Archive for July 17th, 2008
Body Politics…
So a few weeks ago I saw someone plugging a book by John Howard Yoder called Body Politics. I say someone, because I have no clue whose blog I saw it on, and I tried to track it down, but let’s be honest… my Google Reader is incredibly full, and I read too many blogs to keep them all straight.
I will tell you that Yoder’s writing is not for the faint of heart, and I have found myself having to read aloud a bunch of times to help myself better comprehend the book, but thus far it has been a good read. The book’s subtitle is Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World, and the book walks through Binding and Loosing, Baptism, Eucharist, Multiplicity of Gifts, and Open Meeting.
Last night I dug into the chapter on Binding and Loosing… and it was good. Really good. Yoder explains that binding and loosing relate to the process of reconciliation laid out in Matthew 18.
It is kind of ironic that I read this when I did since just before I started I was in the midst of a conversation with a dear friend of mine who asked me how I would define church discipline… and what the purpose of it is. I think that in this day and age, with all the scandal and conflict that we have seen in churches of late that the idea of church discipline may have been lost.
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