Topic : Church Discipline
The Erring
Think gently of the erring;
You know not of the power
With which the dark temptation came
In some unguarded hour;
You may not know how earnestly
They struggled, or how well,
Until the hour of weakness came
And sadly thus they fell.
Think gently of the erring;
Oh, do not now forget
However darkly stained by sin,
He is your brother yet;
Heir of the self-same heritage,
Child of the self-same God.
He has but stumbled in the path
Which you in weakness trod.
Speak gently to the erring;
You yet may lead them back,
With holy words and tones of love,
From misery’s thorny track;
Forget not you have sometimes sinned,
And sinful yet may be;
Deal gently with the erring, then,
As God has dealt with thee.
Infidelity
A man on staff with Chuck Swindoll got sexually involved with his secretary. The church chose not to handle it in public, but rather deal with this privately. The next year, 17 marriages of senior leadership people in the church broke up! Paul is clear that when a leader sins, he/she needs to be publicly rebuked so that others will be warned away from the same sin.
Fallen Leaders
Any decision to hire such an individual (guilty of sexual misconduct in the past) should be based on a full consideration of several factors, including the following: (1) the nature and severity of the previous misconduct; (2) the frequency of the previous misconduct; (3) how long ago the misconduct occurred; (4) whether the minister received counseling; (5) the competency and effectiveness of any counseling received; (6) the prognosis of the counselor; (7) the likelihood that the minister will repeat the same type of misconduct now; (8) the possibility of legal liability if a jury concludes, on the basis of all the evidence, that the church was negligent in hiring the minister.
The same considerations apply if a church learns of previous incidents of misconduct after hiring a minister, since a jury might conclude that the church was negligent in retaining the individual.
