doulos,

You stated:
Quote
I guess what the issue is to me, mainly, is that any group of folks could decide that a person needed this done and get it right. I've seen too many churches go awry after justifying their actions with a prayer meeting. That said, I can see that a group acting under prayer, conviction, and having the obvious evidence of a person's sinful activities at hand could do it right.
You seem to have struggled with the necessity of biblically-exercised church discipline based on the potential for its abuse. By similar logic, one could question the scriptural warrant for: getting married (some marriages go awry), having children (some children go awry), baptizing anyone (some baptizees go awry), having elders (some go awry). etc.. No one would argue against these based on potential abuse, because they are clearly commanded and sanctioned by scripture; rather they should all be entered into with, as you said, "prayer, conviction, evidence", and most importantly faith that the Lord knows what is best for his church. So too with church discipline.

Although our church is very small, we have needed to have a handful of full-church discipline hearings over the past 20 years. Your characterization "after justifying their actions with a prayer meeting" is woefully shallow to describe what took place. Rather, it was certain that the parties involved had first met individually, then with several others, to establish everything on the basis of credible witnesses. Of course these primal, essential steps are on-going with the other 99.9% of grievances which are happily resolved at that level, never proceeding to excommunication, and I am certain the urgency to resolve matters is made more pressing due to the possibility of full-church hearings. If needed, the elders heard all witnesses, attemped counseling, with every action documented by letters, over a period of weeks or months. Only when these measures failed would the entire church be called to a hearing, with all documentation read, and a chance for rebuttal or additional testimony by the involved parties. Given the nature of the case, if there seemed to be motion in the direction of repentance, a penultimate warning would be given, with covenant members encouraged to give private counsel before a new hearing would be convened. Only then, after all parties were able to publically answer all charges, and publically refusing to confess wrongdoing and repent of their scandalous ways, and with solemn warnings given to the church to be motivated by desire for restoration, would the church vote for excommunication. It is nowhere near as shallow a procedure as you imply.

In Christ,
Paul S