Review: The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline

The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline by Jonathan Leeman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As a student of theology that leans more toward biblical theology, no wonder I felt that I did not like this book as much as I thought I would - Leeman states he is attempting to lay out a systematic theology! So perhaps the more systematic scholars would find this a more enjoyable read.

Brevity is not one of Leeman's strength. This book makes Dever's original 9marks book look pint sized! As I read through the pages, often I would be wondering to myself, why couldn't he just write more concisely; how I wish I did not have to wade through so much murky water just to find that gem or two? This is a pity because there were plenty of nuggets of wisdom for reflection between the pages, but you'd need to get through quite a fair bit to find them.

I've yet to encounter a book that exceeded 300 pages that I found still managed to capture my attention, and this was no different (the sole book that did was Stott's The Incomparable Christ - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/324690). But alas! Leeman mercifully includes a summary of the main substantives of the book in the Appendix. Perhaps one could start from there, see which topic interests you and then dive into deep depths of the chapter.

If he, like Dever, would shrink this immense amount of research into a shorter book, that would probably make for a 5 star masterpiece (Dever shrank his 300+ page long book into a 130 page book titled "What Is a Healthy Church? - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/966587)" While the sister volumes in the 9marks series titled Church Discipline and Church Membership may fit the bill, I cannot really tell much from the amazon previews what they really are like. Ideally it would be great if they were merged into shorter one combined title given the numerous overlaps between the two topics.

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The Process of Fathering as Preventive Discipline

Chong makes a fascinating case of how confucian values are part of a Singaporean's DNA, and how that affects the way church leaders manage it. This perhaps applies more to the more "Asian" baby boomers, than to the "Western" millennials. Could it explain the huge generation gap on the understanding and preference of the mode of authority?


On another note, I thoroughly enjoyed the section on "The Process of Fathering as Preventive Discipline":

Paul saw himself, foremost as a "father," when describing his pastoral leadership. The language of church leadership that he used was often in the context of the family. The relationship between the leaders and the people was in terms of parenthood and children. The first task of church leadership is to help those under them to live and serve in obedience to the will of God. From Paul's viewpoint, the organization of the Church is a family. The church leader is like the father of this family.

Just like the father in the world of his day, Paul saw himself as responsible for the education of his spiritual children. As a father, Paul sought to bring up his spiritual children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. He clearly believed that both encouragement and correction were necessary for healthy development within the Christian family For Paul, discipline was not reserved to be an essential part of Christian nurture to build up individuals and churches in the faith. Discipline was a form of pastoral care. Such a discipline was always born of love, like that of a father for his child.

Source: Pages 211-2 of Paul's theology of church discipline in I Corinthians : a holistic model of discipline for the Church in Singapore / by Timothy Keng-Hoi Chong.

Church Membership and Discipline

First have a proper membership system in place, then and only then should a church venture into discipline (or even consider excommunication). Without membership, why should a church "judge" prebelivers (who may have said the sinner's prayer without knowing what the demands of a Christian are)?

Source:
Those Who Must Give an Account

"Church discipline, like church membership, is a biblical concept and important to the health of a church. But church discipline cannot be properly carried out if a church does not have an official membership role...

A person cannot be put out of the church if he was never officially in the church. The authority given to the church is to admit members as well as to remove them if needed. If an unbeliever sins and refuses to repent, he is not excommunicated from the church because he was never a member. A believer who sins and refuses to repent, however, is to be removed from the church. Therefore, if it is biblical to remove someone from the church, it must also be the case that such unrepentant sinners were formal members. Consequently, churches that do not have a membership greatly limit the ability of the leaders to correct those in sin and protect their flock. In addition, there could also be possible legal problems if a church attempts to discipline someone who is not a member of the church and has therefore not formally committed to live by the standards of the gospel."