Full Text for Pastoral Theology and Practice- Volume 64 - Dealing with Lapsed Members (Video)

"PASTORAL THEOLOGY & PRACTICE" PROF. HAROLD SENKBEIL & DR. RICHARD WARNECK CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 1-800-825-7234 * * * * * This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * * * >> NICK: I truly hope I will rarely find myself in a position of having to think about ex communicating someone in my congregation, but I'm absolutely certain I'm going to have to deal with members who are no longer participating in the life and worship of the church. How should a pastor and congregation help lapsed members back to joyful hearing of the word and eager partaking of the sacrament? >> DR. WARNECK: Your question, Nick, is really on target with a challenge to congregations across our land. So many of our fellow Christians are becoming lapsed Christians, if you will, and right in our own midst. And your concern about helping these people back to a faithful use of the means of grace that God has given us and faithful attention to his Word and Sacrament is a very great concern. Properly these persons should be admonished according to Matthew 18. The third commandment bids Christians in the new age as well as the believers under the old covenant to remember the sacred day. And these folks just go week in and week out and forsake the sacred day and the sacred things. And our concern is to their own disfavor, to their own hurt and harm. Okay. Now, the numbers of these persons are so great in many of our congregations that caring for them according to Matthew 18 and following those three steps that we outlined in a previous discussion is almost impossible. In some of our very large congregations, we have as many as 600 of these people who are rarely seen in the worship services and rarely ever come to the Lord's Supper even though years ago they were catechized, they were confirmed and they are, of course, baptized Christians. Some churches deal with this problem this way. They place these persons on an inactive, separate membership list. Some congregations consider these individuals as prospects for their evangelism ministry. That's another approach. Other congregations simply at the end of the year take 100 or so of these inactive Christians and simply drop their names right off the membership list and that's the end of it. Well, is there a better way? I think there is. We sometimes plead that these people, by their absence from worship service and the Lord's table, have essentially excluded themselves. This is not the better way in which I want to lead to, but I want to bring this up because it is something of another approach but it's a little bit different. That approach leaves room for a lot of rationalizations on the part of the frustrated active congregation that seems to be thwarted and inable to deal with this difficulty. And the rationalizations go like this. "well, if these folks are not there, they're simply excluding themselves, and all we have to do is make public recognition of the fact and drop them from the membership list." The question we raise here, Nick, is: Have these persons actually self-excluded? Are they self-excluded? Have they removed themselves? And what have they removed themselves from? Would be our question. And what I'm leading to is to suggest that the congregation should take some special initiatives for and on behalf of this group of inactive Christians that are somewhat out of the ordinary. If we really do care for these people. If they simply don't attend the worship service at the hours of 8:00 and 10:30 on a Sunday morning and they don't commune at those times, certainly they're not there, they are absent, but to confront them and to admonish them and say to them "you're sinning against the third commandment and you're depriving yourself of the good things that God wants to give and the Gospel, please come back." well, they don't come back. They may make some promises but they don't come, they don't show up at the regular times that the church is offering, let the church develop some other opportunities for these persons to respond. This is my point. And what I'm leading around to is the suggestion that every local congregation create a member refresher little class, four or six sessions, let us say, that would be an opportunity for these lapsed Christians to come in, to recover the meaning of their baptism, recover the meaning of church membership and to recover how they really are related to their fellow Christians in this place, to recover the disciplines of using the Scriptures in their daily life, daily devotions and to recover and cherish the preaching of the word and the sacraments. I call this suggestion a member renewal class. I can present it maybe in another way in another format. But I'm giving the contours of it. For instance, if we offer such an opportunity not only on Sunday, but let us say we offer it Thursday evening, we offer it Saturday morning, we offer it Sunday evening, we go out of our way for a four to six-week span of time, maybe three times a year and offer this little class. People can come to it in a nonthreatening environment. Those who lead the class, pastor and others, are very friendly. We provide some refreshments. We make it a joyful, relaxed experience for these folks. The church is really caring for them. That's what we're trying to demonstrate. And we hope that the Holy Spirit, through a little bit of teaching here and a little bit of reteaching, that some re-learning takes place and some recovery takes place. Okay. You know, this kind of a program can take on a life of its own. And once it's repeated, the word gets around and it's a pleasant experience, you see a lot of these people stay away from church, why? Oh, some of them are distracted, by sports, by other activities on the weekend, ah, but a lot of them stay away, we have discovered, because they were offended in some manner. They got their toes stepped on. Got into a conflict with another member of the church. Conflict with a pastor. These kind of things. When you provide an opportunity for the people to come and get beyond those hurt feelings in a comfortable, nonthreatening environment, I tell you, this kind of opportunity has great possibilities. Now, if the inactive Christian does not respond and refuses this initiative that the church takes, special initiative for him, for her and a few others, whoo, then he or she certainly has self-excluded themselves or excluded themselves from the care of the church. Because the church has demonstrably cared for them. And they're keeping out of it and they're staying away. They're resistant to it. Then the church might say well, we're not going to make any judgment about whether the individual's a Christian or not. But the church finally has to say "it's very obvious that this person is not a Christian with us in this place." then they might drop the individual from membership and let them know the same. And the church goes on. But, Nick, I simply wanted to advance the suggestion that the church has to take some special initiatives and reach out to these lapsed Christians with the power of the spirit and the Word of God and giving them that opportunity, may the Lord bless. * * * * * This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * * *