Church Discipline: But for what Exactly?

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, located in Fort Worth, Texas (where I attended for one semester), recently held a conference entitled “Maintaining the Integrity of a Local Church in a Seeker Sensitive World: The Baptist Perspective on Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Church Discipline." You can read the entire summary here.

Among the scholars present were Drs. Gregory Willis, Mark Dever, Daniel Akin, Stanton Norman, John Hammett, Jason Lee, Emir Caner, and Malcom Yarnell. I'm sure it would have been an excellent conference to attend.

One of the issues discussed was that of church discipline. The topic of church discipline has become more prevalent over the last few years and more churches are going back to the historical (and biblical) practice of enacting church discipline.

Willis stated, that church discipline "is the canary in a coal mine. When the canary in a coal mine keels over, catastrophe impends. When church discipline is lost, catastrophe impends.”

According to Wills, church discipline among Baptists began to decline in the late-19th century and early-20th century. Willis attributed the decline to the rise of pragmatism, individualism and secularization into modern society and culture. He also stated that the decline in discipline also permitted liberalism to make inroads into many Baptist churches.

While I agree that church discipline is a much needed biblical tool that shows love, accountability, and eccleiastical committment, there does not seem to be much unilateral discussion on what exactly should be "disciplined."

There is a substantial amount of biblical instruction on how to inact discipline. For instance, Jesus words, recorded in the gospel of Matthew 18:

"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." (v.15-17, ESV).

Also, in 1 Corinthians 5 Paul begins to shed some light on what should be disciplined:

"But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler--not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you" (v.11-13, ESV).

In case you are keeping a running tally, that means that any church member who is in unrepented sins of sexual immorality, greed, idolatry, reviling (without doing a word study, I'm not exactly sure of what this is), drunkneness, or cheating (swindling), should be disciplined.

It is no secret that many churches now are discipling their members, the loving and biblical way. My question is - How does one decide on what exactly should be disciplined? How does one decide greed, for instance?

Discipline seems obvious for adultery and drunkennes but the other sins are somewhat vague. If one were to take it extremely literal, I suppose most everyone in the church would undergo some type of discipline! Again, I am for this biblical practice, but how does one practically decide on what exactly to practice it on?