Anabaptistica
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 56, No. 2 – Spring 2014
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By Mark Dever. Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2012. 177 pages. Paperback. $12.99.
For decades, theologians and prognosticators have declared that Americans are now living in a post-Christian era. Signs of the fading influence of a Judeo-Christian worldview can be easily verified in entertainment, polls, legislation, and personal conversations. However, more insidiously, American Christians also find themselves living in a post-church era, though this does not receive as much attention. While they may not realize or admit it, many Christians today functionally love Christ but hate his bride. In an over-realized Christian individualism, the church is simply viewed as one optional component among many to benefit a Christian’s personal (and often private) relationship with the Lord. As Mark Dever, senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., states in his book The Church: The Gospel Made Visible, “For too many Christians today, the doctrine of the church is like a decoration on the front of a building. Maybe it’s pretty, maybe it’s not, but finally it’s unimportant because it bears no weight” (ix).
For this reason, Dever seeks to provide a “popular primer on the doctrine of the church” (xii). He argues that the church is critically important to God and thus should be important to believers. As the title suggests, the church is the way God makes the gospel visible to the world. Added to that, Dever says, the doctrine of the church, or ecclesiology, “is the most visible part of the Christian theology, and it is vitally connected with every other part” (ix). He writes against the prevailing atmosphere of pragmatism in modern churches, asserting that good ecclesiology is a matter of gospel clarity.
In the preface, Dever explains that this book is an updated adaptation of a chapter he wrote in the 2007 publication A Theology for the Church.1 In comparing the two, it is obvious that The Church is nearly an exact replica of the chapter in Akin, Nelson, and Schemm’s book both in content and structure. However, since this book is intended as a more popular level work, there are places where the language has been modified for a broader audience. The structure is subdivided under three questions about the doctrine of the church. “What Does the Bible Say?” examines Scripture’s statements on the nature of the church and topics such as the marks of
the church, ordinances, church membership, polity, discipline, purpose, and mission. “What Has the Church Believed?” provides a historical look at the marks of the church, ordinances, and organization. Finally, “How Does It All Fit Together?” builds off the first two questions and concludes that a biblically faithful church is Protestant, gathered, congregational, and baptistic (127).
One area of contrast between Dever’s chapter in Akin, Nelson, and Schemm’s book and this volume is the addition of a section titled “An Informal Introduction: The Sufficiency of the Bible for the Local Church,” which comes between the preface and the first chapter. This introduction serves as a summary of the book as well as an argument against those who say the Bible does not give instruction on church matters. Dever says Christians are not left to wonder what they are supposed to do in the church. “My hope,” Dever says, “is that the reader sees how Scripture’s beautiful sufficiency frees us from the tyranny of mere human opinion” (xxviii).
Dever can be applauded for his strong scriptural and historical defenses of both the essence and practices of local churches. His views remain consistent with his earlier works such as A Display of God’s Glory, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, By Whose Authority? and The Deliberate Church.2 The Word of God (i.e., the Bible) is the sole authority on all matters of the church, including its nature, doctrine, and organization. Notably, Dever spends a few pages in chapter 7 explaining that he holds to the regulative principle, the view that only elements that can be clearly seen in Scripture are permissible in the worship of the church. Dever says, “In short, recognizing the regulative principle amounts to recognizing the sufficiency of Scripture applied to assembled worship. In the language of the Reformation, it amounts to sola scriptura” (72). With this in mind, however, he obviously does not hold to a hyper-regulative-principlism that disallows modern applications of basic scriptural principles.
With a high view of Scripture, it comes as no surprise that expository preaching plays a central role in Dever’s understanding of the church and the primary responsibility of elders/pastors. Holding to the Reformation’s view of the two marks of the church—the Word rightly preached and the ordinances rightly administered—Dever says preaching is central over the sacraments. “The Word being rightly taught should lead the church to rightly administer the ordinances of Christ,” Dever says (95). Dever also builds strong arguments from Scripture for regenerate church membership coupled with loving, grace-filled church discipline.
As for church government, Dever calls for a nuanced congregational polity led by a plurality of elders, with one elder serving as the senior pastor. He laments that many pit congregationalism against elder leadership but points out that “all three aspects of authority seen in the New Testament (individual, plural eldership, and congregational) should be enjoyed in every congregation” (142). He promotes an elder-led model against that of elder rule and explains that a biblical form of congregationalism does not necessitate competition between congregation and elders. The congregation, Dever says, has final authority over doctrine, teaching, and membership. But, he says, “The congregation’s authority is more like an emergency brake than a steering wheel. The congregation more normally recognizes than creates, responds rather than initiates, confirms rather than proposes”(143).
Other than a few stylistic and grammatical changes, very few weaknesses emerge in this work by Dever. Certainly, some who disagree with his approach to polity might blame his Reformed views on soteriology with clouding his understanding of church government, but this could not be farther from the truth. Given his Reformed theology, one would expect him to espouse a Presbyterian, elder-rule model of church government rather than elder-led congregationalism. No, Dever seeks only to be faithful to Scripture, which is to be commended.
The Church represents two decades of pastoral ministry and sincere study of the Bible in the life of Mark Dever. Anyone familiar with Dever’s ministry quickly realizes that he not only espouses this grand ecclesiology, but he has also experienced its outworking in the local church replete with all the successes and failures therein. Thus, The Church provides pastors with a well-structured model for healthy churches that reflect God’s glory to the world. Additionally, the book could also serve well as a teaching tool within local churches both for leaders and members. In the end, this book deals a blow to nominal Christianity and provides a wake-up call to lackadaisical churches around the world.
- Mark Dever, “The Doctrine of the Church,” in A Theology for the Church, ed. Daniel L. Akin, David P. Nelson, and Peter R. Schemm (Nashville: B&H 2007). ↩︎
- Mark Dever, A Display of God’s Glory: Basics of Church Structure (Washington, D.C.: 9Marks, 2001); Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, New Expanded ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004); Mark Dever, By Whose Authority?: Elders in Baptist Life (Washington, D.C.: 9Marks, 2006); Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005). ↩︎
