Episode 106: A Foundation for Church Discipline

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Small Talk About Tea and the Podcast Introduction

Okay, I'm terrible at small talk, Danny, but I notice you're drinking some green tea.

Yeah, honestly, so I'm a big tea guy. I love tea. Yeah, I love hot tea. I know that that's embarrassing for some to be associated with me for that reason. But the reason why, to be honest, the main reason why I'm drinking it this morning is because I was running late, and it was faster to make tea than it was to make a cup of coffee.

Okay, so growing up, my grandparents live, this was well before I was born. My grandfather was in the Air Force, but they lived in England for a time.

Yeah.

And they got into the habit of tea. And so when I was growing up and we'd go over there, I mean, they weren't, they're not British, they were born in Texas.

They weren't, yeah, they weren't proper about it.

That's right, but we had tea. They made a little tray, and we had tea a lot. And I guarantee you the tea I was drinking was way more unhealthy than what you're drinking because I loaded it down, you know?

Well, see what happened for me in college, I spent a summer in Jordan, in the Middle East. And there's some Egyptians that I was basically, I didn't stay with them, but I was with them every day. And they had tea, they're into tea.

They ate tea every day.

Well, we're

And so I just came back from that summer and was just hooked on it.

Yeah.

Well, I hate small talk on podcasts. You try to go in and then it's all of a sudden, it's like, how long is this banter? So we'll get in.

Yeah.

The Guest's Conversion and Life Story

Welcome to the Real Church Podcast. I am your host, Alan Nelson. I am one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas. And with me today is one of the elders at Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, Danny Thursby, Mr. Tea Man himself.

Danny, you want to take, you want Danny T. Thursby, yeah. You want to take us like, give us a two minute, you know, introduction of who is Danny Thursby.

Yeah, that's great. First off, thanks for having me on. Some people have the goal of being on Joe Rogan. I just want to be on the Real Church Podcast.

2 .0.

Yeah, 2 .0. I was on 1 .0, but I needed to be on 2 .0.

Yeah.

So I can die a happy man now. I'm ready to go. No, but the Lord saved me when I was young. Let me give you the quick version of it. You know, those like hell house ministries or judgment day ministries.

I wasn't saved there, but that's where kind of like my mom and my pastor and stuff started taking me seriously that, hey, this guy actually might, this little kid might actually be converted. Because basically I kept pestering my mom and the pastor about, hey, I've been saved.

I want to be baptized,. I want to be baptized,.

I want to be baptized.

Well, we go to this judgment day ministry, which I wouldn't recommend now. Especially taking a six year old kid.

Sure.

Hey, let's take it through a Christian version of a horror house, basically. But at the end of that, there's this evangelistic pitch, the bow your head, close your eyes type thing. And basically I'm critical of it now because it's emotionalism, but I'm like, hey, I'm going to see if this guy will, you know, hey, I'm saved.

So yeah, I'm going to tell this guy, this evangelist or pastor up here that, yeah, I'm saved, I want to be baptized. And so I walked the aisle or did whatever thing there. And then after that, my mom and pastor was like, okay, yeah, let's baptize him.

And it's not that I grew up a perfect child or didn't struggle with sin, especially my

That's two different people, your mom and your pastor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Two different people, mom and pastor. Yeah, that's a good distinction. Especially when you're kind of in amongst families who like to homeschool and stuff like that, you got to make those sorts of distinctions.

That's right.

Hey, she can be your mom and your teacher, but she can't be your mom and your pastor.

Amen, amen. Well, sorry to cut you off there, that's

No, you're good.

No, that's, no, go ahead.

So grew up in a Christian home. My dad was saved at some point during my childhood. I'm not exactly know when, but he had a dramatic conversion. The whole household changed and it's never been the same since as far as...

My dad was never a bad man, but there was just peace in the home that wasn't there before. I had a great childhood.

Amen.

Grew up in Texas, came to Conway, Arkansas for college at Central Baptist College. That's where I really grew in the word, grew to know the truth, especially over that first semester there, or that, yeah, that first year there at college.

That's when I found Grace Bible Church, second year of college, met my wife. We get married eventually, and yeah, the Lord just never had us leave here. He just provided opportunity for us to stay. I said, hey, I've got a good wife, good job, great, a good church.

What's the reason to leave? And so this is where we've been. And I was ordained as a pastor at Grace Bible Church in 2017. I've got two children, three children, but one is on the way, due in just a few months.

And yeah, really, that's kind of a snapshot on my life and how the Lord's brought me to where he's brought me.

You can't really say everything, like in that short amount of time, but I appreciate you. I was just thinking here that you and I met is actually almost 10 years ago. Now, is in later 2015.

2015, yeah.

And I had had, and now it's 2025. So I had a conference and I asked Pastor Jeff Johnson to preach on the authority of scripture. And he brought Danny Thursby with him. And Danny and I have been friends since and have been through some good things together.

And he's been a help to me. And just, I'm really grateful to have you. And I want to say, just kind of getting into our topic, ease into that. But the last year and a half or so, Danny, I've kind of just been loving Psalm 87.

It's like, not that I didn't read it. I've read it a lot before, but sometimes the Lord just brings scripture to your heart that you didn't understand before. And I'll just read that the first three verses.

I'm gonna ring the King James. His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah.

And I preached that last Sunday and I'll preach it out of the ESV. But there is something sometimes beautifully poetic about the King James.

But

Yeah, yeah, sometimes it adds that little extra punch.

Yeah, yeah. One of the things about that Psalm, and we're not really gonna get into the Psalm itself, but I just kind of use it as a launching point. One of the things about the Psalm is, what is this city?

Of course, in the foreground here, you have Jerusalem. But you understand that God loves Jerusalem not about its geographic location so much as the fact that that's where his people are. And he dwells with his people.

And so we can understand, you're not crazy if you see the church here. This is a pointing us forward to the church. And I just think about those three. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.

And the church is glorious. And of course, the church universal is glorious, but the church universal finds expression on earth in the local visible congregations. So we don't have time to get through.

People are like, well, I don't have to go to church. I am the church. Well, there is a truth, a smattering of truth there that individuals make up the church. Certainly, that's true. I'll say it that way.

But you individually are not the church.

That's right. That's right.

Number one. Number two, as part of the church, as part of the stones in the temple, it is your duty, but also privilege, together with the church. So there's no understanding of church without gathering.

And we understand that that gathering, and here really kind of broach the topic, that gathering is in visible local congregations under qualified leadership in covenantal relationships, formal membership.

And the church then as an assembly has a measure of authority. You wanna mention anything about that?

The Church as the Bride and Temple of Christ

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love where you started with that psalm. And for sure, you can project that into the New Testament or New Covenant. We see the New Testament pick up on the church being the true Israel, the church being a living temple of God, Ephesians 2, like you were referencing, a temple made of living stones, actually, to riff on, just riff on something else you said, a great way that I've found to explain it is when people are like, no, I am the church.

It was like, oh, okay, well, are you also the bride of Christ? You, personally? Are you the bride? Are you the bride of Christ?

Yeah, yeah.

And you can kind of get away with saying, oh, we are the church, or I am the church. Yeah, I am the church. But you can't really get away with saying, oh, I am the bride of Christ. It doesn't sit as well.

That's right.

But Keech also, Benjamin Keech wrote a little book. It's in little book form now. I don't know if it was originally a book or a sermon or whatever. But he, it's entitled The Glory of the True Church. Yeah, The Glory of a True Church.

And in D .C.

By Grace Press, shout out.

Yeah, shameless plug by association. Glory of a True Church, Benjamin Keech. And he talks about that. And there is glory in the church because that is where God dwells. That is how God has really chosen to meet with us and in a prominent way, I'm not saying exclusively, I do think that you can worship God in the deer woods or on the golf course or whatever, but not in the way that he has prescribed us to worship him.

And it's not just on Sunday morning attendance or Sunday morning worship, but it's bigger than that. It's broader than that. God has saved us, redeemed us, not to be an individual that loves him and loves others, but as you said, to be part of his church, his bride, his temple made of living stones, his family.

And you've said this so many times. I mean, I've heard your preaching and teaching so many times, but you just can't understand, especially the New Testament, outside of a body of believers that have joined themselves together in a redeemed community that's called church or the assembly, you just can't understand it.

It's like a foreign, it's lifting the New Testament out of its context. And really you could say the same thing out of the Old Testament, but the context is a little bit different. There's a, not that we want to get into this, but there's a external context of a people or lineage of Israel that you've got to understand the Old Testament in that's distinct from the new.

But you've said it so many times that I can't agree anymore that the New Testament comes to us in, it's in, through, and for the church. Even if you look at Christ in his original calling of the disciples, that's him laying the foundation, planting the seeds of the New Testament church.

Amen.

You know, if I may make an application from the Psalm I read, it says, the Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. And he doesn't say he doesn't love the tents of Jacob. He does love Jacob's dwelling.

And so if we make an application, the Lord loves you in your opening the Bible in the morning. He loves that in your prayer. He loves that. That's important. That's actually critical to a Christian life and your family worship and all these things, absolutely critical and God loves it.

But there is something that is particular and special about the people together. I think you have multiple kids. I have multiple kids. I love spending that one-on-one time with my children. It's great and it's important.

And I love it. I wouldn't trade it for anything, but there is something special when all my, now your kids are still kind of young. And so they're usually in the home. My kids are kind of scattered sometimes.

Now they're teenagers, so they're not out of the house, but still got different events. But I love those evenings. I try to cherish those evenings when we're all together. I love those. So we're getting into then the idea of God's, there is something special in particular about the local church.

And one of the things Jesus says in Matthew 18, right? That I've given you the keys of the kingdom. So who has, Danny, the keys to the kingdom?

The Bishop of Rome.

Ah, okay. Now we're gonna end the podcast. Thank you for, you know, yeah. I would make an argument that it's the church. You know, it's not the Presbytery. It's not any kind of ecclesiastical authority above the church because there is none.

It is the church. And so the keys, I'm arguing, is the responsibility of the church is to, and this sounds hard, probably to the evangelical mind and particularly to like, I think sometimes the real, maybe kind of fundamentalist Baptist mind, but it's the church's responsibility to say, you're in, you're out of the kingdom.

Now the church can get that wrong. It's not an infallible thing. We can say people are in who are not in, and we can say people are out who are not out, but maybe flesh that out for a second.

The Authority of the Church and the Keys of the Kingdom

Yeah, of course, I'm joking about the Bishop of Rome. But yeah, there's a sense of authority there. And Christ says it emphatically when he says, oh geez, I'm a bad podcast guest at this point. It just, oh, when he says what you bound on earth is bound in heaven.

Yeah, binding and loosing, yeah, yeah.

The binding and loosing, right? So yeah, there's an authority there. And here's an important distinction that a lot of people don't understand. A lot of people don't understand that the church does have real authority.

Yeah.

And on the subject of they were getting into on church discipline, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but even the pastors of the church can't just dictate and say, hey, this person's disciplined out, but this person's not.

That's right.

It needs to be a whole church. And there's a variety of ways that churches do this, but it needs to be a whole church discipline. It can't just be the pastor of the church or the pastors of the church have decided to do this.

But it needs to be the whole church under the authority of Christ practicing this thing. And as we'll talk more, we'll see how that is indeed glorious. But people neglect to realize that the church does have real authority, that God practices discipline and judgment through the local church.

I mean, the church has kind of woken up to, okay, what is God's role for the state? State government over the past four years, or in my mind, pastors and churches that I know I'm talking to, they've had to dig into that over the past four years and kind of learn a new, yeah, what does the Lord say about state government?

And we've learned that God has a purpose and God does give some authority to the state government to punish the wicked and evildoers and things like that, that the state government's authority is derived from God.

And that's why it matters when they breach that authority, when they go outside that authority, that they're sinning against the very living God. Okay, well, still Christians have a hard time understanding it.

Okay, but God's given authority to the church as well, some authority to church as well, and authority on spiritual matters. And you're right that it's not that the church gets it, whatever the church says it goes.

Like when we've had to discipline people out of our congregation for unrepentant sin, you know, it's even said that, hey, we're not saying that we know, we've looked into the heart of this person and have determined that they are not a believer.

What we're saying is that God has told us to make these sorts of judgments, judge them by their fruit. And so we're saying, hey, they should be treated as an unbeliever, that we can't consider them as a believer because of their unrepentance.

And so we're not giving a eternal declaration, we're giving a practical temporal declaration based upon the word of God. And if they return, then that was the Lord's discipline. And if they don't, then it was pruning.

And the Lord's going to make that final revelation or determination, however you wanna think about it, on the last day, on the day of judgment. In fact, that's really the point and the goal of church.

Here's what we're talking about, I got ahead of myself, but part of the glory of the local church is the authority and discipline of the local church. And why is that glorious? It's because in putting and practicing church discipline on somebody, you're disciplining them, even to the extent of putting them out of the church with a love and motivation that their soul might be saved on the last day.

That's what the scripture says in 1 Corinthians 15, that Paul says, deliver them over to Satan so that their flesh may be destroyed now, but their soul may be saved on the last day. And that's a strong statement.

Yeah, that's a statement that, when I first started learning about this, kind of went against the grain of, it just kind of went against, just went against the grain. It doesn't sound like a good thing, but it's actually a glorious thing.

Why Church Discipline Is Both Necessary and Glorious

Yes, the two camps,.

And we can talk about these camps, I'm sure you've ran into both of them, but two camps I run into when it comes to church discipline, it's very rarely to find the biblically balanced, faithful, long, the two camps are either one, I don't care, I don't know what it is and I don't care about it.

Yeah.

And then the other camp actually does come up some too, and that is, all right, I'm disciplining, I'm looking at everything.

Everything.

I can't leave it alone. I can't do. The love covers a multitude of sins. I've got to latch onto everything. And we want to be balanced. So let me start here, because what you're saying, some of this may be foreign to some people, and these are things that our church has gone through and is growing in.

And so one thing I would say, before you're ready to be a church, and by the way, one of the marks of not a healthy church, okay, I'm just talking about one of the historical marks of a church is that it practices discipline.

That's right.

So this isn't one of those things like, okay, like if you want to be a good church, you need to practice churches. Well, yes, that is true. But it's also, it's even more basic than that. It's just the nature of being a church is that you discipline.

So if you're going to be a good church, yes, you want to discipline, but it's even, it's to the very, it's kind of like saying, you know, Danny, if you want to be healthy, you should breathe, right? Well, yes, you should breathe, Danny, but it's more basic than that.

You're going to breathe if you're going to live. So let's, some of the things that may be foreign, I want to try to help some people, and this may be controversial, it shouldn't be, but the same thing is practice on the front end when you bring people into membership, and particularly we can talk about baptism.

So I don't think, hopefully no one would listen to this podcast and think that if someone comes up, any person that comes up to a pastor or to the church and says, I want to be baptized, surely you don't think that on the spot, they should immediately fill up the baptistry and baptize them on the spot because we don't know who they are.

We, so the church has a responsibility, and again, you're not saying, like you said on the other end, you're not saying you're not a Christian. I mean, you're not saying I can see in your heart and I know that you're not a Christian.

You may be a Christian, but the church has a responsibility to give right judgment. And I was thinking about 1 Corinthians 5 .12, which that is with discipline, because a lot of people bring it back to 7 .1, judge not, judge not, judge not.

And Paul literally says, you're supposed to judge those in the church. And he's not saying like condemnation there. He's talking about, we should give the proper understanding of a person's walk with the Lord.

We are responsible for that. So, I don't know, we could stay the whole podcast in here, but I guess what I'm trying to get at is before you run headlong into, okay, we've got discipline. So Sunday, let's find somebody to discipline them.

Before you get to that point, you need to be a church that practices healthy entrance. And so I'm saying healthy baptism practices, healthy membership practices, formal. I know some churches, I'm sure you do too, Danny, that they do not practice formal membership.

And you're like, what the Lord does? So we should have our membership seat to match here. So I guess I'm just trying to talk about that's on the front end before we get to, and by the way, discipline, I guess I'm kind of getting ahead of myself too.

When we say discipline, we're not always talking about the end result. Like this should be happening regularly among members. I think of scenarios too. Yeah, go ahead.

Formal Church Membership and the Meaning of Baptism

Yeah, two things. Let me speak to that. And then if it's okay, let me just introduce, let me just give some, kind of introduce what discipline is. Yes, at the very least, formal church membership is a necessary inference of the scriptures, right?

With, you know, even from the very, you know, the kind of very beginning of Acts, where you have the day of Pentecost, and after that, 3 ,000 were added to their number daily, or in one day. Okay, well, they were, the inference there is that they were doing something there.

It's like they were keeping track of this. They were not necessarily, you know, publishing numbers like a lot of churches like to do. Hey, we had this many baptisms this Sunday, and stuff like, not as a form of marketing, but they were over, the apostles there were overseeing a people.

It was like, hey, this many number was added to us today. We see that in the administration of, kind of the proto-deacons, and the administration of the food to the Hellenistic widows, that there was an accounting.

Yeah.

There was a, hey, these people have joined us. These people are among, these are our people, and those are not our people.

That's right.

And that's what you're professing when you are being baptized, and when a church is baptizing you, is that this person is being baptized, not just into Christ, and identifying with Christ, but identifying with his people.

Amen.

He's identifying with the baptized, those who have been baptized. And so, at the very least, church membership is a necessary inference of scripture, if not outright prescribed, right? Because there's all sorts of arguments against formal church membership.

And Brother Jeff has used this example in the past, and I really like it, is he's just like, okay, why have formal marriage? Why not just move in with someone, commit yourself to someone, show up at the house every day with the same person?

Why have formal marriage? We don't see that. Where's that prescribed in the Bible? Why have a wedding ceremony? What's the point of that? And that's kind of just an illustration showing it's like, hey, no, when there's a commitment, clearly the scriptures tell us to have both a commitment and a submission to the church, then you automatically have some sort of agreement, or I'll say covenant, some sort of, maybe agreement's not the right word, but some sort of covenant or responsibility.

And as soon as you have that, you have something formal. And so you might as well, just church practice and life, you might as well treat it that way and say, hey, this person is a baptized member, this person is not.

They just showed up one Sunday, they're visiting and checking us out.

Let me just interject.

That seems important to me. That seems important.

Well, I just want to interject, because I'm 100 agreement, but like Psalm, we're in 87, Psalm 87, six. The Lord shall count when he rideth up the people that this man was born there. Well, we could talk about that.

But anyway, the Lord's writing down people. I know you have the poetic language, but then we also, everybody, so you may not have known that verse, but everybody knows of the Lamb's book of life, names written down, as it were.

And so it's like, look, God can just know. He doesn't have to write anything down. Look, I'm arguing with you in the same vein there. It's like, I just don't find a compelling case to argue against formal, written down, this is who's...

Right.

If God's doing it, yeah.

Yeah, and there's been people at our church, though we don't agree with them, and we might get heat of this if somebody listens to this online, there's been some people at our church that we consider members, but they have conviction or conscience issue against formal membership.

But they're communicated to of like, okay, but we're going to treat you as members. So this doesn't mean that, this isn't like, it's not like we led with this, but for the purpose of our discussion, this doesn't mean that somebody can be a member here or even say, hey, I'm not, I don't believe in church membership, but this is my church.

Okay, well, if this is your church, then we're going to treat you as a member, whether you hold to church membership or not, or you believe that's a thing or not. And for the purposes of our conversation here, if somebody is a member among us, even if they don't think so, it's not that that precludes them from something like church discipline.

It's like, oh, well, they don't believe in church membership, so we can't discipline them. No, we've still got to be obedient to the scriptures. And we've got to believe that, hey, this is good for them.

This is necessary for them for their spiritual wellbeing and sanctification. We can't neglect that just because they don't have our same view of church, same view of church membership or even church discipline or things like that.

Now, for the record, this is a vast minority. I can think of two people that have been part of our church over the years that have an issue with formal church discipline.

Formal church membership.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Formal church membership. Well, and formal church discipline for that matter. But yeah.

Well, in the life of the church.

It's not. In the life of the church, yeah. The only point I'm trying to make is, we try to be patient with people and where they're at, convictionally and biblically and doctrinally and their understanding and stuff like that.

But just because you don't believe something that is in the scripture doesn't mean the church doesn't get to practice it.

Yeah, yeah. I was just saying in the life of the church, we have this infallible standard, this sufficient work in the scriptures. But that doesn't mean it details every single scenario. And sometimes things come up.

And that's why the blueprint, the Lord has given us a blueprint for church discipline.

There we go.

But this blueprint is, and the reason this is the Lord is so wise and there's a reason this is so beautiful is because this blueprint is applicable to every situation, any and every situation. If the Lord were to say, okay, if you catch a man lying, here's how you're gonna deal with it.

And that's all he told us. Well, then we say, but what about if he's caught in this situation? You know, but instead in Matthew 18, he's given us that blueprint that applies to every situation. Although, of course, we know from like 1 Corinthians 5, that there are some more extreme cases that skip some of the steps in Matthew 18.

But did you wanna just kind of get like, when we talk about church discipline,.

What do we say?

I know it's on, we're here.

Well, we're almost done.

Podcast.

Yeah, we're, yeah. Yeah, we're almost done.

Okay, we're almost done. Okay, church discipline. What we mean by that, you know, when people talk about that, they're basically talking about a process of correction in a church that is mainly drawn from two essential texts on church discipline.

There's others, but there's two essential ones. Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5. And in Matthew 18, Christ lays down, he frames it as, hey, if somebody has offended, you know, if a brother has offended somebody, let the offended one go to him, okay?

Alone.

But we're not just talking, yes, alone. But we're not just talking about, hey, he, you know, hey, he hurt my feelings. Hey, man, I didn't like the way you really said that.

You wore the wrong color shirt.

Yeah, yeah, we're not talking about those sorts of things here. We're talking about things that, you know, that somebody has sinned against another person in some way. Maybe there's even a major dispute of, you know, a major dispute of, you know, maybe even like some cases, like, hey, somebody's done somebody wrong.

Somebody's maybe stole money or something like that. The reason why I'm bringing that up is what you said earlier, church is like, hey, we're doing church discipline on every little, you know, every little ticky-tack thing.

It's like, hey, we can't let love cover, you know, cover a multitude of sins. You know, this is something that can't be ignored. This is something that, you know, hey, I'm sure, there's plenty of things that happened to me, and I say, look, I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it.

He wasn't intending to offend me, and I never bring it up, right? But these are sins that can't be ignored. These are sins of, I would say, commission, not omission.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, this person doesn't reach out to pray for me like they used to. Let's put them under church discipline. It's like, no, you can't discipline for that. You can't discipline for that, and so we're talking about active sins that shouldn't be ignored here, active offenses that shouldn't be ignored here.

And I'll say this, the first step is like, how far do you get into this before people mess it up? Step one. Right.

Because it's hard.

This is what usually happens I've seen in my life in church. Someone gets offended, and what do they do? They leave.

They leave or they tell other people.

They leave or they gossip about, yeah. They leave or they gossip about it, you know, or they, yeah, and it's not handled, because this is hard, Danny. It's hard, but in our culture, especially Southern culture, it's hard to say, okay, brother so-and-so has offended me.

He's done wrong, and it's hard to go to them, and one-on-one, it's just kind of counter-cultural.