Addressing Sin In The Church
Church Governance
For a general definition, by ‘church governance’ we are referring to a biblical model of dealing with sin within the church body, with a particular focus on relationships, church functionality, purity, holiness and it’s witness to the world.
Why is this topic so important?
At the time of writing this, we are a small fellowship. There is just five of us and it is clear that God has brought us together and is moving amongst us through the power of the Holy Spirit. There have been many prophetic words and visions that have been confirmed and although we have not been meeting together for very long, there is a feeling of great love between us and an authentic fellowship built on trust is being grown.
It’s something beautiful that none of us want to lose and we are determined to preserve.
Therefore we want to have something written down, something solid, sound, clear scriptural teaching about addressing sin within church, so that when inevitably in the future we are confronted with difficult relational or functional problems within the fellowship as God grows our numbers, we have some teaching on the subject and a clear way of dealing with it.
In fact, it is our intention that if someone new joins the fellowship who is already a believer, we will make a point of ensuring they are fully aware of the fellowship’s stance on this issue right from the beginning.
It’s something we believe is scriptural, just think about the subject matter of all the Epistles. They are for the most part addressing things like jealousy, quarrels, sexual immorality, greed, contention, divisions and other similar issues. They can all be boiled down to ‘sin’. But for the most part, in my experience at least, the modern church system hardly ever teaches about addressing sin in the church, or at least not the biblical model for doing so, and even more rarely practices it. This fact has led to a toxic environment in many churches, as sin goes unchallenged and ignored. Abusive leaders are allowed to keep on abusing and hurting the church. Congregation members are also often allowed to live a life of sin and cause harm to others. The witness for the Gospel is adversely affected and the faith of many has been shipwrecked as they have become so hurt and disillusioned with the Church. These are things we have witnessed time and again first hand. I am sure that if you have spent any amount time around the church system, you will have encountered the same.
The world needs a healthy, vibrant, functioning Church that stands for the truth and righteousness. The world is sick and dysfunctional, but is that in part due to the Church being sick and dysfunctional? The world around us is dark, but is the light within us really darkness?
Luke 11:34-35, Titus 2:7-8
The new testament is not ambiguous about addressing sin amongst believers and it explains exactly how to do it. The reason we need it is clear. It is to maintain a healthy, loving, nurturing environment that is conducive to real discipleship and enables the Church to be a great witness to the world. Why then is it seldom taught or practiced?
We believe that a major obstacle to addressing sin in a biblical way is that the modern church system has a model which is not a biblical one, instead it is based largely on man’s tradition, and this has a direct affect on issues of sin being allowed to go unaddressed.
How this works out in the real world is something we are going to attempt to address in the next section, but first lets take a quick look at what the biblical instructions are for addressing sin in the Church. This way we have something to keep in mind when examining how the church system works against this idea.
The main passage I want to refer to is this one:
Matthew 18:15-17
Later on we will go into this passage and surrounding ones in more detail, and consider how it should work and look in practice. But for now we can break this down into 4 simple stages:
1. Show your brother or sister their fault, if they do not listen then
2. Take one or two others with you, if they still do not listen then
3. Tell it to the church, if they still do not listen then
4. Treat the offender like a gentile/tax collector
Now let’s look at some differences between the modern, man made church model and the biblical new testament church model and how this has an affect on addressing sin in the church.
Please be aware that our aim is not to be critical of other churches or leaders in the church or that all of these things apply to every church that follows the modern system. Everything we outline is of course a matter of degree and depends upon the individuals involved, their faith, love, resilience, integrity and a number of other characteristics. Our point is that we believe that following the biblical model avoids many of the pitfalls and temptations that exist in the church, especially when it comes to the implementation of church governance.
