Fine Prints: September, 2005

So What About Church Discipline? September 3

The Silent Church and Human-Rights Violations September 10

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dogs and Editors September 17

Rewriting History September 24

So What About Church Discipline?

The foregoing question is a natural response to last week's sermon—in which I told how years ago the Markham Woods Church board voted to recommend full membership for a man who was an admitted alcoholic and heavy smoker, but who believed his life had been miraculously spared just so he could be baptized. (You can order a DVD of the sermon if you missed it.)         

How does a congregation that's so willing to bend the rules relate to church discipline?         

Note this: "The mission of the Markham Woods Church of Seventh-day Adventists is to bring the healing power of Jesus Christ to broken relationships—with God, with family, with others, with the church and with nature." Such a mission is closely aligned with Christ's own: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" (John 3:17).         

Our goal is to restore the fallen, to protect the weak, to model the love of Christ.         

Over the years that I've been at Markham Woods, members—even elders—have made some serious mistakes. No, let's be more blunt: They've committed some grievous sins. Crimes, in fact. I've even had to post bail. So how do we deal with such cases?         

We focus on our mission. We acknowledge the broken relationship and seek to bring Christ's healing power to it.         

We want miscreants to know that we love them, but that we take their misbehavior seriously. Despite our deep care and concern, repercussions for certain actions may last a lifetime. For example, someone guilty of embezzlement isn't going to be made church treasurer. And a convicted child molester will never, never, never, never be invited to work with our children or youth.         

In fact, in the case of convicted child molesters (and we have none attending, to my knowledge), we demand adherence to very specific and very stringent guidelines about what areas of the church the perpetrator can be in, which restroom to use, and who he or she can and can't converse with (ie no children or youth). We also alert a number of people to the identity of the person to ensure that all actions are carefully and continually monitored. And these precautions last for as long as the person attends our congregation.         

All morally inappropriate behavior affects the church's solidarity, image and credibility. (And it isn't even necessary to be truly “guilty." Sometimes the appearance of evil can dramatically undermine a person's effectiveness and bring injury to the congregation.) So on several occasions over the years, I have, after considerable discussion, recommended that an office holder resign for the good of all. Usually I don't even need to recommend it. Sensing that it would be beneficial, the person volunteers to do so.         

I never high-profile such "disciplinary" actions. They're shared on a need-to-know basis. But if anyone complains to me about our church having such a grievous sinner in a position of authority, I say, “Well, actually, he/she has chosen to resign."         

Such an approach may not satisfy those who have a need for seeing sinners punished. But it makes it a lot easier to bring about healing and restoration.         

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor

The Silent Church and Human-Rights Violations

[The following is adapted from a release by constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead, founder and president of The Rutherford Institute, a conservative civil liberties organization that provides free legal services to people whose constitutional and human rights have been threatened or violated. The Seventh-day Adventist Church has at times worked closely with the Rutherford Institute in its pursuit of religious liberty for all.]

There are literally thousands of Bible verses that advocate helping the needy. However, these admonitions have largely fallen on deaf ears in the modern church. Although Christ told the church to care for the less fortunate and to be Good Samaritans, mainline Protestant churches failed to speak out against oppression in the Soviet Union even during the Cold War. Rarely will you hear a sermon on the many breaches of human rights in our world beyond what is being done to Christians in places like the Sudan.

Recently the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) addressed this problem with a critical analysis entitled “Human Rights Advocacy in the Mainline Protestant Churches.” The report focused on the 2000-2003 resolutions of four denominations­the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Methodist Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America­and of resolutions, press releases and articles from the U.S. National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. The findings of the report suggest that modern churches have fallen short in their ability to act on Christ’s words: “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto Me.”

The IRD found 197 criticisms of human-rights violations. Of these, 145 targeted abuses in free countries. This means that only 19 percent of the critiques by these mainline churches focused on countries that are not free. Thirty-seven percent of the criticisms were directed at Israel and 32 percent at the United States, with the remaining 31 percent focused on 20 other countries. The plight of those in China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea went unmentioned.

How can people calling themselves Christians allow their fellow human beings to live under oppression, without basic human rights? The book of Proverbs proclaims, “Open your mouth for the speechless, In the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, And plead the cause of the poor and needy.”

Yet the mainline church has remained silent regarding these injustices.

As theologian Francis Schaeffer once wrote, the church seems to major in being behind. For example, the abuses in Iraq were criticized only after they became a heated topic in American politics.                        Likewise, some churches condemned the atrocities taking place in Sudan only after they became a popular cause for advocates both on the right and the left.

As a New York Times editorial recently pointed out, while “religious conservatives have made their presence felt in so many other parts of the Bush administration, . . . they have been strangely quiet about [the military’s practice of using women soldiers as sexual foils in interrogations of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib detainees.]”

Christians should not wait for issues to become popular in politics before speaking out against injustice­whether it takes place here at home or abroad.

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dogs and Editors

In 1982 I was invited to work as an assistant editor of the Adventist Review. Several months passed between the time the job was negotiated and the actual assumption of responsibilities. During that time, Leonie and I spoke frequently about the impending job change.

Our oldest son, James, four at the time, picked up a new word that he hadn’t heard before: editor. It must have had a nice ring.

Now allow me to provide a bit of background. James had a menagerie of stuffed toy animals with which he played regularly. And his favorite of all was a little dog that he called “Doggie.” It wasn’t uncommon for James to line up his animals and exhort them in much the same way he was probably exhorted at Sabbath School.

One day James had his animals all arranged on the couch. Standing in front of them in an authoritative manner, he solemnly intoned, “Ladies and gentlemen, dogs and editors . . . .”

The rest of what he said has slipped from our memory. It was the “Ladies and gentlemen, dogs and editors” that caught our attention. James had heard a word for which he had no reference point. But it sounded important. So he placed it in what seemed to him an appropriate context. We smile, but the dilemma James faced is one that all humans face—and God, too, for that matter.

The Bible tells us that God is “spirit.” Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a spirit. When I hear the word “God,” I really don’t have a reference point—just as James didn’t have a reference point for the word “editor.” So how can I understand? After all, “spirit” is a rather abstract concept.

That’s where Jesus comes into the picture.

In Jesus, God gave us a picture of what He’s like. Not that God actually looks like a human. Rather, in Jesus we see God’s character, God’s love, God’s concern for humanity. Jesus becomes humanity’s reference point so the concept of God can make sense.

Or let’s put it a slightly different way. The Bible says that Jesus is the “Word.” In our minds are elusive things we call thoughts. What does a thought look like? I’ve never seen one. But when we put a thought into words, it suddenly becomes a whole lot more concrete.

Words are thoughts made tangible. As the Word, Jesus took the abstract concept of God and put it into a form that we could access. He provided a reference point for what divinity is all about.

But Christ took it one step further. He acted out for us what God is like—so even those of us who are highly visual would understand. The Bible says: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came down from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Jesus sought to make it so clear that even little boys who have no idea what an editor looks like will have no question at all about what God is like.

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor

Rewriting History

Do you ever look back at some event in your life and wish you could do it over—differently? I certainly do.

Interestingly, those parts of history that I’d most like to rewrite rarely involve life’s big decisions. Rather, they have to do with human interactions—usually with words spoken that I wish had been left unspoken. And occasionally with words not spoken that should have been.

While musing on this topic the other day, it suddenly struck me that it may be possible to rewrite history a lot more than we assume.

No, I’m not talking about historic revisionism in which we distort the facts of the past by suggesting, for example, that the Holocaust never happened, or that Elvis Presley is still alive and performing nightly karaoke at a nursing home in Missoula, Montana. I’ m talking about something altogether different. Something that lies in the realm of reality. Something that’s achievable, at least with respect to the relatively recent past.

True, events of the past are set. Water that has gone over the dam is indeed over the dam. What has happened has happened. It can’t be made to “unhappen,” if I may coin a term. But while it’s true that we can’t change the events of the past, we can dramatically change the light in which those events are perceived.

Our actions today provide the lens through which the past will be viewed. Our actions today also provide the foundation on which the future will be built. Which suggests to me that our actions today are pretty important.

Most of us go through life leaving a trail of some things done well mixed with a bit of blundering. Sometimes our blundering creates more pain and does more damage than we would have imagined possible. Motive isn’t the sole determiner of how detrimental our actions may be. A lot of hurt has been caused by well-intentioned ignorance.

The big question is: What is our reaction when we know that we’ve inflicted pain on another person? Do we act as if it didn’t happen simply because our faux pas wasn’t based on malice? Or do we set about to relieve the pain, irrespective of how it came about?

Do we readily apologize? Do we acknowledge the pain we’ve caused, however inadvertent it might have been? Where appropriate, do we seek to make restitution? Are we willing to “go the second mile” in accepting more than our fair share of the blame?

I’ve been told that (at least in some situations) a broken bone that heals properly is strongest at the point of the healing. Similarly, some negative human interactions can actually bring about greater respect. Some bad experiences lead to deep and lasting friendships. Some past actions that once evoked hatred and animosity are subsequently viewed as the window through which a bumbler’s true character was able to shine through.

Whether or not our mistakes of yesterday and yesteryear continue to alienate is to a great degree determined by how we choose to live our lives in the present.

And how we live our lives in the present has huge implications concerning what things will look like in the future.

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor