark Community Church, a nondenominational church in Dallas that draws 4,000 people to services, requires members to sign a form stating they will submit to the “care and correction” of church elders. Last week, the pastor of a 6,000-member megachurch in Nashville, Tenn., threatened to expel 74 members for gossiping and causing disharmony unless they repented. The congregants had sued the pastor for access to the church’s financial records.
First Baptist Church of Muscle Shoals, Ala., a 1,000-member congregation, expels five to seven members a year for “blatant, undeniable patterns of willful sin,” which have included adultery, drunkenness and refusal to honor church elders. About 400 people have left the church over the years for what they view as an overly harsh persecution of sinners, Pastor Jeff Noblit says.
The process can be messy, says Al Jackson, pastor of Lakeview Baptist Church in Auburn, Ala., which began disciplining members in the 1990s. Once, when the congregation voted out an adulterer who refused to repent, an older woman was confused and thought the church had voted to send the man to hell.
Scholars estimate that 10% to 15% of Protestant evangelical churches practice church discipline—about 14,000 to 21,000 U.S. congregations in total. Increasingly, clashes within churches are spilling into communities, splitting congregations and occasionally landing church leaders in court after congregants, who believed they were confessing in private, were publicly shamed.
In the past decade, more than two dozen lawsuits related to church discipline have been filed as congregants sue pastors for defamation, negligent counseling and emotional injury, according to the Religion Case Reporter, a legal-research database. Peggy Penley, a Fort Worth, Texas, woman whose pastor revealed her extramarital affair to the congregation after she confessed it in confidence, waged a six-year battle against the pastor, charging him with negligence. Last summer, the Texas Supreme Court dismissed her suit, ruling that the pastor was exercising his religious beliefs by publicizing the affair.
Courts have often refused to hear such cases on the grounds that churches are protected by the constitutional right to free religious exercise, but some have sided with alleged sinners. In 2003, a woman and her husband won a defamation suit against the Iowa Methodist conference and its superintendent after he publicly accused her of “spreading the spirit of Satan” because she gossiped about her pastor. A district court rejected the case, but the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the woman’s appeal on the grounds that the letter labeling her a sinner was circulated beyond the church.
Advocates of shunning say it rarely leads to the public disclosure of a member’s sin. “We’re not the FBI; we’re not sniffing around people’s homes trying to find out some secret sin,” says Don Singleton, pastor of Ridgeview Baptist Church in Talladega, Ala., who says the 50-member church has disciplined six members in his 2½ years as pastor. “Ninety-nine percent of these cases never go that far.”
When they do, it can be humiliating. A devout Christian and grandmother of three, Mrs. Caskey moves with a halting gait, due to two artificial knees and a double hip replacement. Friends and family describe her as a generous woman who helped pay the electricity bill for Allen Baptist, in Allen, Mich., when funds were low, gave the church $1,200 after she sold her van, and even cut the church’s lawn on occasion. She has requested an engraved image of the church on her tombstone.
QUESTION: When should a church publicly expel a member?
From the Wall Street Journal: On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. "And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P." Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff's officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs. (You can listen to the 911 call here)
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Pastor B on Mon, January 28, 2008
QUESTION: When should a church publicly expel a member?
Failure to repent of open sin/rebellion. I had to expel a member 3 years ago. I followed the Matthew 18 principle. This lady had been a source of major problems in this church for over 40 years. She had been brought to the deacon boards over and over again for 40 years. Over 40 years this church has lost 12 pastors and over 150 members because of this lady and here behavior.
When I came here I confronted her in love with the hope of restoring her (she had a lot of giftings!)
Then I had to bring her to the board, she cried, we got soft and felt bad for “picking on” an elderly lady. We told her “lets just work together” .... over the next 10 months she tore the church apart and hurt a lot of people.
On a Sunday morning I preached on encouraging, edifying and building up the body of Christ, and then I told the church that there was a hand full of people who had been tearing up the church for over 40 years (I did not name anyones name) and I told them their day is done in this church and that spirit of rebellion will never be allowed in this church again. I told them that they had 7 days to call the church office and set up a time and we will pray with them in a prayer of repentance, and then we will assign them an accountibility partner for 1 year to help them grow past their sin problem…. But if they did not call in the 7 days on the 8 day we would remove them from membership in the church. Got a standing ovation from 95 people that sunday morning (I felt like passing out!)
(3 months of prayer went before all of this)
During those 7 days every body was calling each other repenting for past offenses… the church phone was ringing off the hook with people repenting…. Except for this lady and her friends.
on the 8th day we expelled her from membership at this church… her husband threatened to bring his gun “to take care of me” .
The last few years expelling this lady was hard on the entire church body but we all have grown from it, including the lady because she is in a church where she has no influence and she is actually growing in christ again.
I am a firm believer in church disipline… but it needs to be last resort and totally prayed about to get the Heart of God on the issue.
Andy McAdams on Mon, January 28, 2008
Great comment Pastor B.
I find it very interesting that on todays posts that there are a number of comments on each of the articles, except for this one. Perhaps it’s because people wish to avoid the whole subject of church discipline. I and grateful to God that in 30 years of pastoral ministry I only had to be involved in this difficult process three times. In one instance the man put under discipline publically repented and aked the congregation for forgiveness. Glory to God!
To me the key is “always” for restoration and for the good of the church body as a whole. Too often we ignore sinful behavior and stick our “leadership” heads into the sand in hopes that it will simply go away.
In many of the churches that I work with all over America that there is a spirit of divisiveness, that all too often pastors are either not willing to deal with the issues, or deal with it incorrectly. Sometimes they want to deal with issues but receive opposition from another leader.
One of the things that I help leadership in churches to do is to identify the “Deadly Diseases” of the church and prescribe the needed biblical remedy. The number one disease in the church today is “The Toleration of Known Sin”, mainly manifested by a “critical spirit.” Nothing will chip away at the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace” as believers that operate by the “deeds of the flesh” rather then the “fruit of the Spirit”.
Disunity and sin in the church is never easy to deal with and always must be approached biblically. If it isn’t dealt with, God can not bless the church for His glory.
Daniel D. Farmer on Mon, January 28, 2008
I second Pastor B’s comments. Sometimes, it’s got to be done. But the spirit with which is done is just as important as the fact that it be done.
I’m happy to see such a mature Christian response to sin in the Body.
steven sinclair on Mon, January 28, 2008
i would like to say that any form of discipline is hard espescially in a church.once about 10 years ago i had to remove a member from the church roll and strip her membership because of her refusing to repent of admitted sexual sins,she was treated with love and kindness but refused to repent and turn to God,she cursed me and the assoc. pastor out and told how we were’nt acting very Godly like for doing this.Sin is as big as a problem that it always has been,we"the church"in the name of tolerance and “can’t we all just get along” ideas are the blame ,i believe the church should have discipline in it,why not we have everywhere else dont we,jobs,home,school,you name it. we have become very soft on sin in alot of churches and its going to take time to turn things around,it wont be easy,things for God generally are not easy.
REV. STEVEN SINCLAIR
James on Tue, January 29, 2008
I agree with all the statements made thus far and affirm that we do need more loving, redemptive discipline in our churches. I firmly believe this is one of the reasons we are irrelevant to most people in the world today. We need to be seen as a place that loves people, but holds them to the standard that Jesus holds people.
David S. on Tue, January 29, 2008
From my experience, many who are pastors are not very comfortable with personal confrontation. Confronting someone in counseling is one thing - confronting a person who may hold some (or alot) of “political” influence in the church is something else!
As pastors, in the eyes of the “public” we’re to have the “personal” “soft touch” as we deal with people. We’re the ones who are called in to help make peace in a situation where people are at odds. So, when it comes to confronting someone and we have to play the role of the confronter, many pastors are uncomfortable in that “non-peacemaker” role, especially when we know it’s gonna make someone in our congregation upset or mad. So, it’s not surprising that we avoid confronting people who need discipline.
That’s why I think our Lord instructed us to not do it alone. Utilizing a group approach (the two or three witnesses…) can bolster our resolve to Biblically apply discipline to a member, and it keeps the “heat” off the pastor or one person. It also guards against a vindictive or angry expulsion, and can ensure a restoration purpose to the discipline.
Trevor Davis on Tue, January 29, 2008
I suppose I am not surprised that the WSJ is shocked that churches discipline people. Since when have we not - and if we haven’t, then shame on us for not upholding a standard of conduct critical to successful pastoring.
I’ve always thought, however, that if you’re looking forward to disciplining someone, you’re probably not the person to do it. It should always be in love, with a heart to restore people, and will/should be something that is uncomfortable and difficult.
The heart of your approach is everything. Being sensitive, however, does not mean you soften your convictions.
Afterall, we’re not the ones who wrote the rule book.
Dorothy J. Bender on Wed, February 06, 2008
I have seen instances in a church when a pastor is not living the way God wants him to according to the Bible. What about when the pastor is angry, continues to be angry about a problem and will not say he is sorry.
70-643 on Mon, April 20, 2009
Well, in my opinion I think our Lord instructed us to not do it alone. Utilizing a group approach (the two or three witnesses…) can bolster our resolve to Biblically apply discipline to a member, and it keeps the “heat” off the pastor or one person.
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