The Church of our Lord is my home. From my very birth, I have been reared in a family that loves and appreciates the church of Christ. My father is a Gospel preacher, and has been for almost 30 years. My oldest brother has been preaching full-time for about seven years, my middle brother is currently a youth minister, my mother travels to various congregations teaching ladies’ classes and teenage girls at camps in the Summers. I have been preaching and writing for about 10 years. All of our wives and children are active in the work of the Church. The Lord’s Church is my life. The heroes of my youth were the Gospel preachers who would gather around our dinner table, tell jokes, and stay up late with my parents talking “Jesus” and “the Church” for hours after we three boys had gone to bed. I love the Church, think of her often and fondly, and enjoy nothing more than sitting around with my wife and members of the Church discussing “church” stuff like VBS, potlucks, Bible class, and bringing the lost to Christ.
I say all that to say that I bear absolutely no ill-will toward the Church. I have no axe to grind. No malice or envy of any sort motivates the writing of this book on church discipline and disfellowship. My sole reason for writing this book is because, in my experiences in the Church, disfellowship is one of, if not the, most neglected commands by congregations of the Lord’s Church that are otherwise very solid and obedient. It is high time that we as the members of the church of Christ revisit the command to disfellowship, repent of our neglect, and move forward in our obedience to God’s command to withdraw from those who walk disorderly (2 Thessalonians 3:6), so that their souls may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus (1 Corinthians 5:5).
