The Healthy Church
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]
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. If it were, we would not have
changeover of congregants and every person would be completely
satisfied with all that we do and offer. I do not know if I would want to be
part of that church. I want to be part of a church that is not perfect. 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.
I would say the first part where we need growth according to
Dever’s book is in the realm of expositional teaching. I struggled with this
one as our way of teaching is expositional with a touch of topical and not
vice versa. We do not pick topics and meld the Scriptures to fit or relate
to the topic like many topical preachers do.[2] We meet as a team in
November and May and set up series for the year and build expositional
messages that fulfill the series. Each message is a passage of Scripture,
and we break it down point for point as typical of expositional teaching.
[3] For example, we are preaching and teaching through our church’s
core values, and currently we are teaching about discipleship. We have
taken each of the Scripture verses that we built our core values around
and are teaching that verse. Dever agreed that not all preaching is
biblical, and I would agree.[4] An area of opportunity for us to improve is
to turn more toward exposing the Word and less commentary. We spend
a lot of time using commentaries and explaining the verses through
commentaries. 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. 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.
The second area that I know we need improvement on is church
discipline. 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. It was ironic that Dever wrote a section on that
type of surprised response.[5] 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. 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. 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. 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. This is
where I think we can do better. 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). 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. 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. 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] 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. Dever’s discussion in appendix two,
especially his discussion of introducing church discipline slowly, is great
advice in this area of church leadership.[7]
The other area that I believe we can grow and improve in is the
area of church leadership. We are currently working through an issue in
our church that Dever provided insight on. 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. Their argument
is that our bylaws and doctrine do not specifically exclude women. This is
where we can improve. Our current leadership and elder board agree that
1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 are clear that elders should be men. Paul did not
arbitrarily choose to state “men” in his writing, because he also spoke of
elders as being husbands (1 Tim. 2). 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] 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.
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[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.
