Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application

Royce Snyman

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 1

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 2

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 3

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 4

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 5

Father in heaven, we thank you again for this chance to study together.

Lord, we wish we didn't live in a sinful world.

We know that the great controversy is going on, and Our wishes will 1 day become true because our wishes are based upon faith, and faith in the Word of God that promises that Jesus is coming again soon.

But until that takes place, we still live in a sinful world, and there are real-life problems that we have to deal with.

I pray that you will be with us as we talk about as leaders how to manage these problems, how to help people with these problems, and to do so in a way that is redemptive.

Give me words to speak and all of us ears to hear in Jesus name, Amen.

Well, up to this point, we've done a lot of work.

I think most of you are used to teachers doing that.

If you've been out of class for a while, it's good to be reminded how teachers function.

And it is, I don't know about you, but it's so easy for me to get going down a track, I need to be reminded of where I was yesterday and what I learned yesterday, and that is part of the way that I learn as well.

And so I'm gonna just back up here in case anybody wasn't here the first day, or you weren't here yesterday, or whatever, I just bring you up to speed with what we have done in the last couple of days.

We have talked about the whole process of redemptive discipline.

We have done so in discussing it in the context of Matthew chapter 18.

We pause to talk about the whole chapter that Jesus where he spoke about the need of the church and Christians in the church, his disciples, his followers to care for each other like a lost sheep.

In chapter 18, he spoke again of the lost sheep that the shepherd had to go out and find and leave the sheep that were in the fold because they were in the fold.

He didn't have to worry about them but he went out to find the lost sheep and immediately after reminding them of that that scenario something very familiar with them because they were used to the shepherds being there around seeing them around in the sheep and and all they understood the imagery Jesus told them about how to interact with each other when problems came up.

They didn't always agree with each other.

They wanted to know who was going to be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

There were other times when they got upset with each other and they got upset with other people.

The disciples wanted to call fire down from heaven in order to be able to take care of those Samaritans that weren't being nice and Jesus said you don't know what spirit you're of.

That's not the spirit of heaven, that's not what I came to teach.

So the disciples had to learn along the way.

So Jesus outlined 3 steps when a brother, or I'll include a sister, offends us.

He said, if you are offended, somebody does something to hurt you, does something wrong, go to him alone, go to her alone.

If they follow that principle and that person responds and says, I'm sorry, let's make it all right, then it's taken care of.

1 on 1, nobody else knows about it, it's finished, it's done, it's taken care of.

But if the person doesn't respond appropriately and says, oh, leave me alone.

I don't really care about that, whatever.

Then the second step is we go with 2 or 3 others.

We've said along the way that it might be that we do this more than once.

Those may be the steps, but if we get a glimmer that there is some hope there, we want to continue this process until all hope is apparently exhausted and the person may say, well, I intend to do that, but they don't do it, then we have to take the next steps.

But we talked about the third step, going to the church.

We also talked about in our class on the second day, we talked about the fact that there might be a third step that leads to a fourth step that's similar to the third step that Jesus outlined, but working within the context of our organization as the Seventh-day Adventist Church, that that third step is creating within the Board of Elders the authority by authority of the local church to put a person under a period of grace without having to bring it to the whole church just through the Board of Elders so that it is contained as much as possible before in an effort to solve this problem before it becomes broad and widely known so that the redemptive process can be inclusive of less people instead of trying to give it out to the whole church.

Yesterday we spent a lot of time talking about what I guess I would say in this context that fourth step of taking it to the church and we talked and outlined that whole process.

We talked about it in detail because churches have to deal with it from time to time, they need to be able to manage that and we talked about the fact that you go to the church in the church board, You talk about that as a recommendation from the board of elders if you've set up that process.

And the process would be in the case of Mr.

B, who we've been talking about a lot this week.

Anybody with a last name that begins with B here?

You haven't been feeling guilty all this time, have you?

And so anyway, we take the recommendation that Mr.

B has resisted the counsel that we've been given, he's not done what he said he would do, the sin continues, in this in the case of that scenario, he's living with, not living, he's having an affair with a woman, he's not breaking that affair off, he's an elder in the church, his wife is not an Adventist, he's also a Sabbath school superintendent, his wife is not an Adventist, she's complaining or appealing to the church to deal with this and he doesn't do what we ask him to do have it oh that's coincide Are you an elder in the church?

It's still not about you so I want you to know that.

He wants an elder, always an elder, except you have to be elected in the local church.

You gave me an opportunity to make that statement.

And so the board votes to censor, I mean discusses whether to censor Mr.

B or to take a recommend, I should say to slow down Royce, the church discusses the recommendation that comes from the Board of Elders.

The board discusses that, but the board can decide whether or not to accept that recommendation or to pass on another recommendation, a different 1, and that is, it's gone on too long, we think he needs to be removed from church membership.

And he could do either 1 of them, yes and it's an executive session, thank you for reminding me, and or they can dismiss it all and say we're not going to do anything.

So the board makes a decision, all right, this is the review part, The board makes a decision about what to recommend to the church in business session.

Do nothing, censors him for a period of time, or remove him from membership because this is an ongoing problem, an ongoing rebellion against clear Bible and spirit of prophecy counsel and therefore the person is removed from it could be removed from membership or censored for a period of time.

So I'm going to keep going for just a moment.

So this goes on to the board makes a decision.

Let's say the board decides to accept the recommendation of the board of elders and makes the decision to recommend to the church in business session that they're going to remove them from, that they're going to censor them for 3 months.

B is informed of the action of the church board.

The church board has made a decision that the meeting is going to happen as soon as possible, which we said is 2 weeks, because you have to allow time for the church to be informed of the meeting that's coming up and the business meeting.

It didn't happen to be a business meeting scheduled so they have to schedule it and let everybody know about it.

2 weeks from then They want to make sure Mr.

He says he wants to be, so he says he can be there in 2 weeks, which is 2 Sunday nights from where they are, and so they make that announcement in the church.

They send a letter out to the church members, you know, communicate in whatever way they can, they get the word out, and the business meeting takes place.

The church is an executive session, that means that if they're not a member, so Mr.

B is at the meeting and at that meeting he's been informed that he can make a presentation if he believes that he's being wrong.

Now he thinks he's right, he thinks it's okay for him to do what he wants to do, but the real question is whether or not he agrees that what he's being accused of is actually accurate.

I don't want this to sound like a court because this is a redemptive discipline, but I'm being real brief in the language that I'm using.

And so he comes there and he says, I'd like to make a statement, and we say, okay, you've got a couple minutes to make a statement, but we're making our presentation, Our recommendation is from the church board that you be censured for 3 months.

The reason is because you're violating the seventh commandment that is clearly taught both in the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy and it's what the Seventh-day Adventist Church believes.

Because you're violating the seventh commandment, we believe you should break this relationship off.

We're trying to stop your behavior and by doing what we're doing here, we're asking you to stop that.

And the real question that we have for you Mr.

B is do you agree that what you are doing that we have rightly represented it and you really are doing that yes I really am doing that So what is it you want to share?

I want to share why I believe it's okay for me to do that.

Now at that point it's a little bit of a judgment call on the part of the pastor who's chairing the meeting as to whether he wants to give him a little bit of time to explain why he believes that's okay.

Because this is not a place for him to have a forum to flaunt his sin.

This is a place for him to say, no, you have not rightly represented me.

I'm not having a relationship with that woman.

That's really what his defense should be.

I'm changing it a little bit right now just to keep it simple.

I want to make sure the basic principles are covered and that is that at that meeting he has a right to represent himself, no lawyers we said, and in that setting he he says yes it really is that way but I believe it's okay for me and we might give him a couple of minutes to explain that but usually when they try to explain why sin is okay, they only dig the hole deeper and we're not going to spend a lot of time in doing that.

If it's false theology, I'm not going to give them time to explain their false theology because we don't believe it.

They are agreeing that they believe what we don't believe and then we have to take an action.

Now the church can reject the recommendation of the church board, right?

Series

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application

Redemptive Discipline: Concept & Application- Part 4

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Michael Carducci Weekend

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Emmanuel Training Sessions

10. Bible Docs 101 Overview- Part 2

30m

Workshop: Dealing with Conflicts In Ministry

Questions and Answers in Conflicts in Ministry

1h 17m

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Managing Theological Conflict in the Local Church

1h 11m

A Man After Gods Own Heart: King David

13 Power Grab And Civil War

42m

Elders Advanced Training

Elders Advanced Training- Part 3

1h 5m

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13. How to Give Bible Studies- Part 3

1h 16m

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Exit the Dragon: Spiritual Dangers of Martial Arts- Part 5

1h 8m

The Time of Destiny

52m

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training- Part 3

1h 8m

Sound Doctrine