I’m not Don and this isn’t a definitive answer to a curious mind, but I may be able to help, falling back on my lengthy experience and accumulation of wisdom.
In 1956, I attended a Free Evangelical church which, for some reason called itself a Baptist Church. Strange, because it eschewed the position of the Baptist Union of those days. It was a very loving, outgoing fellowship and I learned a lot as a young believer (I was 16 something at the time). Anyway, the day came when I decided to formally become a member. Two elders were assigned to question me about what I believed and how I lived my young(ish) life. I remember the interview as if it was yesterday and I kid you not.
Do you drink? No, I said, assuming they meant alcohol.
Do you smoke? No, I said, quite truthfully.
Do you chase after girls? I knew what they really meant (do you go out with wild women?) so I answered that I did not, despite having quite a few friends of the female gender.
That was it. Interview over. I passed the exam.
About 25 years later I became a member of a vastly different form of church - a Reformed one. Joining required a passing knowledge of the church’s creeds, viz. the Three Forms of Unity, held to be (almost) equivalent to Scripture itself. It didn’t seem to matter whether or not I smoked or drank, presumably because most of those who were already members already did those things anyway.
To be fair, some Reformed churches have rules about who can partake of communion because by having them they can protect non-believers from “eating and drinking damnation unto themselves”. More could be said about this, but I’ll refrain. Ill just leave you with a quote from the Sermon on the Mount.
Matt 7:16 You can detect them by the way they act, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit. You need never confuse grapevines with thorn bushes or figs with thistles. 17 Different kinds of fruit trees can quickly be identified by examining their fruit. 18 A variety that produces delicious fruit never produces an inedible kind. And a tree producing an inedible kind can’t produce what is good. 19 So the trees having the inedible fruit are chopped down and thrown on the fire. 20 Yes, the way to identify a tree or a person is by the kind of fruit produced.
