restoration

Disclaimer: I’ve taken on a topic I feel too much but know too little about. So, please let this entry serve as a discussion catalyst to the minds of those who have any insight to share. Thank you for exploring with me as I begin to digest some confusing memories.

It happened when I was little; little enough to run upstairs and tell my mom that the broccoli was boiling over. That day, I knew something was very, very wrong because when I got upstairs…everyone was crying. I started crying too, because I was scared. Over the next week or so, things showed up on our porch. A familiar chair. Those picture frames that had been a gift to another family from church. So many pots and food containers, because Mom was always sending home-cooked food to other church families. But then, I think they all did. I started actually getting worried when we would pass my friends outside, since my family and the whole group lived in the same neighborhood. They were looking away; my friend’s momma told her to look away! I quickly gathered that we weren’t to make eye contact with any of our ‘Family’ as we had called them, and no talking or waving either. I was turning eight the summer my family was shunned.

I’ll admit that I’ve subconsciously blocked out a lot about that summer, and all the years before. As I’ve gotten older and been able to process those memories, they have seemed…unsettling. Before writing this entry, I had stashed these memories and the questions they carry to some dusty corner on a shelf in my mind. Lately, there has been a reason to start probing, to go deeper into why it happened. In my last entry, I wrote about how God patiently sought me, and led me to choose to believe in Jesus. What He has gently helped me acknowledge since is that He is also in His Church, and I am to be there too. It’s not a place, but I think more of a sense of eternal family, and a frame of mind to live life in.

After that first excommunication – definitely the harshest – my family and I visited dozens of other churches over the next fourteen years, and we were excommunicated or asked to leave I think two other times. It’s worth mentioning that as I’ve gotten older, I learned the reasons why, as well as why my family self-excommunicated from some churches too. Usually, and certainly that first summer, it was a matter of my parents’ clashing views of what the Bible intended for church leadership, compared to the kind of church management they had found. I was privileged enough to be raised in a deeply God-fearing, moral Christian home. There was just one main issue; we had all been hurt by churches and I had no desire to know what a real Church was.

For a long time after that summer, I believed that my family and I had to leave the Church Family because we weren’t good enough. Eventually, I realized that I could never be good enough to be part of any church. It didn’t matter much after a while. Recently though, I have received so much of God’s love and direction from the Church, I know I am called to challenge one of my core fears: How will I know if I am worthy of belonging to the Church…and can I lose that again? So the topic of church excommunication probes deeper into my source of security in God than my comfort zone allows. Which means it’s time to dive off that cliff and face what Scripture says about excommunication.

Excommunication is a current issue that carries some heavy implications in the lives of Christians and their families. Accounting for a relatively broad demographic, it would be fair to say that many Christians are seeking a group of believers who they can build some form of community or permanent connection with. This is my goal, and as a college student, I have never felt more keenly the need to be grounded in a church. A campus churchlife has helped me come out of the world, serving as a sanctuary for believers and a way of life to draw unbelievers into the kingdom of God. Churchlife is a blessing, but it can be taken away.

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”   Romans 12:2

For the purpose of this essay, I will use a broader definition of excommunication as related to the Christian church: excommunication can be defined as officially excluding a confirmed, believing member from any or all participation within the Church.

I have known a handful of other Christians who have experienced some form of excommunication, and most of those I talked with have been expelled for reasons to do with disagreeing with their respective church leaders. Nonetheless, valid reasons for excommunication range from commonplace issues such as a bad temper or breaking doctrinal church codes, to convicted murder. Excommunication practices can look a bit different depending on the church who uses them. The Amish Church traditionally practices full shunning, like the kind that my family experienced, with strict codes and little tolerance for members questioning the church’s authority. Shunning often goes along with the members being banished from the physical community and being publicly, locally shamed. Other churches will avoid excommunication at all cost, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints which will disfellowship a member only for the most serious moral sins or felonies. And there’s a noteworthy range of ways excommunication can be manifested. The majority of cases allow limited contact between members and the excommunicated one, and some expulsions only deny the member from taking part in Communion.

“God alone sits in judgment on those who are outside. Drive out that wicked one from among you.” 1 Corinthians 5:13

The verse above from 1 Corinthians is Scripture that I find challenging. Even leaving room for interpretation, this directness and call to difficult action is one that I believe has been taken incorrectly plenty of times in Church history. Still, this command to practice some kind of distancing from corrupted members is backed up by other verses in the Bible:

“As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him.” Titus 3:10

“If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed.” 2 Thessalonians 3:14

It’s actually easy to read these verses and others like them as a call to creating purity and unity in the Church. And objectively, that sounds like a good pursuit. Yet if that was the only motivation God intended the Church to have to excommunicate, I believe there would be a missing link. Worse, if the humans who make up the church start to act as if the church’s sanctity is theirs to protect and enforce, I believe it sets up an ambush for the church to become divisive. Jesus explains this much better to a group of earnest purity-seekers in Matthew thirteen, relieving them of the responsibility of separating the pure from the corrupt:

“The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend…”  Matthew 13:38-41

So since we are to trust Jesus and His angels to purify the Church, that has been taken to mean excommunication is irrelevant to modern churches. This would be a more adaptable interpretation, and probably a lot more comfortable. From visiting several churches with different levels of inclusivity, a talk with one of my former pastors, as well as some simple research…It seems to be a growing trend not to excommunicate members at all, save extreme examples. Excommunication, when it’s not self-initiated, is commonly viewed to be too harsh, and so it seems to be much less common today than it was in the 1850s. But with some of Jesus’ poignant commands in the gospel of Matthew as well as through the letters of Paul, we must consider this topic as more than history or just a disturbing tradition of a few sects.

“And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.” Matthew 18:17

So if we can conclude that the Bible does call for some type of excommunication, I’d argue that instead of discussing how a church could do this, it’s higher priority to understand why and when God calls the church to consider excommunication. We can see a glimpse of this in how the sections of Scripture mentioned so far have explained a common process: speaking to the offender twice before trying and expelling them before the Church. It centers on God’s system of justice. So, grounds for excommunication need to be based in a fear of God rather than a fear of man, or even a fear of the church. It’s for the sake of the ones being excommunicated, rather than primarily for the sake of the church they are being excommunicated from.

“This punishment which was inflicted by the majority is sufficient for such a man, so that, on the contrary, you ought rather to forgive and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with too much sorrow. Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love to him.” 2 Corinthians 2:6-8

This view of excommunication is like the Church’s rehabilitation process for sin-addicted Christians. The end-goal is restoration, and to save as many of the stalks of wheat as possible. But whether separated, or growing together, there is something beautiful, something hopeful to remember from these passages: no one is forgotten by the Church, and no one is overlooked by God.

I am learning to trust that God sees me. Where I used to consciously avoid vulnerability with saints for fear they would ostracize me, I am blooming open a tiny bit more every day to let in the sunlight…and the rain. You know what I have noticed? God’s sunlight is warm and healing, and gentle like His rain.