Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (4th Edition)

Mark Dever

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781433578137
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

What Makes for a Healthy Church?

You may have read books on this topic before but not like this one. Instead of an instruction manual for church growth, this classic text points tobasic biblical principles for assessing and strengthening the health of your church. Whether you're a pastor, a leader, or an involved member ofyour congregation, studying the nine marks of a healthy church will help you cultivate new life and well-being within your own church for God's glory.

This revised edition includes two new chapters; updated material on prayer, missions, evangelism, and the gospel; and a foreword by H. B. Charles Jr.

Appendix 1

Tips for Leading the Church in a Healthy Direction

The Healthy Direction

When we can rightly assume that most of those within a church are regenerated and that they are committed to the church, then the New Testament image of the church as a body and as a family can become a living, vital reality.

In his goodness, God has called us to live out the Christian life together. In being part of a church I have grown as a Christian because of God’s work through my brothers and sisters. I think that’s normal. I don’t think that’s meant to be unusual. God intends to work on us by his Spirit through each other. Relationships imply commitment in the world; surely they imply no less in the church.

In the third commandment (Ex. 20:7; Deut. 5:11), God warned his people not to take his name in vain. By this he does not mean just avoiding profanity. More than that, he is saying, “Don’t take my name upon yourself, don’t claim to be my follower, if you’re not going to live like one of mine.” That, no less than profanity, would be taking God’s name in vain.

That command is for us as a church as well. Many churches today mistake selfish gain for spiritual growth. We mistake mere excitement for true worship. We treasure worldly acceptance rather than living in a way that will incur worldly opposition (see 2 Tim. 3:12). Regardless of their statistical profiles, too many churches today seem unconcerned about the very biblical marks that should distinguish a vital, growing church.

The health of the church should be the concern of all Christians, because it does involve the spiritual life of everyone who is a Christian and a member of a church, especially of those called to be leaders in the church. Our churches are to display the glorious gospel of God to his creation in an amazing variety by all the different personalities he puts in the church and the ways he allows them to relate together and to show his glory. That’s what we’re called to; we’re called to display God and his character in a glorious way to his creation (Eph. 3:10). We are to bring him glory by our lives together.

Tips for Leading

I had thought of writing a book for pastors called How to Get Fired . . . And Fast! I could sum up the basic idea of this unwritten book in one sentence of Pauline proportions: A pastor could go into a church members’ meeting questioning the salvation of some of the church members, refusing to baptize children, advocating a priority of congregational singing over performed music, asking to remove the Christian and national flags and to stop any kind of altar calls, replacing committees (even the nominating committee) with elders, ignoring the secular rotation of Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Labor Day, Halloween, Veterans Day, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, Memorial Day, the local high school graduation, and the Fourth of July, begin practicing church discipline, removing women from elder-like positions in the church, and stating that he had theological opposition to multiple services on Sunday morning. Such a pastor might not get much farther than his next members’ meeting. While I could write such a book, I think that first I should take a more constructive approach. I fear that some may read this book and immediately go into their churches impatient for radical change. But with a little wisdom, patience, prayer, careful instruction, and love, we might be surprised how far we can get with our churches. The story of the persistent tortoise and the hurrying hare becomes a parable for pastors.

Here are four characteristics that you as a pastor should cultivate to help implement the changes you feel are needed in your church.

1. Be Truthful

Ask God to keep you faithful to his written Word. Never underestimate the power of teaching truth. Pray that you will have integrity within yourself, in your own thinking. Pray that you will be honest with all—in responding to questions, but even more actively, in working to help people get to know you.

2. Be Trustful

Rely on God rather than on your own gifts and abilities. Spend time in prayer privately, with others, and with the congregation. Be patient. Recall Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2: “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”

Give your ambitions to the Lord. Be willing to trust him with your life; be willing to pray that God may leave you in your present place of ministry for the rest of your life. Longevity was factored in by God in bringing children to adulthood; such longevity has also characterized many fruitful ministries. The Puritan pastor William Gouge often said that the height of his ambition was to go from Blackfriars (his church) to heaven. Gouge was pastor of that same church from June 1608 until his death on December 12, 1653. He was pastor of the same church for forty-six years. Pray that God will increase your faith and help you see that his concern for his church is even greater than your own.

3. Be Positive

Pray that you neither be nor be perceived to be fundamentally a critic. Set forth a positive agenda. Clarify God’s vision for his church, and your particular plans, in terms of both long-term goals and more immediate goals. Pray that God will help you to build solid personal relationships. Pray particularly that God will help you to develop more leaders within the church (2 Tim. 2:2). Pray that God will make you a personal example of and a chief advocate for evangelism and missions. Pray that God will increase your zeal—and your church’s zeal—for his glory.

4. Be Particular

Contextualize God’s concern for his church. Use the good resources of your church’s own history. Learn from older members about the history of your church. Be an ecclesiastical dendrologist (a person who studies trees). At Lincoln Cathedral, one tour guide told me that dendrologists had taken core samples from the forty-six-foot oak beams that have held up the cathedral’s roof for centuries and figured out when the tree was planted and when it was harvested. The ones he showed us had been more than 150 years old when harvested, many having been planted in the 900s and harvested in the 1100s.

Become the chief student of your church’s history. By doing this you show respect, and you learn.

May you become the agent for recovering what has been the best in your church’s past and the agent for leading your church into the great things God has for it in the future, as your church displays the character of God to his creation. This burden of display is our awesome responsibility and our tremendous privilege. May God make your church a healthy church, and may he pour out his Spirit on churches across our land and around the world to do the same, for his own glory. And may God bless you in the attempt.

Appendix 2

“Don’t Do It!” Why You Shouldn’t Practice Church Discipline

“Don’t do it.” That’s the first thing I tell pastors when they discover church discipline is in the Bible. I say, “Don’t do it, at least not yet.” Why this advice?

Let’s think about what happens in the process of discovery. When pastors first hear of church discipline, they often think the idea is ridiculous. It sounds unloving, counterevangelistic, weird, controlling, legalistic, and judgmental. It certainly seems unworkable. They even wonder if it’s illegal.

They Open Their Bibles

Perhaps when no one is looking, these pastors look back at their Bibles. They come across passages like 2 Thessalonians 3:6, or Galatians 6:1, or the classic text on discipline, 1 Corinthians 5. They consider the Old Testament background of excommunication, and they recall that God has always purposed for his people to be a picture of his own holiness (Deut. 17:7; Lev. 19:2; Isa. 52:11; 1 Pet. 1:16).Then, they turn to Jesus’s own teaching, and discover that, in the same chapter in which Jesus condemns judgmentalism (see Matt. 7:1), he also warns the disciples to be on their guard against false prophets and against those who claim to follow him but do not obey his Word (Matt. 7:15–20; 21–23). Finally, they get to Matthew 18, where Jesus instructs his followers to exclude the unrepentant sinner in certain situations (v. 17). Maybe churches should practice discipline?

What finally sends these otherwise nice, normal, well-adjusted, previously popular pastors over the edge is their discovery that some churches do, in fact, practice church discipline. Not strange, maladjusted churches, but happy, growing, large, grace-oriented churches like Grace Community in Sun Valley, California, or Tenth Presbyterian in Philadelphia, or First Baptist in Durham, North Carolina, or the Village Church near Dallas.

Now these pasto...