Why is Church discipline rarely practiced?

• Is it because there is a general fear of conflict in our society and so the belief that “ignorance is bliss” prevails?
• Is it because of legal fears?
• Is it because we are so entrenched in individualism that the idea that the community would have anything, or any right, to speak into someone’s life is seen as absurd?
• Is it because we are unaware of when and how to do it biblically?
• Is it because we are afraid that if we speak into someone else’s life, they might look and speak into ours?

I am not sure of the full answer but think that all of these sub-questions are part of the reason. Whatever the direct cause, the sheer lack of its occurrence is symptomatic of something greater in our often misunderstood and dysfunctional concept of community. I am not proposing that Church discipline should be a flippant occurrence, but its dramatic silence in our contemporary Church deafeningly communicates something.

I’ll end this post with a quote from the classic, The Reformed Pastor, by Richard Baxter written in the seventeenth century. Baxter was convinced that pastors should…

…set themselves, without delay, and unanimously so, to practice Church Discipline. For it is a sad situation that so great a duty is so often neglected.