After reading Mark Dever’s Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, there were two that
stuck out to me was the discipleship and growth and Church membership. When
Mark’s had mentioned, “to learn what we most need in our lives, we need to turn
to God himself, hear the word preached expositionally, so that we don’t just hear
selective themes”. [1] This really touched my soul deeply because I am at a four
way stop not knowing if I want to stay at the church that I am at or do I want to
find something else, or do I just sit down and be still. There are times where I am
sitting and listening to the word being preached and I have no idea what the
Pastor is talking about. There is no time to even ask a question of understanding
unless you book a coaching session with the pastor. If you do not have the fee
that is sown into the ministry, then you are basically left out into the wind. So, I
take my notes and research on my own to have a better understanding of what
was spoken in a particular sermon. I feel that there is growth in numbers at where
I attend, but there seems to not be any follow up with the new converts. It is
almost like the new convert is there and then they slowly leave, and you look up
and wonder where a particular person may have left and why. I understand that it
is not the job for the Pastor to do everything, but to delegate it to other leaders.
Maybe it is just me being used to the way my other church was tightly connected
where we can ask questions if we did not understand something. I think if they
have a person or a team that would follow up with new converts to assist them
along the way where they can grow and not feel by themselves, and people would
not leave.
With the church membership, they are promoting to share the streams on social
media platforms and the traditional ways of inviting people to church to have
church growth. This is again amazing, however it falls short of connecting with
new converts so that they won’t walk away. This is my personal experience of
being a member as well as when I was serving on the dream team in the area of
youth ministries.
[1] Dever, Mark. (2013). 9 Marks of a Healthy Church. 3rd ed. Wheaton, IL:
Crossway. 216.
