Featured Dealing with a particular church problem

The family and child are in sin. If they are members, the elders of the church must follow Matthew 18 and full church discipline must proceed.
God will bless the concern for holiness and obedience. The church never saves anyone so not disciplining in hopes of salvation is bad theology and worse, it is attempting to take what is God's and give it to men. Such an act reveals an even greater problem in the church than this rebellious family. It reveals a church leadership that is not God centered and faithful.
God cannot bless such treason by denying God his authority over the salvation of a human soul.
The failure of leadership will result in a weak and ineffectual local church.

In my opinion.

 

Your opinion is correct.

I won't sit in a church with scared or weak leadership.

The church leadership apparently doesn't trust the Holy Spirit if they fear the consequence of enforcing church discipline and maintaining order.

The aggressive family must be dealt with.

 

Sounds like your biggest problem and issue is weak Church leadership!

 

Church discipline is necessary. But it is a myth in most churches. As "Servant of Lord Jesus" said this sounds like a church elder failure as well. The offended family is in sin, the other family sounds like they are doing what they can to avoid the situation. At this point the elders need to love their neighbors by enacting discipline upon the offending family rather than letting them harass the other family.
The leadership's failure to address the situation at this point makes them complicit in the sinning family's aggression.

 

I agree with Scarlett O, charges should be filed. This could be considered a felonious assault. If this occurred in the presence of church leadership (pastor or youth leader) there may be a mandatory reporting requirement to the police, depending on which state it is in.

No easy answer, but I guarantee you, everyone in the church knows and are waiting to see what happens.

peace to you

 

Scripture is clear on this. The pastors failure to lead may disqualify him. I would say the same for any other leaders. Waiting around for it to just work itself out is not going to happen.

 

I would volunteer to accompany the pastor, not as a participant, but as a witness. This may give him the confidence building he needs.

Should the offended family go to court, then the counsel has two witnesses to call that the church did make some small attempt to resolve the problem.

I would also suggest to the pastor that a follow-up letter be written to both families and posted that all the membership be kept appraised. That will help prevent side taking and gossip problems. No one can embellish what everyone else knows as the truth.

I agree with RevM.

 

We had a similar situation in our Church. My wife was good friends with 2 other women her age at Church. These other two women had a big fight over something, and it was getting nasty, mostly from 1 side.

Our Elders stepped in and told the less mature believer one that she needs to quit needling, drop the subject and that they don't want to hear any more about it as it was starting to split the Church into 2 camps. They told the more mature one that she did all she was biblically required to do in the situation and she just needed to let the other woman be.

It sounds like poor Elder leadership in your example Reynolds. It should have been nipped in the bud, and even now it needs to be smacked down. The Elder needs to do what the Bible states and talk to the main offending family. If that results in them leaving the church then they're not the kind of Christians he should want at his church.

 

Dr. Bob, I love your story of the goodbye kiss on grif.net.
It has been a few years since I last looked in at grief.net.

true story?
Are you the dad?

well told!

 

This is between the families. If they can't keep it out of the assembly, kick them both out.

 

Do the proper steps on the guilty party first before getting to that stage!