One of the root problems with the lack of spiritual power and zeal in Baptist churches today is the neglect of discipline. This affects nations as a whole. Across the length and breadth of the land there are unrepentant moral reprobates and heretics on the rolls of Baptist churches; and neglect of discipline is not a problem that is isolated to the Baptists. It is spread across the entire realm of "evangelicalism." In "Church Discipline: The Missing Mark," R. Albert Mohler, Jr., recently observed: "The decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible failure of the contemporary church. No longer concerned with maintaining purity of confession or lifestyle, the contemporary church sees itself as a voluntary association of autonomous members, with minimal moral accountability to God, must less to each other. 'Me present generation of both ministers and church members is virtually without experience of biblical discipline. . . . By the 1960s, only a minority of churches even pretended to practice regulative church discipline. . . . most churches leave moral matters to the domain of the individual conscience" (from chapter 8 of The Compromised Church, edited by John H. Armstrong.). Even among staunch fundamental Baptist churches there is a rapid decline in the practice of church discipline. Most of the big ones simply do not practice discipline, and have not done so for many decades. Even many of the smaller ones are too busy trying to build impressive numbers that they avoid anything that would interfere with the potential for growth.

- David Cloud, Way of Life

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