Recently I posted my review of What is a Reformed Church by Pastor Malcolm Watts. He has since sent the corrective below.
Hello Richard. Warmest greetings to you from Salisbury! Yesterday someone kindly sent me your sympathetic and supportive review. Thank you very much for it.
If I may, I would like to clarify one small matter…Although I do believe the elders, or rulers, are responsible for the faithful exercise of church discipline, I do also believe that this, particularly the final censure of exclusion, should be administered with the concurrence of the gathered church. As you correctly state, this is required by 1 Corinthians 5:4,5,13 and 2 Corinthians 2:6.
Concerning exclusion, I wrote in the book, “The elders will lead the church to inflict this fearful censure” (p. 104)and then a little later I referred to “the church’s authority to pronounce a person guilty and liable to exclusion” (p. 105).
Our own Church Constitution states: “The Elders shall bring his or her name (i.e. the offender’s name) before the gathered church, in order that there might be exclusion from all the rights and privileges of membership…The church shall then proceed to the act of formal exclusion” (6.9.8). Our church here strictly adheres to this biblical rule.
I am sorry not to have made this clearer in the book and I thought it therefore best to submit this brief e-mail.
The church remembers your visit to us a few years back with great thankfulness to God. The Lord be with you.
Malcolm H. Watts








[...] Here is a correction to my review from the author Pastor Watts. Categories: 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Book Reviews, Current Issues, Ecclesiology, Pastoral Theology, Public Worship [...]