In this audio message, Lael Weinberger discusses the subject of church discipline and what things pastors should be aware of in regards to the law in America. He explains the different spheres of jurisdiction and what churches need to know and heed to avoid legal situations.

Romans 13:4 (NKJV) - "For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil."

The following message is a presentation of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where we're proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture for church and family life. More information about the NCFIC is available at www.ncfic.org. Is available at www.ncfic.org. But let me start by telling you about the scenario that initially got me interested in the subject of church discipline and started writing on it with my good friend Bob Bernat, who some of you know. And it all grew out of a church discipline proceeding in a church in Texas.

Buddy Westbrook was a licensed professional marriage counselor who became a pastor, was ordained as a pastor of Crossland Community Bible Church outside Dallas. And a couple that he had been counseling as a marriage counselor just before he became a pastor came and joined the church that he was now leading. They had marriage problems, they were in counseling for quite some time, and things seemed to be going well at the outset. After a while though, things took a turn for the worse. Marriage problems continued and grew worse, and the couple separated.

In a counseling session, Mrs. Pendley, the name is public record, talked to Pastor Westbrook and took him aside and said she was having an affair and that there was no point in trying to save the marriage, they would be divorced. Pastor Westbrook told her that this is not biblical grounds for divorce. Obviously told her that this was a sinful relationship And she rejected his admonition. So from this, he then went to the other elders, who then tried to confront Peggy Pendley about what was going on and present scripture to her.

And she rejected all of their admonitions. So as a final step, Pastor Westbrook went to the church and initiated excommunication proceedings. His reference was Matthew 18. My point is not to discuss whether it should have been 1 Corinthians 5 or other passages. But he went to Matthew 18, and this is going to read just a part of the letter which he sent confidentially to the members of Crossland Community Bible Church.

This is an excerpt. He referenced Matthew 18. He said, if one in sin refuses to listen to this group of two or three, and he had referenced the elders who had confronted Peggy, Then, Pastor Westbrook continued, the instructions are to tell it to the church. If the one in sin now listens, the process is complete, and we have won our brother or sister. Notice, however, quote, if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax gatherer, end quote.

As somewhat of an oversimplification, this means to treat the one in sin as an outsider. Through their continuing sin, they forfeit their membership in the church, and the members of the church are to break fellowship with them. So the letter explained the context, an affair, intent to divorce without biblical cause, and said she was involved in a biblically inappropriate relationship and remained unrepentant. The letter concluded with a reminder that this was, quote, a members-only issue not to be shared with those outside the congregation, end quote. So church discipline is never easy.

And if we know anything from the last day and a half. I think we know that. But the real difficulties for Pastor Westbrook were only just beginning, because he soon found out that he was being sued for violating his duties as a licensed professional counselor, his duties of confidentiality. So what I'm going to do today is present four major themes and I'm going to present these as practical legal considerations that will hopefully complement and expand on some of the discussions that we've already had here and there over the last couple of days about legal issues that come up in the context of church discipline. And first section, I'll just quick overview of how you may end up in court.

God forbid that this ever happens, but you should know the different avenues into the courtroom. Second, there will be some good news about the state of the law and protections for churches. Third will be some practical pointers on what you should be doing as a pastor, things that you can do as pastors and elders and church leaders that can minimize your exposure to liability. And finally, I want to tackle the limits of church autonomy and what you need to think about as you have things going on in concurrent jurisdictions, things that are the state's jurisdiction. And so first, just a quick overview, how do you end up in court?

And this I would subdivide, there are ways you can end up in court that are internal to the discipline process. And then there are ways that people end up in court that arise because they didn't go to the state when they were obligated to do so. Internal to the process, the main things that bring pastors into court are lawsuits that allege things like defamation, which is it's a false or defamatory statement which is published to third persons, is understood by those persons as relating to the plaintiff, and it caused damage to the plaintiff's reputation. So There's falsehood in this, and so... But as we know, everyone who's been through church discipline and has had a, you know, come against them and they don't receive it, they often have their own take on this, and so they are going into court saying, this is my story, and this was false accusation against me.

There's a tort in some states. Most states have this called public disclosure of private facts, where it's a highly offensive public disclosure of private facts about the plaintiff. So this is an easy one. They don't even have to say that what you said was false. They just say, I had an expectation of privacy in whatever I was doing.

There's intentional infliction of emotional distress. You, the vindictive pastor, are intentionally inflicting emotional distress on your congregants because, you know, that's what you enjoy doing, obviously. And there are these issues in the Westbrook versus Penley case. Of course, there was the licensed professional counselor aspect of this, which is a unique aspect, but you do have to be aware of if you have licensure in those areas. There can be particular confidentiality duties that arise out of that.

And finally, when discipline involves removing someone from leadership, from a paid leadership position in particular, there are employment law issues that come up with that. Claims for unpaid salary and wages. Are you going to reimburse them for vacation time that a pastor was entitled to, things of that nature. So all of these things can arise directly out of a church discipline proceeding. But then kind of running alongside church discipline proceedings, The other thing to flag is something that has already come up a couple of times, but it's the issue of reporting, and particularly sexual misconduct, assault, or abuse that is a disciplinable offense in the church, also has mandatory reporting requirements by the state.

And I think the churches that have not reported these issues, There are a number of confusions that circulate, which we've already had some really good critiques of the errors in jurisdictional thinking that lead people to think, oh, we should deal with it all within the Church. I would just flag that 1 Corinthians 6, when one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare to go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints, often comes up in this context by, I think, well-meaning believers who say, we wanna deal with this all internally, we wanna have a good testimony before the world. We don't want to be turning in believers to the state. We can handle it here and we can have justice and righteousness advanced and we can do a better job than the state. Attempting line of thought in some ways, but wrong biblically, as we've already heard some explanation, and we'll come back to this briefly later on, but also most definitely wrong legally.

If there's child abuse, pastors are mandatory reporters. If you don't report, you are personally exposed to criminal prosecution. And most legislatures and courts allow child abuse victims to also sue for monetary damages. So this is something that you also need to be aware of, and I think it's self-evident that you don't want to end up in court. And if you do end up in court, you certainly don't want to be found liable.

So that is the bad news. The good news is that this is actually a time in American history when we see lots of bad things happening in the courts, but the legal protection for churches that end up in court is actually right now incredibly strong. In fact, I think some of us have a tendency to look back historically and say, you know, the good old days when Christianity was protected and recognized in the civil sphere, This is actually an era that is stronger than some points 150 years ago, the protections that churches have. There was a time around Second Great Awakening. This could make an interesting historical discussion for some other time.

There were lots of regulations on churches as to how they could run various aspects of their internal governance. There were limits on how much property a church could own. There were requirements that for managing property, churches had to have a board of trustees which would then report to the court in particular states before you could dispose of church property, all sorts of weird and complex things that happened here in the 1830s. But today, in many ways, churches aren't in a better position than they were then. This field of law is known as church autonomy law, and it's a field of law that actually protects churches in the exercise of church governance.

And it's really one of the best examples also that exists in the law of the real meaning of separation of church and state. A phrase that a lot of Christians are a bit uncomfortable with. Separation of church and state has often been associated with separation of God from government, separation of religion from the public square, things of that nature. But the essence of separation of church and state at its best is a Christian idea of jurisdictions. And I'd like to just give a quick run-through, because one of the things that I think is really encouraging about the field of church autonomy law is that the theology and the law in this field actually fit together amazingly well.

This doesn't happen a whole lot, so I think this should be encouraging. We've been talking a lot about the subject of church as a government, which is part of the point of the title Tale of Two Governments, which, when Bob and I co-authored this book, we thought this kind of captures the idea that when these issues come up, churches brought to court, here you're seeing two different governments brought into conflict, and how do you resolve these conflicts? How do you determine what belongs under this government, what belongs under this government? That's really at the heart of what's going on when a church is called into court, arising out of a church discipline issue. And the biblical line of thought, we could just do a really quick review.

The most famous line in scripture, I think, on the jurisdiction of the state is, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, unto God the things which are God's. And the Reformation theology of this verse said there's two sides. One, Christ recognizes that the civil government does have legitimate authority. Calvin explained the necessity of civil jurisdiction in these terms. The amount of it, therefore, is that those who destroy political order are rebellious against God, and therefore, that obedience to princes and magistrates is always joined to the worship and fear of God.

So affirmation of a proper role for the state. But the flip side of this is that Christ's statement also denies the civil ruler his absolute power over citizens. As Calvin wrote, if princes claim any part of the authority of God, we ought to obey them. We ought not to obey them any farther than can be done without offending God." And had to include there are any number of people who I could have quoted here yesterday was John Calvin's birthday so had to include some Calvin. The so state is ordained by God the church is also a government ordained by God, and it has its own sphere of authority.

And this is where you have the sword of the state and the keys of the kingdom as the symbols of these two sides of authority. The bottom line being church and state are both governments. They're both ordained by God. They fulfill unique responsibilities. Neither is superior to the other.

Neither commands the other. Each has its own rightful authority. And for present purposes, what I want to highlight about the state of modern law is that the First Amendment, At its most essential, what I would argue is the core of the First Amendment's protection is to really bring about a church-state relationship that recognizes two jurisdictions both in operation at the same time. The First Amendment, as many of you know, talks about it prohibits Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. So establishment of religion and free exercise, the courts talk about these as the two clauses of the First Amendment.

And in its original form, the First Amendment did nothing to restrain the framers from making public acknowledgement of God. When the Bill of Rights was approved by Congress, the immediate response was Elias Boudinot, member of Congress, recommended to the president that they declare a day of Thanksgiving, which President Washington did. So that was the response to the Bill of Rights. So certainly no separation of God from government. But that has come.

In recent times, all the establishment clause cases typically deal with claims that a public display of the Ten Commandments violates the Establishment Clause, things of that nature. But the church autonomy cases, they're unique. Because this is the one area the courts say, the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, they actually work together. And what they essentially mean is that, and I'm quoting a court here, the church autonomy has protection and civil courts review of internal church disputes is prohibited when it involves matters of faith, doctrine, church governance, and polity. Which is great.

So that should be very encouraging. The courts have a real respect for internal church governance. Discipline and palliative come under this heading. And the cases, you could separate them out on this issue, where you could see the discipline cases are about the ability of a court to really stick by a decision that it has made. The palliative cases are about the ability of a church to make decisions in the first place without a court telling it how to do so.

But in either case, the courts have protected the churches. The Texas Supreme Court heard the Westbrook versus Penley case, the case that I opened by describing, and their decision on this case was actually really good. I protected Pastor Westbrook. It said, and I quote, the right of a church to be site for itself whom it may admit into fellowship or who shall be expelled or excluded from its fold cannot be questioned by the courts when no civil or property rights are involved. The US Supreme Court in a 1976 case said, when the resolution of disputes cannot be made without extensive inquiry by civil courts into religious law and policy, the First Amendment mandates that civil courts shall not disturb the decisions of the highest ecclesiastical tribunal, but must accept such decisions as binding on them in their application to the religious issues of doctrine or polity before them." This is a longstanding line of cases, going back into the 19th century, that has protected churches in their exercise of church discipline.

The most important case that most of you have probably never heard of, but from the recent years, was 2012, Hosanna Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church versus the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Is this a familiar name to anyone, Hosanna Tabor? This is a case that I would argue is the most important religious liberty case of the last decade that no one's ever heard of. And in that case, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the First Amendment's church autonomy doctrine protects churches from lawsuits. The particular facts of the case are interesting because it was actually right at the borderline of, it's actually pushing towards an expansive church autonomy protection because the facts of the case involved a teacher at a Lutheran school connected with the church and the teacher, it was a messy situation as all these are, the teacher was diagnosed with narcolepsy and took an extended leave of absence from teaching.

The church hired a teacher to fill this place for the year. But This teacher with a diagnosis, she comes back and says, I'm ready to come back and resume my teaching duties. After a leave of absence, she shows up and they say, Sorry, we already hired someone for the rest of the year. We're not really convinced that you can fulfill your teaching responsibilities and we want you, so sorry, you can't just come right back on the job right now." She said that they were, she said, well I want you to make a note that I reported for work they said okay they said but you know you can't like this is this is how we've got to do it and she said I'm going to be asserting my rights. And the church leadership said, when you signed on to this job, you became a minister.

The way the Lutheran church works this, you can have some teachers are classed as ministers if you go through I think it's maybe equivalent of eight college classes of theology training and so she was a minister who had accepted an ordination to teach and they said part of what you agreed to with this is internal church dispute resolution mechanisms. She went to EEOC, filed a complaint for disability discrimination. And the church lost in the trial, lost on appeal the Sixth Circuit. This was in Michigan. And went to the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court 9-0, unanimous Supreme Court, reversed the lower court's decisions and said, requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister or punishing a church for failing to do so intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision. Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selections of those who will personify its beliefs." It's a really good decision. And the bottom line from all this is that the problems, for all the problems the courts have in dealing with religion, this is one area where the law is really, really good for a church. There is very robust protection for churches. Now one thing I should just flag, this what made Hosanna Tabor kind of an outlier case is that this was a teacher at a school.

This is not a church but she's classed as a minister. So for those of you who are also involved with various not-for-profit ministry organizations, one thing just to keep in mind is that you could kind of think of this there are tiers of protection. The church right now is right at the center of protection. If you are a church, protection is really robust. Next concentric circle out are not-for-profit religious parachurch ministries, organizations, humanitarian organizations, things of that nature.

But if you have a religious mission, the Hosanna-Tabor decision suggests that somewhere out, this will extend out to cover you to some extent. The border lines are really fuzzy. This is where the fight is right now, as to what is in, what's out. Christian college, Does it get the benefit of this same church autonomy production? Religious school, there's going to be fights.

The final level out is you're a Christian with a for-profit business, your Hobby Lobby, your Conestoga Wood Company, the cases that were in the Supreme Court over the contraception mandate. And that's where the fight is in really it's a difficult spot but praise God for the central concern of this conference the churches are are at the center of protection So what does this mean that you should do? So let's, we've looked briefly at how you end up in court. We've looked at what's hopefully encouragement that the state of the law is actually really good. But now let's look at what you should do.

Just because the state of the law is good doesn't mean that there isn't anything for you to do. There are limits to church autonomy. If, God forbid, you're ever threatened with a lawsuit, arising out of church discipline, the thing what you need to prove basically is that you're acting in an official capacity with your church, and your actions in the church discipline proceeding are actually part of the religious beliefs and practices of your church. So what does this mean concretely? This is the other thing that should be really encouraging, that the most important things you can do to protect yourself legally are actually things we've already talked about from a theological perspective.

Church government, relevant to the discussion that Marcus and Dan had this morning, whichever form you take, let me just plead with you, don't make it up as you go along. And I assume most of you in this room have a church constitution. If you don't, let me urge you to prepare such a document as soon as possible. And if you do have one, be encouraged that this is not only a wise step from the perspective of membership biblically, scripturally, but this is also a very wise step legally. If you're making things up as you go along you'll end up in dangerous territory.

In some places what passes for a church is nothing more than a group of people meeting with one or more de facto leaders who may counsel or teach. Such casual associations certainly don't meet the biblical definition of a church. Reformers wouldn't have recognized them as a church, and courts are going to have a very hard time recognizing them as a church. So if we're going to embrace the biblical marks of a church, Belgian Confession listed three. Word of God is preached, the sacrament is administered, and the church is subject to biblical church discipline.

If we're going to embrace these marks of a church, we should be able to articulate it, should be in the church constitution, and This will help clarify things to the members of the congregation and to the courts. One thing that you'll want to think about is – Also, if you're operating a religious not-for-profit, parachurch organization, et cetera, you'll want to think about also having a mission statement that functions akin to a constitution. But to put yourself as close as possible to the church autonomy protections. You want a mission statement that makes it very clear that you have a religious mission even in the really dicey cases that you know say your church operates a resale shaft that's employing people who are just out of prison and you're trying to help them back into the community. You take any number of things where you're operating something that's a little bit outside the domain of the church but is part of your ministry operations.

These are things that can be really dicey. But making sure that you have mission statements that really tie, show how this ties to your work for the kingdom of God, This is crucial. So church government, second procedure, closely related but likewise with the procedures even if you figured out exactly is your church elder run, are you connected with the presbytery, et cetera. Once you figure that out, you also do want to think about the issues that are in the Book of Church order. And whether or not you're Presbyterian, I say, take a look at the book of church order because it is very, very helpful.

Because your procedures too should be based on theological reasoning. If you go into court and you've just been making it up as you go along, there's the opportunity that people will look back and say, oh, you're claiming that it was all motivated by your religious beliefs, but you're making this up as an after the fact justification and rationalization for what you did because you had really no plan for when someone violated the basic ethical standards of your congregation and then you just started talking about it to everybody and yeah of course you defamed them whereas if you have expressed in your governing documents that this is what we do that sometimes we're called to go to the church, we're called to take these things before the church, then you can clearly say, look, we have this plan in place, this is part of our beliefs, you're good. One thing that I would caution that I've seen in some church constitutions, you want to be aware of over-promising. I've seen church constitutions that just reference Matthew 18. So then you're stuck if you're in a 1st Corinthians 5 situation, and you're going straight to the congregation.

This is public, this is open notorious sin. But if you end up in court and they say, look, I became a member of the church. The church constitutionally said, Matthew 18, I was entitled to have a private confrontation. I would have repented if I had a private confrontation. And then it would have never been public.

The court, You want to make it easy for the court. The court is going to have a hard time there. They don't want to get involved in that kind of a dispute. But this is going to make it possible for a court to reason this through and say, yeah, you did something that you were not required to do by your faith. You defamed without being required to do this.

So beware of over-promising. Those sorts of things can get you in trouble. And with the range of discussion over the past couple of days, I think everyone here is equipped to be thinking about this, as Dan said, in terms of case law, that these are complicated things. So you want to, so you're walking a fine line as you draft this, just think about it as you look back over your church governance materials and say have I over promised something? Have I seemed to promise confidentiality when I shouldn't have?

Because you don't want those things to come back and bite you. And once a process has started, it's too late to change it for the purposes of that proceeding. One other thing on the subject of procedure in church government, in the world that we live in, you should give extra thought to the issue of marriage, particularly if you have employees as a church. You should think about explicit standards of conduct. For example, no sexual activity outside marriage, biblically defined.

I'll give you a reference at the end of this talk for there's some model language that Alliance Defending Freedom, which is a good not-for-profit legal advocacy organization, does religious liberty stuff, they have model language on their website that you can look at, adapt the details of the biblical reasoning, but you can put this in your statement of beliefs, your constitution, etc. And that can be very valuable. Church membership, we've commented on church government and procedure. Let me just also say church membership, the other most essential thing from the legal perspective as well as everything else that we've been hearing for the last day and a half. If you're faithful to the Lord and seeking to have clear church membership, you are also protecting yourself in a very big way.

And I think pragmatically, this can also be helpful, as I'm sure all of you who have church membership have had the people come into your church and say, why do you have this? And even if they're slow to grasp the full biblical case, I've actually been surprised at the way that this is a commentary, I guess, on American Christianity. They are able to grasp the legal reasons that you need it. And a clear position on church membership, of course, makes it clear what is happening in a church discipline action, who is accountable, so that both congregants and leadership know what's going on? And if a church doesn't have membership requirements, how do you excommunicate?

What are they being excommunicated from? And of course, if the issue ends up in court, the courts have really viewed it as very significant that people have voluntarily entered into membership in a church. The courts are then much, much, much more likely to find that church autonomy protections apply to the church. Can churches win a case without formal membership requirements? Yes, it has happened.

But it's not easy, it's messy, And at the very least, having membership can make the difference between summary judgment and a full-blown trial. That's a big difference in terms of time, money, and stress. Membership doesn't have to be complicated from the legal side. It should be a written statement of at least minimal doctrinal adherence, including specifically a voluntary submission to the discipline of the Church. And there's also some model language that ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom, has on their website, which can help in thinking about how exactly you want to phrase this so a court can understand it.

And you can, of course, tweak it for details of the doctrinal concerns. Let me make a final comment on documentation, which runs across all of these issues. You certainly want written constitution, you want written membership commitments. Can you, if you have people just verbally affirm membership vows can you win yeah but you need witnesses and things like that it's it is slightly easier if you have written and signed membership vows as well as any verbal statements. But let me just comment more specifically on in the midst of a church discipline process You want to think carefully about what kinds of documentation you're creating.

Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it isn't. If you talk to someone on the phone, there's no record. If something comes up from that, it's he said, she said. If you put it into writing, though, it could end up on a blog anything you put in writing think of it as public even if it's just for members of your church Write it in such a way that you can say this is not to be shared with someone outside of the congregation. But write it in such a way that if it is, It is explained enough that the person will understand what's really going on.

So think of everything written as public. A final comment, a concern for fairness, that I think this is also in the background of discussions that we've been having all this weekend that as Christians yes we should want to be scrupulously fair, careful about making accusations of taking action, we should do our homework, We should research well what's going on. I think as Marcus was saying, we should think carefully about how we create records of proceedings. It's at the credit of the church to have this concern for fairness. And it also matters to judges.

This hasn't been the make it or break it in any appellate case that I have read. But it does matter to judges if they perceive that this church is proceeding with scrupulous care and concern for fairness. And that kind of subjective impression on a judge actually does matter. So, what you're doing does represent the cause of Christ and of course has all these ancillary benefits from the legal point of view of you know if you're transferring membership You want to think about what you have in the record for someone, and so you went through a church discipline process and you restored them to membership, and then they're moving, and what are you going to be able to send if the other church asks? How did this get resolved?

Things to think about. Well those are the central issues I think with what you should be doing, what you should be thinking about. Oh, one quick comment. As you put things together, church constitution, membership statements, book of church order, if that's a distinct part of your package, You do want to think about how these cross-reference each other. So if someone is taking a membership vow or an expression of membership commitment, how does this commit them?

Some people are subscribing to a confession, some churches the confession is only subscribed to by the elders and deacons if you're an officer and then there's a more minimal statement for members. However you're doing that, you want to make sure you cross-reference these other documents so people know what they're submitting to. So say your church does not require people to subscribe to your confession. Say you have just a much more basic statement of kind of Apostles Creed, orthodoxy, and then submitted to the discipline of the church. You want to make sure that it does cross-reference that when you say discipline of the church, it means that the elders are following a book of order or something like that.

Because it really does help if people are then, Again, God forbid, if you're ever in court, then they say, oh, you did agree to this. And one thing, this is in my notes, but the subject came up, it was a great question earlier about what if someone resigns their membership. This, there was a case that actually turned on this issue where there was a church discipline proceeding, someone and the person being disciplined resigned their membership in the middle of the proceeding and then sued the church because the church did not stop the chastisement. What's wrong with these elders? I don't know.

But the court said that individuals have a First Amendment right to leave a church unless they waive that right explicitly. So that means you should probably think about putting in your statement and again the model language from Alliance Defending Freedom covers this But you want to think about putting an express waiver of the ability to resign membership, which is very legalistic, but at least one court saw this make the difference between a church winning and losing a lawsuit. And it's not going to be the same for all courts. And this disclaimer applies to everything I'm saying. It does vary from state to state in all the details.

But from the general perspective, that is something to think about. OK, final section, the limits of church autonomy. And this is where we get into the concurrent jurisdictions of church and state. Let me just make a quick comment on 1st Corinthians 6, which is the passage that I think often gives the impression to some people that we want to handle everything internal to the church. I'm not going to exposit the passage, but I think, let me just offer a picture that I think gives an image of where this comes in.

If you have two people in your church with neighboring properties, and they're arguing about where the property line goes, you don't want that to turn into something that ends up in the civil court. For the cause of Christ, I would argue that this is where 1 Corinthians 6 comes in. Can't you handle this among the saints? But where 1 Corinthians 6 does not come into play is when there is a crime, and you're exercising church discipline because of a crime, sexual assault, as the example that we keep coming back to, which is really important. 11% of all lawsuits against churches last year related to sexual abuse.

The highest, that's the biggest single group of lawsuits against churches in the United States in the year 2014 were about sexual abuse. So the the crux of the matter I think is sometimes it's a matter for just the church, false doctrinal teaching. The state has no jurisdiction. But some things are the legitimate domain of the state. Sexual abuse is a crime.

It is the jurisdiction of the state. Dealing with something as a matter of church discipline does not resolve it as a matter of state's jurisdiction. I believe that those churches that think otherwise have fundamentally misunderstood the church-state jurisdictional relationship. They've misunderstood the theology of how these jurisdictions relate. I think we've heard that case presented from a couple of different angles over the last day and a half.

I'm not going to repeat that, except my favorite hypothetical that I just wanted to share, especially in light of Jason's comments yesterday about executing at church discipline. But it's my hypothetical electrocution in the church basement. Say the civil government does away with capital punishment, but that you as a Christian, of course there is debate about this, but say you as a Christian are convinced the capital punishment is biblical and the state is required to fulfill capital punishment in a in the case of murder. And so the church sets up an electric chair in the church basement and you go out to find the murderers because you know the state isn't going to do its job. So you'll come there and you'll have a church proceeding and then you, you know, zzz.

So, you have executed the justice of God. No, no, absolutely not. This is definite usurpation of another God-ordained jurisdiction. So, should something have been done? Absolutely.

Who should have done it? The state. And it's not the church's job to go and try to one-up the state in how well we can do justice. So less exotic hypothetical, the more common one, there's an instance of sexual assault in the church. What's the right response?

Initiate church discipline proceedings and report. And you will be fulfilling your biblical duties in regards to the jurisdiction of both church and state. And you'll be fulfilling your duties from the perspective of the state, which will protect you from criminal prosecution on your part and civil lawsuits on your part. And bottom line, not everything you do as a church is exempt from the jurisdiction of civil government. Imagine the inverse of this, another ridiculous hypothetical.

There's a Christian, a member of your church, who has a position in civil government and they claim that you, as church leadership, can say nothing to them about the way they act in their role as an officer of the state. That would also be ridiculous because there is a role for the church, of course, to speak truth, God's truth, even to those in civil government. Otherwise, most of the election sermons and such that Dan Ford shared with us the other day would be pointless. So overlapping jurisdiction, I think that's the key. And this comes up in all sorts of contexts.

So if you're wondering if your church can avoid paying unemployment benefits to someone who is an employee because you have church autonomy protection? No, you don't. That's not something that courts have ever been willing to recognize that a church has conviction against paying unemployment benefits? No, that's ridiculous. Or a church school teacher has tried to unionize.

The church said, we have a church autonomy privilege to not deal with a union. They said, what, really? Church lost. So there are limits to this. And this is why you're protected in fulfilling the things that are actually called for by Scripture and not beyond that.

For more information, because all of this does vary from state to state in all the details, and you should take a look at what is the mandatory reporter policy in your state. It's almost always very easy to find, just put mandatory reporting guidelines and your state into Google and it will come up. So there's no excuse for not taking a look at this. I think what Jeff Pollard said last night about knowing a good lawyer who you could call on is also just very wise advice. And he mentioned the Christian Law Association who have located in Florida.

They've been very helpful to Jeff. The Alliance Defending Freedom has an office that deals with church autonomy issues. So just alliancedefendingfreedom.org. You can look them up, and they won't be your attorney for just everyday things, but they can give you some references. And they have a very good litigation team.

God forbid you ever need them, but they're there. They have a great guidebook. I just have one packet. That's all I could take in my suitcase. So I've got about 10 of these here.

I'll put them on the back table after this. So this has some of the model language that you want in your constitutions. This is a PDF, AllianceDefendingFreedom.org. You can find this. You can find model language for constitution, for employment policies, for a mission statement, for a not-for-profit.

Lots of very helpful, very practical stuff that they have. And they also have some videos by my friend Christiana Holcomb, who is a staff attorney at ADF. And there is some very specific stuff related to current issues with sexual orientation and gender identity lawsuits that are worth thinking through, and that's covered in this guideline and some of the videos that they have online. So definitely take a look at that, alliancedefendingfreedom.org. And there's also a good set of articles that, let me just suggest you browse a little bit on churchlawandtax.com, which is something that Christianity Today puts out, but it has some useful regular updates on things like mandatory reporting laws and things of that nature.

So again, I hope this doesn't seem like just a bunch of overwhelming things that have to be done all at once. I think the key to keep in mind is that actually following the Word of God, the principles that we have learned from the scripture over the last day and a half about membership, about church government, about procedure, these are actually the key things If we're following them thoughtfully and carefully, praise God that that actually is the best thing that we can be doing to also protect ourselves in the civil courts. That's a real blessing to have that kind of lineup, because in many areas that is not the case. So I hope that's encouraging. And as you think about the Westbrook v.

Penley case, the case that I began with out of Dallas, be encouraged as you think about that too. Because the Texas Supreme Court got the issue right. All the steps which the church did following its understanding of Scripture were protected by the court. Religious liberty in this area at least is still very strong, although there are very serious challenges coming up in all sorts of areas, there is still strong, strong protection for the church. And the Westbrook v.

Penley case, the added thing, it's not in the book. Most of what I just described is in this book, which, if you haven't picked it up, ask at the table. But the other thing that I saw one of Pastor Westbrook's attorneys about six months ago and was talking with him about what happened after the case ended and he said when I took the case I'm a Christian but I had not seen church discipline in my own church And I saw this and I thought, boy, what a messy situation. I certainly want to see the religious liberty rights of Pastor Westbrook and this church protected. And I'm taking the case at the Texas Supreme Court and won, praise the Lord, thankful that religious liberty is protected.

But then what happened after the case, you think, oh, what did, you know, this is definitely a church discipline situation that did not succeed in bringing about restoration actually it did because as of today Peggy Penley and her husband are reconciled to each other and to the church. And so the Word of God works and that's what the attorney said. He said, yet again, what I thought was, you know, a pretty obscure set of commands in Scripture it actually works and for the moment at least the courts will also protect it so Hope that's encouraging. Thanks so much. Ncfic.org where you can keep up to date on what is new as well as find articles, videos, audio sermons and much more at no charge.

The ncfic exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for both church and family life. You