A Time to Laugh

February 7th, 2010

Greenville Syndrome — How

If you’re wondering how this Greenville Syndrome works, here’s proof from a recent article, “Discipline for Discipleship,” by Greenville pastor Tony Miller from the Bob Jones University’s publication Today’s Christian Preacher, Winter 2010.

When the word discipline enters your mind, do you also think of the word disciple? These two English words come from the same Latin word: discipulus. Discipline is the process and a disciple is the intended product. Years ago in a church history class, Dr. Edward Panosian explained the threefold purpose of local church discipline. He told the seminarians that the purpose was first to remove leaven from the lump (I Corinthians 5:6-8); second, to restore the sinning brother to fellowship with God first and then to fellowship with the local church (2 Corinthians 2:5-11); and third, to teach other to fear or reverence scriptural standards (I Timothy 5:19-20). The goal of church discipline should be to bring about these three biblical objectives and produce disciples.

Our motives normally determine the manner and method in which we deal with people. In the book of Ephesians, Paul said to keep “speaking the truth in love.” Speaking truth should be done out of a motive of love and in a loving manner. Discipline requires speaking the truth. As a parent may have to discipline his or her child out of love, so the church may have to discipline a member out of love with the goal of helping that member put God first.

Undisciplined individuals are self-indulgent. The list of the fruit of the Spirit ends with ‘temperance’ or self-control. For the believer, the purpose of self-denial (by putting God first) is to become a proper disciple (Matthew 16:24).

Too many Bible-preaching churches are unwilling to obey the Lord in the steps of church discipline. However, church discipline has been ordered by the Lord for our benefit. What are these steps?

Private confrontation of person sin–go alone and, if necessary, repeatedly (Matthew 18:15).

Public confrontation of established sins, especially of church leaders (I Timothy 5:19-20). The sin, if not admitted, must be established by two or three eyewitnesses.

Plural collaboration–two or three witnesses (Matthew 18:16; I Timothy 5:19; 2 Corinthians 13:1).

Public disclosure (within the church) of personal sin if not repented. “Tell it to the church” (Matthew 18:17a).

Public correction (by the church) of personal or public sin if not repented. “Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican” (Matthew 18:17).

Treatment of the unrepentant former church member as unsaved (Matthew 18:17b).

Private association forbidden with unrepentant former church members (I Corinthians 5:9-12).

Personal reconciliation with the disciplined brother if he repents at any stage of the process (Luke 17:1-3; Matthew 18:15; 2 Corinthians 2:5-11).

Public restoration of a publicly repentant former member (2 Corinthians 2).

Progressive restoration of the repentant church member to certain biblical ministries.

The ten steps listed above need some clarification. If the sinner repents at any stage, he should be forgiven. The church should distinguish between fellowship, membership and leadership in restoring one who is forgiven. Forgiveness should be given instantaneously because God restores fellowship with the individual who asks forgiveness. He forgives for Christ’s sake, not because the sinning brother deserves it (Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13).

When a church has removed an unrepentant brother from membership, it usually is better to withhold membership until he cures his wrongdoing (making restitution, telling the truth to those to whom he has lied, reconciling his marriage, gaining victory over drugs, etc.). Leadership positions might never be restored. For example, a Sunday school teacher might return to teaching God’s Word after a sufficient time has lapsed for a credible testimony to be reestablished; but a pastor who becomes sexually involved with a woman other than his wife would always be doubted in biblical preaching and counseling on the family. The majority of a pastor’s counseling time deals with family needs. Therefore, the life of a pastor or a deacon must be blameless in moral issues (“the husband of one wife”) so that family counseling and preaching can be authoritative.

If the sin is private, keep it private if the person is repentant. If the sin is public, then public confession and restoration is necessary. The sin of the incestuous man of I Corinthians 5 was public and not repented; therefore, Paul publicly rebuked and asked for removal of the leaven of this unrepentant brother (v. 7).

When a Christian sins privately against another Christian, the one sinned against is told to “go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone.” The Greek for go implies continuing confrontation if necessary. Ken Sande in his book The Peacemaker says go several times alone to repent. If private confrontation does not work, two or three other church members should go with the offended brother as witnesses.

Public correction is the next step for an unrepentant church member. After repeated confrontations, unrepentant members should be removed from membership. In I Corinthians 6:1-5, Paul points out the importance of having Christians urge matters among themselves.

If the unrepentant member withdraws his membership before the church votes, a church cannot legally proceed with an official vote. However, if a second church requests from the first church a letter of release from membership for the unrepentant one, the leadership of the first church can tell the second church that the individual is not in good standing.

Paul makes it clear that we should not “keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner” (I Corinthians 5:11). Jesus said to treat an unrepentant brother who has trespassed against another Christian as a heathen man and a publican (Matthew 18:17). Obviously, though, a mate or a blood relative should relate naturally to the one who has been disciplined.

Early in one of my church pastorates, a teenage church member who admitted to immorality refused to listen to appeals calling for repentance. With brokenness we voted to remove this one from membership.

It is essential that a church have a clear constitution and that it publish clear information regarding what is required of members. Often, pastors are concerned that they will scare people away if they spell out on the front end what is expected of church members. In fact, the opposite may be true. One Sunday our church leadership asked a person in public sin to ask for forgiveness. That person stood before the church and asked for forgiveness and asserted repentance A visiting Bible student who witnessed the event came and said, “I want to become a member of this church. I have never seen this done where I come from.”

Scriptural church discipline has been ordered by the Lord for our benefit. We cannot please Him by ignoring His instruction. The steps should be followed in order and carried out in love. The desire and prayer of the church must be that the offending brother will respond positively and be restored. “If he shall hear thee, thou has gained they brother” (Matthew 18:15).

Anybody care to discern where the Bible ends and Greenville Syndrome begins? My favorite is paragraph #6.

February 5th, 2010

Greenville Syndrome in Hindsight

If the 20th-century culture wars were as real as we were taught — and how many times did I leave Whirlybirds convinced that the world would collapse before I woke in the morning? — and if Bob Jones University really is the West Point of Christian Fundamentalism, then I think I finally understand this song. A little.

I was so gung-ho to lay down my whole life for a constructed fight for a pristine good and against a clear evil. . . . we all were. And when you’re fighting — especially when that fight is more about resurrecting a “good war” than anything else — it doesn’t even matter who is wrong and who is right. The fight is everything. That’s how complete the training is.

And we lost in Vietnam too.

February 3rd, 2010

Greenville Syndrome

Here are the conditions to make this work:

People who develop Greenville Syndrome often view the authority figure as giving success — vocational, spiritual, social — by simply not destroying it. Thus, the authority figure becomes in control of the person’s success.
A person endures physical or ideological separation from outside people and groups so that only the authority figure’s perspective is available. Leaders routinely keep information from their people — specifically outsider’s views of the leader’s actions. This isolation keeps the person totally dependent on the leader for information.
The authority figure threatens to cut-off the person from his approval, his property (“campus”), or his fellowship. That person judges it safer and easier to align with the authority, endure the difficulties of separation, and obey rather than to disagree and face utter failure.
The person sees the authority figure as showing some degree of affection. A simple positive gesture of attention (“being gracious” or “being nice”) is the cornerstone of Greenville Syndrome; the condition will not develop unless the authority exhibits some affection toward the person. However, people often misinterpret a lack of negative attention as affection and may even develop feelings of appreciation for this perceived benevolence — “He’s always been nice to me.” If the authority figure were purely evil and abusive, a person would respond with hatred. But if the authority figure offers some positive attention — an emailed compliment, a “we really like you here” – a person will submerge the anger s/he feels in response to the threat of failure and desperately concentrate on the authority figure’s “good side” to protect themselves.

January 31st, 2010

More Familiar than Funny

While the difference between mortal and venial sin seems obvious, don’t be fooled. There is more to this than meets the eye. What is really bad and what isn’t? And who decides?

Here is a routine situation that every Catholic of my generation had to deal with: You are at a baseball game at Yankee Stadium on a Friday night in June 1950. Catholics are forbidden to eat meat under penalty of mortal sin. But you want a hot dog. Now, just considering eating meat on Friday is a venial sin; wanting to is another. You have not moved in your seat and you have already sinned twice. What if you actually ate one? Aside from the risk of choking on forbidden food and getting punished right on the spot, have you committed a mortal sin or a venial sin? Well, if you think it’s mortal, it may be mortal; and if you think it’s venial, it still may be mortal. After much thought, you decide it’s venial. You call the hot dog vendor, you take the money out of your pocket, and you buy a hot dog. This is clearly an act of free will. You figure you can go confess your sin to the priest on Saturday night. But wait! Does a venial sin become mortal when you commit it deliberately? That’s a chance you take. What if you’ve forgotten it’s Friday? In that case, eating the hot dog may not be a sin, but forgetting it’s Friday is. What if you remember it’s Friday halfway through the hot dog? Is it a venial sin to finish it? If you throw it away, is wasting food a sin? Within five minutes you have committed enough sins to land you in purgatory for a million years. The safest thing to do is not to take any chances–stay away from Yankee Stadium on Fridays.

The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning

It might be funny if it didn’t sound so familiar.

I’ve taken my own sort of vow of poverty. I’ve participated in endless cumin-dividing discussions about the fine arts (as if “fine” had more to do with its size than character). I’ve “done devotions” with every sort of program, cutesy name, and innovative strategy since early elementary school. I’ve been lured to strive for that “higher life” monastic upper-class known in my world as “full-time Christian service.” I’ve endured endless preaching where justification by faith is just a brusque bro-hug that gets you in the sanctification-by-works club. And we think we’re so different from the “Romish” church?

The crazy-making internal conversation cum tailspin that Manning describes is the life of a fundamentalist. That’s it.

What stuns me is how we do it together.

Just like the Shakers. Really. The Shakers’ individual (tail)spinning and twitching developed over time (due to outside criticism) into a full-fledged communal performance. I look at that picture and imagine how easy it is to get swooped away into the spin. The individual must persist with the dance because well . . . people are watching, and it’d be a bad testimony for . . . the group. You wouldn’t want to be “ungracious.”

I got shoved out of the spin. But I’m not sitting in the crowd watching on the left either. I don’t know yet where I am, but I’m kind of amazed at how many people keep calling me back to the dance. Or back to the prison, as Steve Brown would say.

January 25th, 2010

The Fullers’ Soap

“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.”

Malachi 3:1-4

I’m told I’m wrong about this. But no matter. I’m going to make my case anyway. Even if it is wrong because I can’t stop thinking about it.

I made a phone satchel this week for my new iPhone. I have trouble keeping the phone on me, so as usual I’d solve that problem with one of my two favorite coping methods: knitting.

Knitting as a process itself is pure bliss. But to be practical about it, my favorite construction method is really felting or, rather, fulling. Felting is what you do when you make a whole piece of cloth. Fulling is what you do when you make the garment and then shrink it to size. You knit something in wool about double in every dimension and through alternate hot and cold baths, friction, and soapy water the whole thing shrinks to a completely different looking item.

Felt is one of the oldest known ways to make cloth. They discovered it by some poor schlep sticking raw wool fibers into his shoes to keep his feet warm. By the end of the day, the heat, sweat, and friction had created something more sturdy and resilient than before.

Like with these Stetson hats.

I knit the thing with just a hunch about its future purpose. More instinctive art than exact science, I imagine the approximate proportions and the general design. And just run with it, changing as I go and incorporating mistakes as . . . well, challenges.

I wish I had taken a picture of the purse, post-knitting but pre-fulling. It was pretty ugly. It looked homemade. You could see each stitch and every tucked-in yarn tail. Every flaw was as plain as day. Yet you could see a vision of its final purpose too.

Then into the wash it goes. About 6 times. Friction, soapy water, and heat turns a floppy, gargantuan purse into a tidy little wallet. The stitches disappear. The curling that inevitably happens with a knitted garment is no longer a problem. It’s resilient now — strong and durable. And, in my not-so-humble opinion, it’s much prettier.

You need the soap. The oily soap makes the wool’s fibers slippery enough to “stand up” and the friction makes them connect. When cool and dry, the fibers lock and form the felt.

The NIV translates Malachi’s words as “launderer’s soap.” But the KJV and ESV choose “fullers’ soap.” The latter image is very different than the former. From my vantage point, that Soap is not just cleaning, but strengthening. It’s not only purifying, but also perfecting. The Knitter of our bones and sinews has a end purpose in mind for His creation. We start out floppy and misshapen — a kind of Burkean burlesque. But life’s friction and heat under the Fuller’s watchful eye and, of course, with His Soap make something entirely new.

It’s redemptive.

January 18th, 2010

Shalom

Isaac came home talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. this week. He learned about him in school, of course — the first one in our immediate tribe to hear about him as a fact and not a threat:

See this picture, Mommy? He’s waving hello. And he’s saying, “White people, you be nice to black people. And black people, you be nice to white people.”

That about covers it.

Being the public address nerd that I am, I said, “Let’s watch his speech, Isaac!” And more motivated by the snuggling than the learning, he settled into my lap for a viewing.

“He said Stone Mountain, Georgia! I know where that is. That’s where the presidents heads are carved — George Washington, George Bush, and Abraham Lincoln.”

Oh, so close. So, so close and so very, very far. “You’re thinking of Mount Rushmore. But we’ve been to Stone Mountain, remember? There are presidents carved into stone there, but presidents of the Confederacy.”

“What’s the Confederacy?”

Sigh. . . . Where to begin. I did my best. The differences between the North’s industry and South’s agriculture. The labor-intensity of cotton. And slavery. I hate talking about slavery.

I ended up at Abraham Lincoln’s conclusion that the South’s leaving the Union was no option at all. And the Blue Coats and the Grey Coats.

We listened some more and jumped ahead a hundred years to the Civil Rights Movement. I told him that right here in Greenville, people couldn’t eat lunch in a restaurant simply because they were black. Or drink from the same water fountain or use the same bathroom.

I finally sighed through saying, “And you know what, Isaac? Mommy has just discovered one of the most hateful sources of this racism. Right here in Greenville. That’s Mommy’s job right now — working with God as He makes that crooked path straight.”

While I was stuck in my little Public Speaking 121 lecture, I listened to this greatest speech of the 20th-century again. For the first time in a long time. King’s talking about the same thing I read during Advent. It sounds different now than it did in my previous life.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together:

No wonder King was such a threat. Shalom is a threat. A threat to habits, isolation, pride, greed. And King was just preaching Shalom. No, I think he was singing it.