Directive & Corrective Discipline

 

Hello everybody, my name is Dean Davis and this is “Multiply,” the podcast that provides a word of encouragement for Village Church Planters.

One of the joys I experience by being a part of One Mission Society’s Village Church Planting ministry is the privilege of sharing the Train and Multiply materials with church planters in Africa and around the world. These booklets are simple, practical and profound.  So let me encourage you to review the Train and Multiply booklets you used in previous terms.  Read over them. Pray about the practical tasks that these books suggest for church planters.  Ask God to use these Bible-based tools to guide you into a stronger and even healthier church planting ministry in 2023.

When I read the Train and Multiply booklet called “Become the Body of Christ,” that is used in Term 4, I am struck by a three sentence paragraph that was simple, practical and profound.  Listen to what I read:

“There are two kinds of discipline: directive and corrective. Directive discipline includes organizing, teaching, and coordinating the whole church. Corrective discipline includes reforming and restoring disorderly and fallen members. If the elders use directive discipline, then there will be little need for corrective discipline.”

When church planters and elders give direction to a church by organizing, teaching, and coaching church members, there will be little need for corrective discipline of disorderly members. Why? Because everyone will know what is expected by God, by church leaders, and by their fellow church members.

Sometimes corrective discipline is needed to help church members reform their bad behavior so they can be restored to full fellowship and ministry activity.  But if you and your leadership team teach clearly from the Word of God and check to make sure your members have understood that Word, they can and will correct their own behavior in the power of the Holy Spirit.  

So it is very important to teach God’s Word with clarity. Our teaching must be simple and applicable to the common experiences of the people we teach.  But sometimes church leaders make big assumptions.  I know a church in which a young member of the worship team had to be put on discipline because he began living with a woman without getting married. Somehow he failed to understand that such behavior is sinful and would exclude him from leading worship.

When his church leaders thought back on what had been explicitly taught in the  church, they realized that no one had taught a lesson about marriage and sexual purity.  They had assumed that everyone knew that sexual relations outside of marriage are sinful.  But the young man seemed surprised when he was informed of this reality! Oh how I wish that directive discipline would have been practiced instead of the corrective discipline that was required.  

Would you take a moment today or tomorrow to make a list of plain teachings of Jesus that need to be taught in your church?  Remember, directive discipline includes organizing, teaching, and coordinating the whole church. Corrective discipline includes reforming and restoring disorderly and fallen members. If church planters and elders use directive discipline, then there will be little need for corrective discipline.”

This has been “Multiply.” And I’m Dean Davis asking, “Who will you share this encouraging word with today?

 

#EncouragementForVillageChurchPlanters #ChurchDiscipline