The Gospel Coalition Offers a Sample Covenant and Posts 9 Marks Answers to Objections to Church Discipline: Looking at the Reality, Not the Hype.



Hubble looks at the Southern Crab Nebula

“Of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst.” – C. S. Lewis

Today I’m combining two posts which recently made appearances at The Gospel Coalition’s website Why Have a Church Covenant? (And a Sample You Can Use) and 7 Well-Meaning Objections to Church Discipline — And How Pastors Ought to Respond to Them

The church covenant is merely a legal contract to protect the church.

I have been making this point for years now and many of the friends of TGC have denied it. In Taylor’s introduction to the glory of church covenants, he doesn’t realize that he makes my point or me. According to Justin Taylor who posted the Church Covenant article:

“The Bible does not say explicitly, ‘Thou shalt have a written church covenant,’ any more than it says, ‘Thou shalt have marriage licenses,’ or, ‘Thou shalt have wedding rings,’” John Piper explains. “One way to look at it is that a church without a covenant is like a marriage without vows. Marriage vows are not spelled out in the Bible just like church covenants aren’t. Both follow necessarily from the nature of the relationships.”

Think about it. Marriage vows in the church, when followed by the signing of the marriage license, is a legal contract. The husband and wife are now recognized by the law as being married and the dissolution of said union must be done under the auspices of the judicial system.

The Gospel Coalition’s BFF, Matt Chandler, has proven the very real legal implications of the church covenant.This was spelled out in the New York Times post: Her Evangelical Megachurch Was Her World. Then Her Daughter Said She Was Molested by a Minister.

But her daughter’s ordeal showed her a different side of her church. The Village, like many other evangelical churches, uses a written membership agreement containing legal clauses that protect the institution. The Village’s agreement prohibits members from suing the church and instead requires mediation and then binding arbitration, legal processes that often happen in secret. The Village also uses an abuse prevention company called MinistrySafe, which many evangelical churches cite as an accountability safeguard. Ms. Bragg assumed that MinistrySafe would advocate for her daughter, but then she learned that the group’s leaders were the church’s legal advisers.

Make sure you get this loud and clear. The covenant is a legal contract and I shall call it that from this point forward. For those of you who signed a covenant, here is a question. Did your church advise you that you were signing a legal document? If not, why not?

From this point forward, TGC and all of their BFFs can no longer deny the legal implications of the church contract.

So, as you are asked to sign such a document, ask yourself if you are prepared to accept the church forcing you into legal arbitration. Also, ask yourself why your church would want to be legally protected from you,. Could it be that they are planning on instituting unjust church discipline?

Think about it. Are you prepared to be legally tied to your church as closely as you are legally tied to your spouse?

The church contract is there to prevent the church from being sued, particulary when it comes to church discipline.

Taylor provides a model church contract. Let’s take a look at what is slipped in there.

Put away all anger, bitterness and injurious speech.

We will eagerly maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace by walking together in love and in the Spirit and by putting away all bitterness, anger, and injurious speech. (Eph. 4:3; Gal. 5:16, 25; Eph. 4:29, 31)

What do they mean by injurious speech? Could you get in trouble if you ask too many questions about the budget? It’s happened. How does one put away all anger? Could it be that they will unjustly discipline you for anger which is directed at the church leaders for covering up a child abuse situation? That’s happened as well. Please note that they do not (and will not) define parameters regarding these *things they do not like.* The lack of specificity is necessary for their agenda. Basically, they can get you for whatever they don’t like.

The loving exercise of church discipline

We will not neglect to gather together, but will support and treasure the biblical preaching of the whole counsel of God, the faithful observance of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the loving exercise of church discipline. (Heb. 10:25; 2 Tim. 4:2; Acts 2:38; 1 Cor. 11:26; Matt 18:17; 1 Cor. 5:13)

They will not define, a priori, what they will discipline. They don’t do this because they want the freedom to discipline whatever they feel like disciplining. Can you imagine renting a car in a country which wouldn’t tell you the speed limit and laws of the road but reserved the right to arrest you for whatever they think is fair?

It is this wish to discipline the people without being subject to getting sued which has led to the development of these contracts. These are not mean to protect you. They are only meant to protect the church. Do not give away your rights. If you have already signed a contract, you can get out of it. Go to this link at TWW for help in this matter.

You do not need to sign one of thee contracts in order to attend most churches. They will happily take your donations and even let you take part in many church activities. Who cares if you can’t vote. When have you ever gone to an all church meeting when the outcome wasn’t predetermined anyway.

Church discipline: Even when you leave, they can come after you.

I’ll look at this in a minute.

We will, when we move from this place, unite as soon as possible with some other church where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant and the principles of God’s Word.

9 Marks supposedly addresses well meaning objections to church discipline.

We now switch to the second post. I laughed and laughed when reading this post. I truly believe the boys at 9 Marx(sic) and their BFFs are reeling from the revelations of The Village Church pulling the *legal arbitration* card against the child victim of a rape at one of their sponsored camps. The gig is up.

I believe we will see all sorts of breathless posts, extolling the virtues of the church contract and church discipline. It is the well known tactic of “Nothing to see here, move along, please disperses.”

This post appears to have an objective which is to downplay the very real objections to stupid and downright abusive church discipline which is the main reason that 9 Marks is often referred to as 9 Marx

Todd Wilhelm got church discipline thrown in his face when he left a 9 Marx church over a matter of conscience.

This could happen to you if you do not join an approved church immediately after leaving 9 Marx. Oh, and be sure to tell them you are going because they NEED to know this in order to keep watch over your soul and all that jazz.

Let’s take a sentence from Taylor’s lovely church contract and see how it was translated by one of 9 Marx’s most famous of entities -UCC Dubai.

Here is what Taylor’s above sample contract states.

We will, when we move from this place, unite as soon as possible with some other church where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant and the principles of God’s Word.

Here is what happened to Todd Wilhelm of Thou Art the Man. At the time, Todd was living in Dubai and involved in air traffic control. He attended UCCD.

Here is a quick synopsis of Todd Wilhelm’s story. He was a member of an SGM church in the United States. Due to his business, he was sent to Dubai, which is a city within the United Arab Emirates. There, he joined a 9 Marks church, UCCD. If you haven’t yet discovered Todd’s comments, you may not be aware of his deep knowledge of Scripture and church history. He is also very humorous and self-deprecating. He once told us that his choice of churches, first SGM, and then 9 Marks, demonstrates a decided lack of discernment. 🙂 Todd was being considered for the position of deacon at UCCD. Part of his job would be to oversee the bookstore. Over the years, due to his former involvement and continued interest, Todd had become deeply concerned about SGM and its former leader, CJ Mahaney. Todd takes a strong stand on child sex abuse and was dismayed by the stories that he had read on SGM Survivors. You can read about his concerns on the post. He informed UCCD that he could not oversee the UCCD bookstore because it sold a number of books by CJ Mahaney. This statement led to great discomfort since Mark Dever, the head of 9 Marks, and pastor of Capital HIll Baptist Church, is a BFF and ardent supporter of Mahaney link. Tood said: Unfortunately I don’t think most Christians in Dubai are aware of the Mahaney scandal, much less Piper and Dever’s support of Mahaney. If they were I believe these good people would be questioning the wisdom of inviting Piper and Dever to speak at their church. I resigned my membership on March 6th from the United Christian Church of Dubai because my church leadership refused to quit promoting Mahaney’s books. To date they have refused to act on my letter, so I am technically still a member. John Folmar, the Senior Pastor of UCCD, is a gifted speaker and good friend of Mark Dever’s, having formerly served on staff with him at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. It appears he has no concerns over Piper and Dever’s public support of C.J. Mahaney as he has arranged for them to speak at his church in Dubai. Piper and Dever will be returning the favor by having John Folmar speak at their conferences. Todd made the difficult decision to leave UCCD. The church refused to remove him from their membership. You see, according to the legal contract (oops-membership covenant), members can’t leave until they become members of another church.

Addendum: Todd Wilhelm has offered to sign a legal release in order to debate with 9 Marx what happened to him at the church. They have chosen not to take him up on his offer,

It appears that 9 Marx doesn’t want to talk about their unjust application of church discipline. So, in order to downplay the very real aspects of abuse inherent in the church disincline situation, they wrote this post.

Let’s look at some of their thoughts.

Many people who oppose discipline are just misguided, having been taught by poor shepherds.

as we reflect on the church contexts where we’ve served, many wonderful, godly Christians have opposed discipline (at least initially) for understandable, albeit uninformed, unbiblical, and misguided reasons. They’re opponents, but not wolves. They’re simply sheep who have sadly endured decades of bad shepherding.

Once again, no mention of the fact that 9 Marx appears to inconsistently and abusively apply discipline. They would have you believe that they only *do* church discipline for serious situations. That is codswallop. I know a number of people who dreamed up schemes to leave the church in ways so they wouldn’t be disciplined. Can you. imagine? “No, 9 Marx, some people are sharp enough to realize that you are playing games with their lives. They aren’t the ones who are misguided, you are the ones who refuse to get it.”

“Pastor, we can’t judge someone’s heart, so how could we possibly say someone is not a Christian?”

Now ask yourself a question. What does this question mean? In many instances, 9 Marx and other groups call into question your very faith in Christ when they *discipline* you. Take Todd’s situation. He left UCCD because he disagreed with them selling CJ Mahaney’s books since he was aware of the raging controversy in the States. This was a courageous act since it is hard to leave a group of friends when one is living in a foreign country. Todd refused to immediately join another church since hsedidn’t want to make the mistake of joining another church like UCCD with leaders like those present at UCCD.

So, he didn’t join a church and that meant he needed to be put on the *care* list which is a 9 Marx euphemism meaning “most likely outside of the faith.” 9 Marx holds to a bizarre belief that they hold the keys to the kingdom. Basically this mean that if they say you are *OUT* of kingdom of faith, then your are outside of God’s will and you most likely are not a Christian.

Frankly, they are naive at best. Todd called it on CJ Mahaney years ago, long before Papa Bear Mohler threw Mahaney under the bus. Mark Dever is still silent on the matter. I wonder if Dever now considers Mohler outside of the faith as well?

The church only disciplines those who are obstinately sinful? Codswallop!

The church only disciplines the obstinately sinful—those who are unwilling to repent of their sins while professing the name of Christ. Discipline is not turning people away who want Jesus, but identifying those who want sin more than they want Jesus.

This is what they claim. They absolutely will not provide a list of sins which will get the member booted from the fellowship. My 10 years of observing this nonsense tells me why. They want to discipline anything that is uncomfortable for them So, Todd Wilhelm called them on Mahaney years ago. That upset the boys who believe that they are God’s infallible authority on who they consider divine leaders. Well, this time, Todd had it right and Dever, Folmar and their bevy of wannabe followers had it very, very wrong. Yet who got disciplined?

People only get disciplined for unrepentant sin. Tommyrot!

Nobody gets excommunicated for sin, per se. Rather, the church enacts discipline for unrepentant sin.

Explain to me how wanting to be very careful before joining a new church is unrepentant sin. Make sure you understand what they mean by words before you take any action. A sin is a transgression against divine law as found in Scripture. However, in some churches, a sin is defined as anything that goes against or challenges church authority. I believe that this underlying reason was in play in this situation.

Todd challenged the justness of encouraging the ministry of CJ Mahaney’s by the church’s bookstore selling his stupid books.(Have you ever read any of them? I have. Don’t get me going on The Cross Centered Life.) So, he left that church.

Now think carefully. Why did they discipline Todd? He did not immediately join another 9 Marx approved church. Not only that but he didn’t join that church in a certain amount of time. Did the stupid contract give the amount of time that he had to join the next church? Of course it didn’t. That is the problem with these ridiculous pacts. They get to define what it means after the fact. Do you really want to sign one of these ? Do you really want to join a church that plays these games?

Sadly, some church discipline is harsh and judgmental because the pastors cook the books about real sin.

Some folks in our congregations may fear that practicing discipline will communicate to outsiders that our church is harsh or judgmental. But we must remind people that discipline is actually God’s way of maintaining the church’s credibility in a lost community. Jesus’ reputation is bound up with his church. If we tolerate sins even unbelievers find scandalous, we compromise our witness to the gospel’s power to transform lives.

Some of the most unjust, judgmental people I’ve ever met are found in churches. Pastors get to decide which *sins* they are going to discipline and you can be darn sure that the sins that get disciplined are not the one that the pastor and his yes men struggle with.

“So, let’s get Todd who hasn’t joined a new church within our undefined time parameters.” Of course Pastor Joe can be chronically angry, mean and greedy but we can overlook that. “You know how hard it is to run a church, disciplining all of these members.”

Take a look at Matt Chandler. People reached out to him for help in dealing with his good buddy, James MacDonald. Matt Chandler & Other Evangelical Leaders Rejected TED Bloggers’ Pleas to Expose Harvest in 2012 Guess who he said were harmful? Pastors protect pastors when they should be protecting the little guy like Jesus did.

“I might not agree with decisions made by James or the elders at HBC,” Chandler wrote, “but I have no intention of drawing any attention to your blog and if I can in any way deflect others from giving it ‘coverage’ I will use my influence to that end.” Chandler said he believed the blog was “unhelpful and maybe even harmful,” and added, “This will not lead to repentance, this will only serve to push people to the fringes where helpful discourse is impossible and ignorance and aggression will take over the conversation.”

Here are the takeaway points