Practicing Christian Leadership, Mentor's Guide, MG11

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P R A C T I C I N G C H R I S T I A N L E A D E R S H I P

Effective Church Discipline Exhorting, Rebuking, and Restoring

Welcome to the Mentor’s Guide for Lesson 3, Effective Church Discipline: Exhorting, Rebuking, and Restoring . This lesson concentrates on the role of the Christian leader to both exhort and encourage believers in the body of Christ to remain faithful to Christ. The inability to identify the kinds of input that a believer needs, and then to provide them with the appropriate care is a great problem in much small group, pastoral, and one-on-one ministry today. Undergirding all attempts to care for believers is the assumption that we have understood precisely what they require, and that we have provided for that need in the right measure, at the right time, and with the appropriate emphasis called for. This lesson introduces us to the very real possibilities that Christian leaders, especially those who are equipping disciples among the urban poor, will encounter those who need encouragement, and at times, exhortation and even rebuke. It will be important for you to help your students in this lesson understand that one’s temperament and style are only of marginal importance in this expression of Christian leadership. Whether they are introverted or outgoing, whether they prefer an indirect approach or more confrontational style, the biblical injunction of exhortation and discipline stands clear and important. As you explore these concepts you must help your students to understand the scriptural grounds for these demands. In a day when privacy and individualism are at all time peak levels in society and the Church, it will be tempting to overlook this part of Christian leadership, or delegate it to those who do not mind engaging in conflict for the sake of growth. After all, not all of us were born with a staff sergeant’s personality, and the Christian Church is not the personal boot camp of an aggressive, buttinsky kind of spiritual leader. What will become plain as you look at the texts, however, is that the contour of authentic Christian leadership involves the pole of challenge as well as the pole of affection, the pole of confrontation as well as the pole of encouragement. We will not define this in terms of “balance” since the appropriate response is not a matter of weighing how many encouragements you have given over against how many exhortations. Rather, led by the Spirit of God and sensitive to the people we lead and the situations they face, we provide the appropriate care which matches their spirit of openness, their level of responsiveness, and the facts we are encountering

1 Page 81 Lesson Introduction