Tuesday, April 23, 2013

CC and the Marks of a Church

One thing I heard repeatedly at seminary is that there is no normative model for church government in the Bible. Maybe there’s some merit to that claim since clearly the NT isn’t a cookbook for how to govern a church. But I think the argument is overstated and there are some clear markers in the NT about what makes up a church.

These have been called the “Marks of the True Church” and there are various lists of those marks. Wikipedia has some of those lists for those who are interested.

One of the common marks is church discipline rightly administered. If you are in a church which doesn’t have church discipline, rightly administered (note I didn’t say perfectly administered) then you are not in a church.

Make your own application, CCites.