Why Matt Chandler Can’t Practice Matthew 18
Guest Post By Janna L. Chan
Dealing With Sin in the Church
15 “If your brother or sister[b] sins,[c] go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’[d] 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
Matthew 18 Fanaticism
Anyone who has been on blogs pertaining to Matt Chandler’s The Village Church’s ongoing scandal pertaining to the Hinckley couple has likely been hit with the following line of reasoning:
You’re a sinner because you’re not following Matthew 18’s guidance saying that no Christian is allowed to publicly criticize another Christian without talking to them first, preferably in person. The attitude of the critic is not generally pleasant. It’s more along the lines of, “heh, heh, I got you. I’m right and you’re just a big fat Christian sinner.”
The comments section of John Pavlovitz’s blog post about the Hinkleys has some lovely examples of what I’m talking about.
There are many problems with this line of reasoning that I intend to address later. However, the primary one right now is logistics.
If Matt Chandler Can’t Give Face Time to His Members, How Can He Justify Talking to Members of the Public
Matt Chandler’s The Village Church reputedly has about 6000 members. 1% of 6000 is 60. Thus if only 1% of Matt Chandler’s Church members want to speak with him about anyone’s sins for 5 minutes, that would take up 5 hours of every single one of Matt Chandler’s days.
And I’m guessing that right now more than 1% of Matt Chandler’s members would like to chat with him personally about what might be perceived as Matthew 18 issues. Clearly, Mr. Chandler can’t practice Matthew 18 within his own Church community because the mega-Church model precludes personally interacting with the people running it.
And if he can’t take care of his own members, how can he be expected to talk with bloggers and other lowly members of the public?
To be continued…
Update: on 5/31/2015 at 3:08 P.M.
I’ve just been informed that The Village Church may have up to 11,000 members. That’s a lot of “sin talk” to be processing, Mr. Chandler.
Good luck, Sir!