I was 17 years old when I first witnessed an evangelical “excommunication.” It was disturbing, sad, frightening, unnerving — and necessary. Unfortunately, excommunication is often misunderstood, even by Vocabulary.com. The online guide claims that “excommunication is a formal way of describing what happens when someone gets kicked out of his or her church, for good.” It goes on to say:

Excommunication is really a kind of banishment, a punishment that’s handed out by a church when one of its members breaks some important church rule.

No, no and no. Merriam-Webster’s definition is much better. The dictionary discusses the rights of church membership that are affected, but also highlights that it’s “an exclusion from fellowship in a group or community.” That’s more like it. It’s exclusion, but not necessarily permanent.

Yes, We’re All Guilty

It’s an unfortunate reality and a consequence of our humanity that each of us sins. Some are just a little better at sinning with the noticeable stuff. In some cases, certainly not all, this warrants excommunication from the body of believers. In the case at my church, it was temporary. A married woman was in a relationship with another man and, although she cried profusely in front of the church body, she refused to end the relationship. So she was cut off from our body of believers temporarily. Call it grace, call it true repentance, call it church policy but she was allowed back into the church after some time. This after she and her husband divorced and she married the man with whom she’d had an extramarital relationship.

While it may be necessary to bar someone from church fellowship for a time, the goal is always to bring them back to fullness with Christ through true repentance.

For whatever reason, the church felt at that time that she was repentant and eligible to commune with the body once again.

But We Can See You Better

Situations like these get ugly when the sinner is a high-profile Christian leader, as in the case of Tullian Tchividjian, former pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and grandson of “America’s Pastor” Billy Graham. Following his confession to extramarital affairs and subsequent divorce, many  Christian leaders have recently signed a statement saying that Tchividjian has “disqualified” himself “from any form of public vocational ministry.” Tchividjian resigned from Coral Ridge in 2015 and worked for a while at Willow Creek Church near Chicago in a non-ministry post but was fired when it was discovered that he’d had another inappropriate relationship. Tchividjian re-married last month.

While pastors and friends in church leadership continue to plead publicly with Tchividjian to “repent of his wickedness and demonstrate his repentance by submitting himself to the leadership of his church of membership, pursuing forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation with those whom he has sinned against,” Tchividjian told Christianity Today that he is doing just that. “Nothing grieves me more than the fact that people are suffering because of my sins, both in my past as well as in the present,” he stated. “I want to be perfectly clear that I take full responsibility for this.” He went on to say:

Please pray for those who are most deeply affected and please respect their privacy. … God knows how sorry I am for all the damage I’ve caused and the people who have been hurt. Please pray that the good work God has begun will be carried out to completion.

Don’t Be a Stumbling Block

He said he is committed to the “painful and progressive process” of repentance. Yes, it’s painful, but oh-so-necessary, too. That’s because people, particularly those in high-profile positions of Christian leadership, have the capacity to harm the faith of others. My church failed to address the well-known sexual sin of my former fiancée. I struggled with my faith (and relationships) as a direct consequence of that for many years. Others undoubtedly did as well. Jesus knew this — about me and humans in general — and addressed it during a sermon at Capernaum:

Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves (Luke 17:1-3).

Even more so, those in leadership will have to rise to a higher standard and will one day answer for their actions that caused others to fall: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).

Once sin has gained a foothold in someone’s life, the goal is to draw the person back to holiness, not to permanently bar them from church.

Just Good Discipleship

Christianity Today’s Mark Galli wrote an insightful piece on church discipline last month, stating, “We do no one any favors if we ignore or downplay core beliefs.” His November 23 piece covered InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s decision to ask employees who disagreed with their theological commitments on human sexuality to resign. IVCF takes a traditionally orthodox theological stance on the issue of human sexuality. Galli said that this isn’t a “witch hunt,” or “purge,” but simply good discipleship. The church must hold high standards set not by an arbitrary panel of human leaders but by the Leader of the Church, Jesus Christ. It is “crucial to be clear about doctrinal and ethical standards,” said Galli, something that IVCF is doing. To do less than clearly state biblical orthodoxy and hold the Word of God up as the standard would be a tremendous disservice to believers as they live out their faith. Not only because the sinner continues in a pattern of sin and outside of the holy will of God, but also because his or her sin will cause others to stumble in their faith.

With Grace In Mind At All Times

On the other hand, the Church must allow for grace, forgiveness and true repentance. 9Marks.org asserts correctly that “discipline is everything the church does to help its members pursue holiness and fight sin.” Once sin has gained a foothold in someone’s life, the goal is to draw the person back to holiness, not to permanently bar them from church. “Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” (2 Timothy 2:25-26)

While it may be necessary to bar someone from church fellowship for a time, the goal is always to bring them back to fullness with Christ through true repentance. No, it isn’t permanent; no, it isn’t banishment; and no, it isn’t about “some important church rule” that has been broken. It’s allowing the broken person to come to a place of repentance and acceptance of God’s forgiveness, which ideally the Church mirrors in her love for the sinner — just as Tchividjian says he has experienced, as he expressed in a Facebook post:

I could tell you a thousand stories of the ways God has sweetly met me very specifically in my darkest and most despairing moments, of which there have been many. Through many of you, God has met my guilt with his grace, my mess with his mercy, my sin with his salvation.