How is it that we believe a church can be wrong on baptism, wrong on the Lord's Supper, wrong on the gospel itself, and yet imagine she cannot be wrong on church discipline?
When the well-known pastor of a large church announces that the membership has excluded several members by majority vote, the assumption among observers is usually that the action was just. People in other churches are expected to take it at face value. That assumption needs to be tested. A majority vote is not a substitute for a Scriptural process.
The Limits of Church Authority
The local church has real authority, but that authority is not unlimited. Every church is bound by Scripture. The keys the Lord gave were given for use within the bounds He set, not above them. A church that disciplines a member for unscriptural reasons, or by an unscriptural process, has not acted with the Lord's authority. She has acted on her own.
This matters because the practice of church discipline carries weight. When a faithful church puts a member out, that action ought to be recognized as the Lord's own. But when an unfaithful church puts a member out for personal reasons, or under the influence of a pastor who must have his way, that is a different matter altogether. The Lord does not recognize unscriptural baptism. Why would He recognize unscriptural discipline?
The Pattern of Diotrephes
The apostle John ran straight into this problem in his own day. In a single church, a man named Diotrephes had taken control. He refused to receive John or anyone John sent. He spoke against the apostle with wicked words. He would not welcome the brothers, and he put out of the church anyone who would. The text is plain in what it shows. A man can be in office in a church and still use that office sinfully. A vote can carry, and still carry wrongly. The Lord did not vindicate Diotrephes simply because he held the floor.
A Sobering Example from Baptist History
If Diotrephes feels distant, J. R. Graves is closer. The well-known nineteenth-century Baptist editor and preacher was put on trial by the First Baptist Church of Nashville in 1858, in a dispute that was as personal and political as it was doctrinal. Milburn Cockrell, writing in The Life and Times of J. R. Graves, gives the account:
In 1857-62 there occurred what was called "the Grave-Howell controversy." The dispute was between J. R. Graves and Robert Boyte Crawford Howell, and it was personal, doctrinal and denominational. This dispute almost split the Southern Baptist Convention.
Howell had left Nashville in July of 1850, but he returned in July, 1857, for his second pastorate in the city. Two weeks after Howell had returned to Nashville, he introduced a resolution in the Concord Association, calling for a Southern Baptist Sunday school convention in Nashville, October 23, 1875 [sic – 1857], just prior to the Baptist General Association of Tennessee and North Alabama. When it met Dayton presented a constitution for a new organization, the Southern Baptist Sunday School Union to provide and recommend suitable Sunday school books and periodicals. After a heated discussion the organization was approved and the constitution adopted. The officers were: Dayton, president; Graves, recording secretary; and J. E. Sharpe, corresponding secretary – all Landmarkers. Of the seven managers elected two were part owners of Graves, Marks & Co., and some of the others were Landmarkers.
Howell opposed this new union because he was against Landmarkism and a supporter of the Southern Baptist Publication Society, Charleston, South Carolina. He also believed that the union had been started to advance the private interest of Graves's publishing firm.
The Christian Index, Georgia, January 6, 1858, printed a letter from Howell explaining his opposition to the union and its board of managers. In February Graves assailed Howell for this article. Considerable debate followed which resulted in Dayton's resignation from the Bible Board under pressure by anti-Landmarkers headed by Howell. Graves attacked the board and sought to have it abolished without success in 1859.
It was the firm opinion of J. R. Graves that Howell was persecuting him and was determined to ruin him. On September 8, 1858, the church preferred charges against Graves, but they gave him time to think over the matter involved. The trial began October 12, and ended October 18. Graves was charged with gross immorality and unchristian conduct. He spoke at length to the motion that the charges be dropped. About midnight the church voted, 91 to 48, to proceed with the trial, whereupon Graves and twenty-three other members withdrew and declared they were the First Baptist Church, and the majority were no church but a faction. They elected Graves as pastor.
Being warned of legal action if they continued to call themselves the First Baptist Church, they then called themselves the Spring Street Baptist Church.
The First Baptist Church tried J. R. Graves in absentia, found him guilty and excluded him October 18, 1858. It then published its proceedings in a booklet, The Trial of J. R. Graves.
Milburn Cockrell, The Life and Times of J. R. Graves. Source: baptisthistoryhomepage.comThat is church discipline by majority vote. It was reported in the papers. It was published as a booklet. To anyone reading at a distance, the trial had all the marks of due process. The actual result was the exclusion of a brother for reasons that had little to do with the Word of God and much to do with the publishing battles of the day.
It would be one-sided to leave the matter there. Graves was wronged, but Graves was also wrong. When the vote went against him, he and twenty-three other members walked out and declared themselves to be the First Baptist Church. They elected him as pastor on the spot. That was not the answer. A wronged man does not have warrant to walk out in the middle of a meeting and constitute his own faction as the church. The Lord did not put the keys into the hands of an aggrieved minority. Two wrongs do not produce one Scriptural church.
So what is the right course of action when a member has been excluded for unscriptural reasons?
The Path Forward
A similar thing can happen in our day. A church can act outside the bounds of Scripture and call the result discipline by majority vote. When that happens, the wronged member is not without recourse, and the recourse is not to start a faction.
If the offending church will not correct her own action, another church that holds the Bible as her only rule of faith and practice can receive that member by statement. She picks up the keys the first church laid down, and she does so on the same Scriptural authority by which any church receives any member.
The keys are real. They were given to the churches. But look across church history and you will find pastors and congregations who used them to lord over the flock. That posture is forbidden. Peter wrote against it:
No church has been given authority over another church. None has been given authority over Scripture. When a church goes beyond her bounds, the Lord has not bound her error in heaven. Another faithful assembly is free to take in a wronged saint, and we believe she should.
Unscriptural baptism is not recognized by the Lord. Unscriptural discipline should not be either.