How judging killed a discipleship effort in the local church – Holding others accountable, Part 2

Over the years in my church family, people have raised the concern about Jesus’ teaching, “Do not judge” on more than one occasion.  “Who are we to judge one another,” people say. It sounds very spiritual. But I think they are interpreting Jesus incorrectly. 

The first occasion people raised the concern about judging was probably 20 years ago.  Our denomination has a guideline in which local church leadership team are to examine the members of their church before they take communion to see if there is any issue that might prohibit a person from taking communion.  Historically, our denomination has practiced quarterly communion, and 20 years ago, Faith Church was also practicing quarterly communion.  For the past 15 years we have been holding monthly communion.  But even with the less frequent quarterly communion, Faith Church’s leaders were not examining the congregation before every communion. 

So we talked about it.  Should we start?  How would we do this examination?  Bring each person into the office, sit them down, turn a bright light on them, strap on a lie detector machine, and interrogate them?  Set up a confessional booth in the lobby, and require everyone to confess their sins before taking communion? 

Before you start wondering if our denomination’s guideline is bonkers, there is an even longer history to this idea.  Our denomination was started right here in Lancaster County by a tile-maker named Jacob Albright who was from Ephrata.  The small, private Albright College in Reading is named after him.  Albright committed his life to Jesus and joined a Methodist class meeting, and that’s where his story connects to the story I’m telling in this post. 

“Class meeting” is a way the Methodists described house churches, which were essentially small groups.  At the beginning of a typical small group meeting, the class leader would ask the question, “How goes it with your soul?”  Then the people would go around the room and they would divulge the truth about their spiritual lives.  They would confess to one another.  This was an accountability measure. 

But as churches became institutionalized, they got away from small group confession to one another.  Maybe they thought it was too Catholic.  Maybe they thought it was too invasive. Maybe they were concerned it would keep people from interest in their churches. As small group house churches turned into large groups with church buildings, accountability faded away.

At some point, our denomination thought that each local church should the practice of accountability, and that led to the suggestion that each church’s leadership team should examine every person before they take communion.  I distinctly remember being in Faith Church’s Leadership Team meeting where we discussed this idea.  The heart behind the idea is for real discipleship.  God does not want us to have any sin in our lives. It is in our best interest to not have sin in our lives.  So an examination like this would have the intention of love and care and spiritual growth for everyone in the church.  It’s a desire for healthy accountability.

Wonderful, right?  Caring, right?  Loving, right?  Accountability that encourages discipleship, right?

We weren’t going to perform any lie detector interrogations.  We weren’t going to set up a confessional booth.  We weren’t going to have a public discussion requiring everyone to answer “How goes it with your soul?”  What we talked about the idea of getting out the list of everyone in the church, and just going down name by name and having a confidential discussion amongst ourselves to see if anyone had any concerns.  If there was a concern one or two from the leadership Team would privately and confidentially talk with that person.

Awesome idea, right?  The idea went over like a lead balloon.  Why? 

Numerous members of Faith Church’s Leadership Team said that they felt deeply uncomfortable judging another person’s spiritual life.  They mentioned Matthew 7, judge not or you will be judged.  They said that they were sinners too, and they had no right judging others’ spirituality.  With that, the idea died. 

Then years a couple years later the idea came back to life. I’ll tell that story in the next post.

Photo by Small Group Network on Unsplash