Church Discipline is the single biggest problem in the Church today. There is nothing more serious that the lack of serious commitment to the keys of the kingdom. Many churches have decent Word and Sacrament. But they fall flat on their face with regard to church discipline. As a result, Christ's name is dragged through the mud, and serious offences are overlooked, or dealt with in an atrocious way. If church discipline does happen, then many people will cry foul, especially if there is hypocrisy involved. This is understandable, but not warranted. If the church officers are so brave as to actually enforce church discipline, then the parishioner should abide by it, and take their lumps, and, most importantly, repent! One thing that countless parishioners forget is that church officers must give an account to God for their actions, especially in how they maintain the purity and peace of the flock. That includes the spiritual well-being of the people in the church. What is usually more difficult to accept, as a parishioner, is that the action of the session is warranted (when it is warranted). Everyone who undergoes church censure thinks that they are innocent, or in some way not deserving of the church censure. This is always the case. However, the fact of the matter is that offending brothers and sisters need that discipline for their spiritual well-being. We should then be encouraging our church officers when they have the guts to enforce spiritual discipline, rather than reproaching them for "being unkind." After all, you wouldn't reproach a doctor for cutting into you to remove a cancerous tumor. That is not unloving, but rather loving in the extreme. If the church council does not love their parishioners, then discipline will not occur. If they do love their parishioners, then discipline will occur. It is that simple. Do we love our parishioners enough to exercise church discipline on them? And then the question is how this should be done. It is a fact that some exercises of discipline are unloving because they have not gone through the proper steps, as laid out in Matthew 18. They might skip a step or two, and then the parishioner is left wondering where this came from. Instead, gentle but firm admonition is the first step, by oneself (unless there is a history of misbehavior before, or if it is a case of a man and a woman who are not married confronting each other; then there should be a witness, one who is impartial and friend to both sides). If that does not work, then bring someone along. If that does not work, then it should be brought before the session. There are steps before excommunication, as well. There is suspension from the Lord's Supper, and maybe even an excommunication that is temporary. Every chance should be given to the offender to repent and come back, since that is the entire and sole purpose of discipline anyway. Only then can it be said that the church did everything possible, and the offender refused to listen.