Mark Dever: The Preacher

Mark Dever, (pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC):

What about the role of the preacher of God’s Word? If you are looking for a good church, this is the most important thing to consider. I don’t care how friendly you think the church members are. I don’t care how good you think the music is. . . . The congregation’s commitment to the centrality of the Word coming from . . . the preacher, the one specially gifted by God and called to that ministry, is the most important thing you can look for in a church. . . .

Preachers are not called to preach what’s popular according to the polls. . . . People already know all that. What life does that bring? We’re not called to preach merely moral exhortations or history lessons or social commentaries. . . . We are called to preach the Word of God to the church of God and to everyone in His creation. This is how God brings life. Each person . . . is flawed and has faults and has sinned against God. And the terrible thing about our fallen natures is that we are greedy for ways to justify our sins against God. Every single one of us wants to know how we can defend ourselves from God’s charges. Therefore, we are in desperate need to hear God’s Word brought honestly to us, so that we don’t just hear what we want to hear but rather what God has actually said.

All of this is important . . . because God’s Holy Spirit creates His people by His Word.

This is why Paul told Timothy to “form a committee.” Right? Of course not! . . . “Take a survey”? No! . . . “Spend yourself in visiting”? No! . . . “Read a book”? No! Paul never told young Timothy to do any of those things.

Paul told Timothy, straight and clear, to “Preach the Word” (2 Tim. 4:2). This is the great imperative. This is why the apostles earlier had determined that, even thought there were problems with the equitable distribution of financial aid in Jerusalem, the church would just have to find others to solve their problems, because, “We . . . will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word” (Acts 6:4). Why this priority? Because this Word is “the word of life” (Phil. 2:16). That is the great task of the preacher: to “hold out the word of life” to people who need it for their souls. (Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 38-39)

Blurring The Lines

From the words of Mark Dever and Paul Alexander:

A steady diet of performances by soloists or even choirs can have the unintended effect of undermining the corporate, participative nature of our musical worship. People can gradually come to think of worship in terms of passive observation, which we do not see modeled in the Bible. Such a diet may also begin to blur the line between worship and entertainment, especially in a television-sopped culture like ours, where one of our most insidious expectations is to be always entertained. Of course, this blurring is hardly ever intended. But over time, separating the “performers” from “the rest of the congregation” can subtly shift the focus of our attention from God to the musicians and their talent – a shift that is frequently revealed by applause at the end of some performance pieces. Who is the beneficiary of such applause?

Questions About God

Mark Dever

A thought from Mark Dever:

Questions of who God is and of what He is like can never be considered irrelevant to the practical matters of church life. Different understandings of God will lead you to worship Him in different ways, and if some of those understandings are wrong, some of those ways in which you approach Him could be wrong as well.