On How Discipline is Necessary in Everything

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Discipline is necessary in everything. Without discipline, there would not be success, unity, or peace. A world where there is no discipline is a world of chaos and corruption. Relatively, a church without discipline can be listless and unable to operate to the best of its ability. Discipline is essential to everything and especially to churches. In order to better understand the significance of discipline, I have interviewed a clergywoman from my church and will compare her answers to my questions to John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. I asked Naomi Passarelli, an assistant pastor of my church, many question regarding discipline and have decided to center this paper on three of them: Does your church apply discipline when needed? How treacherous must a person's sin be in order for the church to consider intervening? Would you allow a member of your church to live in open public sin?
In response to my first question about the application of discipline in her church, She responded, “Yes we do. But we reserve it for the times when the actions/words of a single member are damaging or dangerous to the larger community or specific members of that community. The discipline is out of concern for the safety of the rest of the congregation, NOT out of a desire to tell individuals how they should live their life. If a singular member is behaving in such a way that it is damaging others directly within the community, there may come a time when that individual will be asked to leave or take a break from the community until the behavior is rectified.” John Calvin is in agreement to this when he writes in Institutes of the Christian Religion, “If no society, nay, no house with even a moderate family, can be kept in a right sta...

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...s members not to shame or humiliate them.
Throughout our readings of John Calvin and my interview with Naomi Passarelli, I have learned a great deal about discipline in the church, how it should be applied, and when it should be applied. Discipline, out of love, is essential to the mission and integrity of the church and its congregation. Without it, the church cannot function properly. It can be hard for the leader and pastors of a church to apply the necessary discipline but it will always be better for the future of people to receive it. As Hebrews 12:11 says, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Works Cited

Calvin, John Institutes of the Christian Religion. PDF
NIV Bible. Large Print ed. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd :, 2007. Print.

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