Protestant churches in the United States rarely reprimand their members for misconduct as a survey indicates that more than half of pastors say they don’t know of an instance in which their church has disciplined a member.
LifeWay Research unveiled a new poll Thursday in which over 1,000 Protestant senior pastors, ministers and priests were interviewed about their church’s handling of formal discipline. The responses were weighed by region to reflect population. The sampling size includes a 3.2-percentage-point margin of error.
When asked over the phone when the last time their church formally disciplined a member, 55 percent of pastors said that “a member has not been formally disciplined since I came as pastor nor prior as far as I know.”
Only 3 percent of pastors said that discipline was issued within the last month and 5 percent said that their churches disciplined members within the last six months. Meanwhile, 8 percent of pastors said their churches had disciplined members in the last year and 5 percent said that members had been punished in the last two years.
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