Has your church excommunicated someone?

I was in a church that expelled a member, or "churched" him.

Excommunicate? I don't think so...

 

Try asking, "Should your church excommunicate" someone and see how different it should be.
BTW...you are referring to church discipline, right?

 

Not to my knowledge,

Yet there was one case in the church that I grew up in where I did think that should have been the action taken in the case of one lady who had some serious problems with the way that she treated other people that belonged to the church in a threatening manner. The church leadership felt that they could deal with it, yet dealt with it poorly and several families left the church over it. They eventually realised that they could not help her in the way that she needed to be helped and had her sent to a live in programme which she did not follow through with and came back to the church causing more problems before she eventually left of her own descion.

I realise that the leadership were keen to help her, yet they got out of their depth and it was then their fault that those people left. Their action in leaving hurt the whole church which a few years later had a huge split over another issue. I wonder if they had taken the action of excommunication in the first place, even for a stated period of time if it would have been different, and think the answer is probably yes it would have been different.

 

I thought only Catholics did that.

 

Yes, sadly, a member in an adulterous relationship who refused counseling and or reconciliation but chose to continue in his sin!

 

wasblind

I didn't know any church excommunicated anyone except for Catholics. Interesting.

 

Yes, and when you're my size, you automatically become the "bouncer" if they become violent.

 

Yes, although we call it exclusion, not excommunication.

In fact, and unfortunately, we have had to exclude 2 former pastors; one for adultery and one for joining another faith and order.

It does seem like almost all exclusions involve either someone committing adultery or someone joining a different type of church.

It should always be a last resort, but it also must be done on occasion.

What's unfortunate is that some churches would exclude you for walking too close to a bar, and some churches wouldn't exclude you for being a practicing Mormon-polygamist.

Finding the middle ground between too much discipline and no discipline is difficult. We should always try to err, if we're going to err, on the side of mercy and fellowship. Middle ground is hard to find for most people due to emotional, worldly attachments to one another.

 

Our CHurch did once. Adultery again in this case. She left her husband for another guy and then eventually married him.
Neither had been very faithful to church in a while but we felt it best to go through the action anyway to do our duty.

It was sad because they had been the first couple married in our church after our church was started.

 

They have in theory.

 

For flagrant sin, not in the last 50 years, according to our church records. However, we have excluded more than 100 non-resident members in the past year who we haven't seen in years and don't know most of them. We adopted a more charitable euphemism--we "removed them from our rolls."

Another term is "withdraw fellowship."

In the late 1920s, our records show that our church withdrew fellowship from a man for gambling. The gambling that he did was invest in the stock market!

Not long after that, the church "churched" a deacon for dancing--with his wife. Another deacon brought it to the church. The accused said yes he did dance with his wife and he wasn't sorry, so they excluded him. His wife also confesed to dancing with her husband, but she was sorry, whereupon the church voted to forgive her.

How times change.

 

Literally the only way a church could actually "excommunicate" someone is for that church to believe that they are the dispensers of salvation. The RC church believes that salvation comes through the church, whereas evangelicals believe that salvation is a personal act of God in the life of an individual. Biblically, since the church did not give the salvation they cannot remove it. The NT speaks of disciplining one who is in sin, it never tells the church to "excommunicate" them---it is not within the power of the church to do so.

Bro Tony

 

Bro. Tony in his post numbered 1,907 is correct and offers a open slap in the face of those churches that Practice excommunication. Bro. Tony to continue to tell the truth clearly and with boldness
disqualifies you for a membership in my self-righteous church. Therefore you're officially excommunicated from that church.