Church Discipline of Celebrities

[buggy]

I know that in some cases, we have professed evangelicals who are famous people in society - be they politicians, tycoons, MTV celebrities and so on. Sometimes they are caught by the media committing adultery, caught taking drugs, assault and so on.

How is the local church to handle discipline cases for them? This is a very touchy issue before the world - don't do it, the world says "Christians are hypocrites", do it and you get "they lack Christian love".

 

[toddpedlar]

I know that in some cases, we have professed evangelicals who are famous people in society - be they politicians, tycoons, MTV celebrities and so on. Sometimes they are caught by the media committing adultery, caught taking drugs, assault and so on.

How is the local church to handle discipline cases for them? This is a very touchy issue before the world - don't do it, the world says "Christians are hypocrites", do it and you get "they lack Christian love".

The answer is quite clear that the right response is that their celebrity status is irrelevant when it comes to properly dealing with their sins.

I wonder, though, how many people of the type you're talking about actually are members of a local congregation, and aren't just 'me and Jesus' individual believers who don't see the need (or aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary) to be real members of a congregation? If they aren't members of a local church then discipline is a non-issue.

 

[buggy]

Well, there are many people of those type who belong to the mega-churches. Or something like that.

Back in my country quite a few celebrities do. And a few of them do make the headlines. Could be divorce. Could be adultery. Could be talking about premarital sex as though it's okay. And I marvel at why there was little or no mention of church discipline.

 

[toddpedlar]

Well, there are many people of those type who belong to the mega-churches. Or something like that.

Back in my country quite a few celebrities do. And a few of them do make the headlines. Could be divorce. Could be adultery. Could be talking about premarital sex as though it's okay. And I marvel at why there was little or no mention of church discipline.

I'm not sure church discipline outcomes ought to be proclaimed by the news media in any case.... but I suspect strongly that the reason you never hear about discipline cases of the sort you're talking about is that the churches they're members of don't practice discipline in any meaingful way in the first place, celebrity or no celebrity. THAT is the main problem, not whether celebrities are 'getting away with it' because they're celebrities. Many, many, many churches in general (quite honestly I believe it's the overhwelming majority) just don't practice discipline or believe in it at all.

 

[Jack K]

I would guess along with Todd that in many cases discipline just isn't done at all. But if these celebrities were in a church that practiced discipline...

First, not all discipline is public-to-the-whole-church discipline. We start by confronting people privately. Only when they do not respond in repentance do we move on to wider discipline. It would be inappropiate for the church to speak widely about a *repentant* believer's sin just because the person is a celebrity.

Second, discipline is to be undertaken in love and with the aim of returning the wayward believer to fellowship. So I could see a church deciding to handle a celebrity's discipline with an extra measure of privacy because the person's celebrity status makes normal procedures particularly unloving or harmful to reconciliation. This would need to be balanced with the need to protect the good name of Christ's church. But I'd probably lean toward extra privacy for a celebrity case. We don't need to give the outside world fodder for passing judgment on how we handle discipline in the church.

Finally, if a person continued to bring public disrepute to the name of Christ by practicing or advocating sin while still claiming membership in the church, the church must publicly disassociate itself from that person.

Those are my off-the-cuff thoughts. I'm interested in what others think, and in how this might play out differently in the Singapore culture than in America.

 

[MarieP]

I know that in some cases, we have professed evangelicals who are famous people in society - be they politicians, tycoons, MTV celebrities and so on. Sometimes they are caught by the media committing adultery, caught taking drugs, assault and so on.

How is the local church to handle discipline cases for them? This is a very touchy issue before the world - don't do it, the world says "Christians are hypocrites", do it and you get "they lack Christian love".

Gal. 2
6 But from those who seemed to be something—whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God shows personal favoritism to no man—for those who seemed to be something added nothing to me.

And I agree with Jack as to the outside world. Church discipline is based on God's Word and not on celebrity status. But it is the church that disciplines and we need to realize that making it more public than necessary may make repentance harder. What is necessary for the church to maintain her purity and be salt and light in the world?

 

[EricP]

It seems pretty clear that church discipline is meant to be a private affair between church leadership and the disciplined party; it is sad that such cases end up to a degree being tried "in the press"--this has the potential to both hurt the one disciplined, and the church involved. It's unfortunate that church officials often feel they need to make ANY response when a microphone is stuck in their faces--how a church reacts and responds to such things is no one else's business but the parties directly involved. Even the Catholic church's "who can take communion" responses (to those public officials, for example, who directly support abortion, etc) should have been private; and when laid on the plate of public opinion by the officials involved, a generous helping of "no comment" heartily supplied.