Session Three: Preventive and Corrective Discipline

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Taught September 27, 2026. Reading: Adams, chapters 2 and 3.

Summary

Adams opens chapter 2 with a two-part definition that is the spine of the whole book. Positively, discipline is everything a school does to promote and maintain the conditions of learning. Negatively, it is everything a school does to root out whatever hinders them. Ask yourself which half you pictured when you signed up for a class on church discipline. Almost everyone pictures the second. Good discipline is unobtrusive, so the remedial side, as Adams puts it, “like the proverbial squeaky wheel, gets all the grease.”

Preventive discipline is the bulk of all discipline, and almost none of it looks like discipline. It is teaching truth in such a way that it promotes godliness, which is the “teaching to observe” of Matthew 28. Where members get a regular diet of Scripture, straying is caught early, by the member himself or informally by others, and formal discipline becomes largely unnecessary. The rule is simple: the more preventive discipline there is, the less corrective discipline there needs to be. The goal is not a church that disciplines well. It is a church that rarely needs to.

That is why Adams warns churches that want to “get tough.” There will be no wholesale change in practice until there is a wholesale change in concept. Restoring only the corrective half, without the teaching half, is what discredited discipline in the first place, and it would get discipline abolished all over again. A church that does not practice discipline is not being gentle with its members. It is withholding from them something that is theirs by right.

Whose job is it? Formally, the officers: Ephesians 4:11-12 gives the leadership to the church to build up the members. Informally, every member: Hebrews 10:24-25 and Colossians 3:16 are addressed to the whole body. It is good order when believers attend the meetings of the body, and good informal discipline when they encourage others to. Our Bylaws (3.2) say the pastor “must instruct the officers and congregation in the use of discipline.” Read that sentence and understand that this class is not an optional enthusiasm of the pastor’s. It is our own constitution being obeyed.

Corrective discipline is simply the other edge of the same sword, the negative half of the definition we opened with, and even in its corrective measures discipline is a privilege: the care of other members, and the care of Christ working through the officers of his church, to bring a straying member back. Chapter 3 gives the map of the five steps. Steps one through three are informal, with no official church action: self-discipline, a private word, one or two others. Steps four and five are formal: the church is told, and, if even that fails, the offender is removed from the midst. Through step four he is treated as a brother. At step five he is treated as an unbeliever. The circle of people involved widens at each step and never widens faster than it has to. Matthew 18:15-17 gives four of these steps; Adams adds self-discipline at the front, because Jesus is addressing a matter already between two brothers.

Two things you can use tomorrow. First, never promise confidentiality absolutely. A promise of silence at step two makes step three impossible, and it is a rash vow, since no vow may put you where obeying God becomes impossible. What you may promise is confidentiality consistent with what the Bible requires, and no Christian can rightly ask you for more. Second, not every case starts at step one. In 1 Corinthians 5 the sin is public and Paul begins at step five. Adams’ rule of thumb is to deal with a problem at the level at which it presents itself, and to involve no one who is not already involved. A refusal to listen, not a clock, is what moves a matter to the next step, and except in cases of divisiveness it is always wise to err on the side of caution.

Key texts: Ephesians 4:11-12; Hebrews 10:24-25; Colossians 3:16; Colossians 2:5; Matthew 18:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5; 1 Corinthians 13:7.

For discussion

• What in our life together already counts as preventive discipline?
• Someone starts a sentence with “promise you will never repeat this.” What do you say?
• Why would restoring only the corrective half of discipline do more harm than good?

Go deeper: Jay E. Adams, Handbook of Church Discipline, chapters 2 and 3. Buy the book