After reading Dever’s book, Marks of a Healthy Church, I had to do some real
reflection where I separated personal feelings and facts.[1] d Who wants to admit
that their church is not the perfect, Bible preaching, God honoring, heart
converting church? I know my church is not perfect, though I do not want to admit
it. d If it were, we would not have changeover of congregants and every person
would be completely satisfied with all that we do and offer. d I do not know if I
would want to be part of that church. d I want to be part of a church that is not
perfect. d I want to be a church that can grow, change, and be willing to accept
criticism while staying true to the Scriptures, our mission, and our values.
d d d d d d d d d d I would say the first part where we need growth according to Dever’s
book is in the realm of expositional teaching. d I struggled with this one as our way
of teaching is expositional with a touch of topical and not vice versa. d We do not
pick topics and meld the Scriptures to fit or relate to the topic like many topical
preachers do.[2] d We meet as a team in November and May and set up series for
the year and build expositional messages that fulfill the series. d Each message is
a passage of Scripture, and we break it down point for point as typical of
expositional teaching.[3] d For example, we are preaching and teaching through our
church’s core values, and currently we are teaching about discipleship. d We have
taken each of the Scripture verses that we built our core values around and are
teaching that verse. d Dever agreed that not all preaching is biblical, and I would
agree.[4] d An area of opportunity for us to improve is to turn more toward exposing
the Word and less commentary. d We spend a lot of time using commentaries and
explaining the verses through commentaries. d We could adjust to focus more on
the hermeneutics or spend more time on the translation of the Word, however, I
would be concerned of losing the focus of the message. d Ultimately, I believe our
growth potential in expanding our expositional teaching is in delivering the
message in a way that commits the Word at the center always.
d d d d d d d d d d The second area that I know we need improvement on is church
discipline. d I was surprised to find out recently that the leadership had “requested”
a member of the church to no longer be part of the worship team due to adultery. d
It was ironic that Dever wrote a section on that type of surprised response.[5] d It
was explained to me that someone living in sin should not be allowed to be
leading worship as worship is celebrating Christ, the same person they are
actively living against. d I do not disagree with their reasoning but was surprised as
I have been part of other churches that have knowingly turned a blind eye to sinful
behavior for the benefit of the church and because they did not want to single
people out. d My current church is not worried about singling a person out as much
as setting the example that living in sin is living without God. d In conversing about
the handling of this situation, it was noted that they did not base their decision on
a biblical stance but a moral stance. d This is where I think we can do better. d
Dever provided several examples of Scripture that addressed church discipline,
noting that Paul called for removal from fellowship those that cannot be directed
away from sin (1 Cor. 5:2-11 paraphrased). d I feel that we need to look at what
biblical church discipline is, and structure our ideals and decisions based on
Scripture, not on group morals. d Jesus Himself noted in Matthew 18 that there is a
prescribed way to handle church discipline, but we do not currently have anything
in writing that states we will follow His model. d I agree with Dever’s statement that
we, as a church, need to live and be accountable for the same rules we preach
and teach.[6] d I also firmly agree that whatever we decide to follow and put in
writing for church discipline, we should not be looking to completely exclude the
person from fellowship based on their sins, but we should also not ignore sin and
give the appearance of complicity. d Dever’s discussion in appendix two, especially
his discussion of introducing church discipline slowly, is great advice in this area of
church leadership.[7]
d d d d d d d d d d The other area that I believe we can grow and improve in is the area of
church leadership. d We are currently working through an issue in our church that
Dever provided insight on. d We have a group of individuals that would like to see
us add women to our elder board, on the basis that we do not specifically say that
woman cannot be elders. d Their argument is that our bylaws and doctrine do not
specifically exclude women. d This is where we can improve. d Our current
leadership and elder board agree that 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 are clear that
elders should be men. d Paul did not arbitrarily choose to state “men” in his writing,
because he also spoke of elders as being husbands (1 Tim. 2). d The group argues
that Jesus allowed women to teach and preach, and therefore gender should no
longer matter. We need to strengthen our doctrine and bylaws to emphasize 1
Timothy and Titus explicitly to their wording as to protect the sanctity of the
Scripture and not allow the Scriptures to be shaped to fit narratives.[8] d As a
church, we need to be better at documenting our stances on areas of ministry,
and eldership is one of those areas.
Bibliography
Dever, Mark E. Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. 3rd ed. 9marks. Nashville, TN:
Crossway / Lifeway, 2013.
[1] Mark E. Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, 3rd ed., 9marks (Nashville,
TN: Crossway / Lifeway, 2013).
[2] Ibid., 43.
[3] Ibid., 44.
[4] Ibid., 54.
[5] Ibid., 194.
[6] Ibid., 191.
[7] Ibid., 263-266.
[8] Ibid., 245.
