GYC 2012 Acts: The Revolution Continues

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2012 Seminar: Church Authority - Gospel Order and Redemptive Discipline

Jay Gallimore

Church Authority, Part I

Church Authority, Part II

Church Authority, Part III

Church Authority, Part IV

Church Authority, Part V

Church Authority, Part VI

This message was presented at the GYC 2012 conference in Seattle, Washington.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

This is probably 1 of the most subjects that people really like to avoid, and it's probably 1 of the most important subjects we have in the Adventist church.

And we are going to get into the Scripture today as well.

I'm not going to strictly stick by the church manual because of...

I just want to make this a really teaching time for us.

And so we'll get into the Scripture here in just a little bit.

Under the chapter on church discipline, I want to set this out here.

The Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy set forth in clear, unmistakable language the solemn responsibility that rests upon the people of God to maintain their purity, integrity, and spiritual fervor." And all of those 3 go together.

If members grow indifferent or drift away, the church must seek to reclaim them for the Lord." So that's a pretty solemn statement, it's a very serious statement that we are to take this whole issue very serious.

I made the statement yesterday and I'll make it again today.

I don't think it's possible to have a real church growth without having church discipline.

We can have growth, but it may not be true kingdom growth.

A lot of people shy away from this subject because it's a difficult subject.

And it's become more difficult because of the way we've approached some of these things.

How is the health and purity of the church preserved?

This is by the way coming from 7T 261-263, Church manual, page 57, Ellen White quote, "...no church officer should advise, no committee should recommend, nor should any church vote, that the name of a wrongdoer shall be removed from the church books until the instruction given by Christ has been faithfully followed.

When this instruction has been followed, the church has cleared herself before God, the evil must then be made to appear as it is and must be removed, that it may not become more and more widespread.

The health and purity of the church must be preserved, that she may stand before God unsullied, clad in robes of Christ's righteousness." It's quite a statement.

This is another place she talks about our schools, in the context of our schools.

She said she talks about lowering the standards in our schools and that the argument would be if we don't lower our standards then people will not attend.

She says fine, let them go to other schools.

She said the school's reputation should be based not on its numbers.

Sometimes we lower the standards, we have higher numbers, and then she says we make that an issue of great rejoicing.

She said the real rejoicing should be is are those schools and its faculty and its students, Are they doing the will of God?

And that should be the real issue of rejoicing.

Is there Christlikeness in their characters?

It's a very different view than what we have with all the church growth mania.

I'm not talking about in the Avens church, I'm talking about in the Christian world that we have and all that kind of a thing in the world that we have today.

So that doesn't mean we want to be small.

And we need to be very careful with church discipline.

What is the great object of church discipline?

I'm going to read this and then I'm going to give you 3 ways that the church today approaches church discipline.

This is again Church Manual page 56, a quote from 17260, human beings are Christ's property purchased by him at an infinite price, bound to him by the love that he and his father manifested for them, how careful then should we be in our dealings with 1 another?

Men have no right to surmise evil in regard to their fellow men.

Church members have no right to follow their own impulses and inclinations in dealing with fellow members who have erred.

They should not even express their prejudices regarding the erring." Very interesting.

For thus they place in other minds the leaven of evil.

1 person is told, then another, and still another.

And continually the report grows, and the evil increases until the whole church is made to suffer.

We are really suffering on this kind of thing today.

Somebody does something wrong and first place we want to do is get on Facebook and tell it to the world.

Ellen White says about that secular world today that they love the sin but they hate the sinner.

How do you know that the media loves the sin but hates the sinner?

Because they condemn the person who did it, but they keep recounting and regurgitating the evil and all of its horrible details.

I'm just wondering how you would reconcile that statement with some of the church policies that are coming into, at least in my conference, I'm from the Upper Columbia Conference, and they have started a policy whereby every member gets background checked in order to work with the youth, Pathfinders, young people, children, Sabbath schools, whatever.

If you're going to be involved in the church, you need a background check.

In fact, some churches in the conference have discussed having everyone background checked before they're even baptized.

That to me means that you're suspicious of evil in all of the brethren.

Well, unfortunately we live in a very ugly world.

Yeah, I will tell you that She's talking about publicly making people's sins apparent.

We have a shield of vulnerable where if you're working with children in our conference, It's an educational program as well as it does do background checks.

Because we want to make sure that children are protected.

But we don't take that information and broadcast it around.

It's a state law in the state of Michigan, if you're teaching in a in a school, that you have to be fingerprinted.

Again, that is private information and it's protected information.

We it's it's a difficult thing to be we got to be careful that we don't, that there's a balance between protecting and not advertising the sin at the same time protecting our kids.

So I don't have a totally good answer, but I do believe we've got to protect our kids.

Here's some of the challenges that we have in our world today.

You can turn on spigots of sewer, I'll put it that way.

And so today we're educating little kids in the grossest stuff of Sodom and Gomorrah today.

And these kids, innocence is taken away from them, adults have taken it, stuff people would never ever look at, they're going and looking at it on the internet today and it's affecting behavior.

And we're just creating monsters between that and the media.

But her point here is that we should not be evil speaking of 1 another.

We shouldn't be going around saying to somebody, do you know what I know about so and so?

If there's a church discipline issue, people get it on Facebook and everybody in the world thinks they have a right to weigh in and we try to do church discipline by blogs.

There's a reason why church discipline is left to the local church.

It's not a conference issue, it's a local church issue.

I've just been amazed at some of the stuff that I have seen and it's like folk never read that particular thing.

Alright, if it's my wife I'll answer, No.

Okay, there are 3 kinds of church discipline.

The first 1 is what I would call an ostrich discipline.

I don't think I have to explain that, do I?

I had a, I won't tell you where, but I had a church some years ago, who had a young couple in their church and they were living together without the benefit of marriage.

And the church was kind of stirred up about it.

But the elders didn't want to do anything about it.

And they just said, Well, we'll just leave them alone, because eventually they'll get married anyway.

It's not, it's not caring about the individual.

Series

GYC 2012 Seminar: Church Authority - Gospel Order and Redemptive Discipline

Church Authority, Part III

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

GYC 2012 Seminar: Church Authority - Gospel Order and Redemptive Discipline

Church Authority, Part V

1h

Workshop: Dealing with Conflicts In Ministry

Dealing With Conflict in Public Ministry

1h 6m

Adventist 101

56m

Devotions For Decisions

2. Where Did You Find That?

54m

The Power of Perspective

Two Covenants

57m

Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 13: Disturbing our Monotony

1h 15m

Lessons From The Reformation

27m

Studies in 1 Corinthians

02 Conflicts and Divisions in Corinth

50m

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Sanctuary: How Sinners Can Safely Approach a Holy God

03-The Ministry and Protocol of Forgiveness, Part 2

50m

The Doctrine of Personal Ministries

Part 5 - Mining the Manual

1h 16m

Why Am I a SDA?

1. Does the Truth Really Matter?

35m

Our Desperate Need of the Spirit is Now

04 Praying in the Spirit

53m

Sound Doctrine