Mark Dever’s book 9 Marks of a Healthy Church explains nine characteristics of a
church that would be considered to be healthy. d Reading this book has opened
me up to think about the health of the current church I serve as a minister as well
as the church in which I will serve as senior pastor in the future. d As a result of
reading 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, there are three marks I feel our church
needs to work on the most.
The first mark our church needs to work on the most is an understanding of
evangelism. d d Out of the three, evangelism is the one that our church needs to
work on the most. d d In the many times, I have served with the evangelism ministry
as well as the minister’s ministry of our church, I notice that there are very few
people from the congregation that evangelize with us. d There are a few reasons
why this is the case. d First, I believe this is the case because many of our
members do not understand what exactly evangelism is. d Many people believe
that evangelism is converting people to the faith. d According to Dever, this is not
the case. d d Dever noted that “the Christian call to evangelism is a call not simply
to persuade people to make decisions but rather to proclaim to them the good
news of salvation in Christ, to call them to repentance, and to give God glory for
regeneration and conversion.”[1] d In other words, evangelism is simply sharing the
good news of Jesus Christ to the lost. d Another factor is that our church members
do not understand that the Great Commission as described in Matthew 28:18-20,
is a commission from Christ for all Christians to fulfill. d Many people in our church
believe that it is the responsibility of the pastors, ministers, and elders of the
church to evangelize. d However, Dever refuted this belief as he stated, “the Great
Commission, is a commission for all of Jesus’ disciples—those who heard his
words directly, and we who read his words today.”[2] d A final reason why
evangelism is a mark that we need to work on the most is that many of our
members do not understand the purpose and motivation of evangelism. d d Our
members need to understand that the motivation for evangelism is the love of
God. d We can improve on evangelism by providing a detailed training seminar on
the importance of evangelism and making it mandatory for every leader and
member to go on at least one evangelism outing a year.
A second mark our church needs to work on the most is an understanding of
church membership. d d The reason why I believe that church membership is a mark
we must work on because my wife and I have experienced hatred from some of
the members and leaders of the church. d As I thought about this, I have come to
an understanding that the members of the church that treated with such hatred did
not understand the responsibility of being a church member. d d I agree with Dever
when he noted, “the duties and responsibilities church members have toward one
another summarize the life of the new society that is the church. d As followers of
Jesus Christ, Christians are obligated to love one another.”[3] d They also do not
understand that we are to build each other up and encourage each other as
church members. d d Our members must understand that we must invest in each
other lives. d This is what promotes unity in the church. d The steps that we need
to take to improve unity in our church is to train our current members on what
church membership is all about and the responsibility of being a church member
and the behavior that is expected as a member of the church. d Another step we
need to take is to teach this material in our new member classes so they will
understand the responsibility of being a member of the church.
The final mark our church needs to work on the most is church discipline. d The
reason why discipline is a mark that our church needs to work on simply because
church discipline is not implemented at our church. d d My wife is a musician in our
church band. d She was involved in an issue where two choir directors refused to
let her play during service. d We later found out that these choir directors had her
mic muted so that she cannot be heard playing her flute and saxophone. d My wife
and I followed Christ’s commands on dealing with disagreement in Matthew 18:15-
17 in this situation. d However, when we approached leadership on this issue, there
was no accountability or discipline for these choir directors. d I believe that church
discipline is not implemented at our church because the congregation does not
understand the aspect of church discipline. d Church discipline is not meant to hurt
the body of Christ, but to help us to grow into the people that God called us to be
as a body and individually. d Dever makes this clear by stating, “we don’t want our
churches to encourage hypocrites who are hardened, confirmed, and lulled in their
sins. d d We don’t want to live that kind of life individually or as a church.”[4] d To
implement church discipline, what I would recommend for our church is to teach
the congregation about church discipline, establish discipline rules to enforce
church discipline, and establish a church discipline ministry or leadership board
that will be responsible for enforcing discipline in the church.
[1] Mark Dever, 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, 3rd ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013),
130.
[2] Ibid., 137.
[3] Ibid., 160.
[4] Ibid., 201.
