Why We Disciplined Half Our Church
October 1, 2000
At the members' meeting of our church in May 1996, we faced a daunting task. The sixty or so of us there needed to go through a list of 256 names—more than half our membership—and remove them from our church roll.
We had been working on this for months. Some had suggested I simply make one motion to dismiss all the people at once. I decided against that. We had taken them in individually; we would dismiss them individually. It would be a kind of Chinese water torture to good ends. We would all be reminded of the significance of church membership.
The first challenge came when in the first few names there were a pair of twin boys who had been brought up in the church—thirty years earlier! One of the older members put up her hand and said, "But we know where those boys are!"
I believe God's Spirit specially prompted our chairman of deacons, who responded calmly with just a touch of humor, "The problem isn't that we don't know where they are, but that they don't seem to know where we are."
Silence for a moment. Then gentle laughter.
The blockage broken, we were free to go on through the list, removing from membership even children and grandchildren of those sitting there in the meeting. Those who were perfectly able to attend but had not been doing so for months, even years, we removed.
I took pains that night, and throughout the process, to emphasize that what we were doing did not mean that we didn't love these people. It didn't mean they weren't welcome here. There was no place in this world where we would love to see them more than back with us in church. It didn't mean we thought they weren't going to church anywhere. We just knew they weren't coming to church here.
What membership means
Church membership is ...
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