Discipline is necessary in everything. Without discipline there would be no success, unity or peace. A world without discipline is a world of chaos and corruption. Relatively, a church without discipline can be apathetic and unable to function to the best of its ability. Discipline is essential to everything and especially to churches. To better understand the importance of discipline, I interviewed a clergy member at my church and will compare her responses to my questions to those of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. I asked Naomi Passarelli, associate pastor at my church, many questions regarding discipline and decided to focus this article on three of them: Does your church enforce discipline when necessary? How dangerous must a person's sin be for the Church to consider intervening? Do you allow a member of your church to live openly in public sin? In response to my first question about enforcing discipline in her church, she responded, “Yes, we do. But we reserve it for times when the actions/words of a single member are harmful or dangerous to the community as a whole or to specific members of that community. Discipline is motivated by concern for the safety of the rest of the congregation, NOT by a desire to tell individuals how they should live their lives. If a member behaves in such a way that harms others directly within the community, there may come a time when that individual will be asked to leave or take a break from the community until such time. that his behavior be corrected. John Calvin agrees with this when he writes in Institutes of the Christian Religion: "If no society, or even no house, even with a moderate family, can be maintained in a right condition... middle of paper. .. ....s not to shame or humiliate them. Through our readings of John Calvin and my interview with Naomi Passarelli, I learned a lot about discipline in the Church, how it should be applied and when it should be applied. . Discipline, through love, is essential to the mission and integrity of the Church and its congregation. Without this, the Church cannot function properly. It may be difficult for the leader and pastors of a church to enforce the necessary discipline, but it will always be better for the people's future to receive it. As Hebrews 12:11 says, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” » Works Cited Calvin, John Institutes of the Christian Religion. Bible PDFNIV. Ed. in large print. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd:, 2007. Print.