Links: 0. Canrc Church Order, 1. Canrc CO Lexicon, C.O 68
Created: 2025-03-14 10:13

Admonish, fraternally admonish, admonition

Admonition refers to an act of verbally reproving anyone who is teaching falsely or living badly. The Scriptures are useful for this (2 Tim 3:16). Ministers and elders are expected, as needed, to admonish members assembled for worship or instruction, as well as families assembled for home visits (27). Any office bearer— whether present or not—who has scorned the admonition of an assembly that is minor or less broad to the one that is occurring shall be censured at the close of that major or broader assembly (44). Private admonitions and admonitions in the presence of two or three witnesses must precede consistory involvement in any matter of purported sin, unless the sin is public in character (67). Suspension from the Lord’s Supper by the consistory may only occur after the consistory has given admonitions and these are rejected, unless the sin is public in character (68). Public announcements of unrepentant sin are intended to solicit the engagement of the congregation in admonitions toward the sinner (68). Refusal of an office bearer to hee. d the admonitions of the consistory with the deacons will result in suspension from office (71). Article 46 assigns to the church visitors—two ministers appointed by the classis, visiting each church’s consistory with the deacons in the classis—the duty to, “in good time fraternally admonish those who are found negligent in any thing.” In Reformed church polity, the word “fraternal” is very important, for “no office bearer shall lord it over another office bearer” (74). Although the church visitors must be ministers, as article 46 stipulates, the two ministers do not speak to the office bearers of a local church out of the authority of their office, since they have no authority in a church other than their own. Rather, they speak as fellow office bearers and brothers in Christ who seek to help fellow office bearers and brothers in Christ, and they do so because the churches themselves have asked them to do so, including the church and office bearers to whom they may direct their admonition. That said, although the word “fraternal” is important, the word “admonish” is more important, because that is the actual activity that is expected of them, if needed. Deviations creep in too easily to overlook this duty.

References

1. Church Order Handbook, 121.