In an age of global pandemics, financial upheaval, and an increasingly secularized western culture, ecclesiology might sound like a topic reserved for those with their heads in the sand—idealists out of touch with reality. For many, the most important thing that Christians can and should do is to share the gospel with as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. Any perceived hindrance to that is simply that: a hindrance.
But I wonder if our approach to these matters (the proclamation of the gospel and biblical ecclesiology) doesn’t demonstrate our own captivity to the spirit of the age, an age driven by expedience and consumption. Most pastors and theologians prior to the twentieth century would not have pitted the Great Commission against biblical ecclesiology. In fact, for most Protestants, biblical ecclesiology laid the groundwork for the advancement of the gospel.
A church that was rightly ordered in teaching and practice was what God blessed and used to advance His gospel and to preserve it from one generation to the next. Let’s put it another way: We all want to obey Matthew 28. But Matthew 18 is essential to the foundation on which Matthew 28 rests. We cannot simply jump to Matthew 28 without taking Matthew 18 into account. The same Jesus who gave us the Great Commission also taught us church discipline in Matthew 18.
It’s difficult to imagine now, but Baptists in America, like their counterparts in England, suffered great opposition to biblical ecclesiology. They thought that a rightly ordered church, where only believers were baptized and membership consisted only of those who demonstrated saving faith, was worth suffering fines and other forms of opposition for. For them, biblical ecclesiology was central and non-negotiable.
But today we seem less-than-sure that the Bible says much of anything about the governance, leadership, and practice in the local church. Let’s call this “ecclesial minimalism.” Whereas our forebears would’ve sought conformity to biblical ecclesiology with the expectation that God’s blessing would follow, we measure numerical increases and organizational efficiency as a sure sign of God’s blessing. The two approaches are strikingly different.
Here I will contend that the difference between the two approaches matters and will advocate for the former. Biblical ecclesiology is essential to the life and mission of the church.
Some Basics of Baptist Ecclesiology
Baptist ecclesiology centers upon sound doctrine, biblical preaching, proper administration of the ordinances, and regenerate church membership. For Baptists in particular, membership in a local church was preceded by genuine conversion and believer’s baptism. This practice constituted a “rightly ordered” church. “Rightly ordered” meant “ordered after the teachings of the Bible.”
Baptist ecclesiology also stridently affirms the priesthood of all believers, which has many ecclesiological and theological implications.[1] What the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, and others might have reserved only for priests, Baptists have believed that Christ has given to every believer through His mediatorial work on the cross. Through His continued mediatorial work, every believer has access to God the Father (Hebrews 4:14–16).
Now this interpretation should not be misconstrued as a promoting a radical individualism eliminating all distinctions between the clergy and the laity. Baptists wholeheartedly affirm the biblical offices of elder and deacon, and their biblical roles to serve and equip the laity. But, ultimately, God gives congregations the responsibility to elect these biblical officers. Furthermore, even these officers fall under the jurisdiction and discipline of the congregations.
In an attempt to achieve greater expediency, many Baptist churches have moved away from the biblical model of congregational consent. Most decisions, even very important decisions, have been removed from the laity and entrusted to ministry staff, elders, deacons, or other boards. This practice seems to deviate significantly not only from historic Baptist ecclesiology but also from the teachings of the Bible.
Church discipline, for example, is not merely the responsibility of the clergy but the congregation as a whole. Baptists appeal to Matthew 18 where the process of discipline moves from individual confrontation to a few going to a believer in unrepentant sin to the whole church body bringing the charge against an unrepentant believer. It was then the church’s responsibility to determine what to do. First Corinthians 5–6 also evidences this pattern of when a church should bring a case of discipline before the gathered congregation.[2]
To be clear, some churches are plagued by something more akin to congregational anarchy where the congregation has stripped the pastor(s) of all ability to lead, and even the smallest decisions require a congregational vote. That extreme is not what I am advocating for. If anything, we’ve developed a situation where laity vote too often on matters best suited for elders and/or deacons, and the elders and/or deacons have handled matters that the congregation should have been trained to deliberate on. The laity must fulfill their spiritual responsibilities, particularly on matters relating to membership and discipline.
Exclusion in an Inclusive Age
Why has biblical ecclesiology declined in the United States over the last 150 years? In his monograph Democratic Religion, Gregory A. Wills traces the decline of church discipline among Georgia Southern Baptists in the nineteenth century.[3] His study shows that over time these churches began to discipline and excommunicate their members at much lower rates. The decline in discipline was not due to a lack of immorality in the churches.
Instead, churches transitioned away from practicing church discipline altogether—a change in ecclesiology. The prevailing sentiment among Georgia Southern Baptists (and many like them) was that church discipline was no longer necessary or expedient in the twentieth century. This sentiment has only spread among evangelicals as we have entered the twenty-first century.
Biblical church membership has fallen on hard times as well. Membership in Baptist churches has become more akin to membership in some sort of club (and a very inclusive club, we might add). Is this what the church should be? Have we lowered the bar in an unbiblical way? Consider this striking anecdote from Mark Dever on membership and discipline:
A few years ago, I conducted a seminar at a state Baptist Convention on “Getting your church off the plateau.” I picked up some typical modern literature to read. In it, the author encouraged pastors to “Open the front door of your church and close the back door.” I understood what the author meant. He meant that the church should be more accessible and that we should do a better job on follow-up, assimilation and discipling-all laudable ends. And yet, as I read about opening the front door and closing the back door, I couldn’t help but think that if many of the generation of Baptist pastors from a century and a half ago gathered around to read the book, they would locate our church’s major problem elsewhere. They might even say that the answer to the endemic weakness in our churches is closing the front door and opening the back door! Closing the front door simply in the sense of being willing to be honest about the cost of discipleship, and being more careful about conversions claimed and members accepted; and opening the back door in the sense of being willing to correct and discipline those who join.[4]
Biblical membership, which includes the discipline of members in unrepentant sin, is key to the ministry of the local church (Mt. 18:15–17). We must entreat people to count the cost of following Jesus (Lk. 14:25–33). Pastors and the laypersons have a responsibility to admonish one another to grow in Christ-likeness (Col. 3:16). These teachings are for the good of the church, the glory of God, and the way that we portray God’s holiness to our community. If churches are to thrive in the most biblical sense, they must reclaim meaningful church membership and church discipline.
Responsible biblical ecclesiology is one area where we likely feel most at odds with ourselves and with the world. One of the ideals of modern western culture is inclusivity. Church membership is inclusive in the sense that it includes all baptized believers who faithfully strive to obey the teachings of God’s Word. But it is also exclusive in the sense that it creates a clear dividing line between the church and the world.
Church membership requires that Christians discern the professions of faith of other believers and respond when their profession does not correspond with their actions. The goal of church discipline is always repentance and restoration. Jesus was very clear on that. But we must recover the difficult but clearly biblical task of biblical membership and discipline. This recovery starts at the front door of the church and involves the entire congregation. We must not let the thin inclusivity of our age determine our ecclesiology.
Conclusion
Very few, if any, church growth experts will recommend the things suggested above. But if these things are biblical then we should humbly obey them. We must read the Bible carefully and consider what it says about the structure and ministry of the local church. For the structure and discipline of the church are not essential only to biblical fidelity but also are integral to our success in fulfilling the Great Commission. These two things—biblical ecclesiology and the Great Commission—are not unrelated or in opposition. We should not imagine having one without the other. The former undergirds the latter as it strives to produce, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, a pure, holy, disciplined church.
Rest assured that God is more committed to seeing people saved than we are. If that’s the case, then it follows that His design for His church will best accomplish that end over time. So then we must transition away from seeing our own metric of effectiveness as a sign of God’s blessing, to beginning with obedience (including ecclesiology) with the expectation that God will bless a faithful, rightly ordered church with biblical fruitfulness.
[1]For a more detailed treatment of this doctrine and its implications from a Baptist perspective, see Malcolm B. Yarnell III, “The Priesthood of Believers: Rediscovering the Biblical Doctrine of Royal Priesthood,” in Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches, ed. Jason G. Duesing, Thomas White, and Malcolm B. Yarnell III(Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2008) 221–44.
2For more on this in the English General Baptists, see J. Matthew Pinson, Free Will Baptists and Church Government (Nashville, TN: The Historical Commission of the National Association of Free Will Baptists), 2–6.
[3]Gregory A. Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
[4]Mark Dever, “The Noble Task: The Pastor as Practitioner and Preacher of the Marks of the Church,” in Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life, ed. MarkDever (Washington, DC: Center for Church Reform, 2001), 17.
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