Healthy congregations: Prune membership, disciple members
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, July 25, 2000
DURHAM, N.C. – One of the off-the-shelf suggestions for church growth is to “open the front door and close the back door” – meaning that welcoming and retaining new people will fill the pews. The subheads under that strategy include meeting people’s needs, providing the music they like, activities for children, etc.
But Dr. Mark Dever, a pastor and church historian, says that’s the world’s strategy and that it needs to be reversed: Close the front door and open the back door. More pointedly, he said, “Make it more difficult to get in and throw people out.”
‘Growing to maturity’
Dever, a Southern Baptist minister, seminary professor and senior fellow of the Center for Church Reform in Washington, D.C., was obviously not trying to make a case for “inclusiveness” or theological diversity. Rather, he was suggesting that a “healthy” congregation is distinguished not necessarily by increasing membership but by “growing” members to Christian maturity. And mature Christians who demonstrate the fruit of love for each other provide a powerful attraction to outsiders, Dever said.
Dever lectured recently at Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church in Durham, an evangelical congregation that he attended when he was an undergraduate at Duke University. After Duke, Dever received a master of divinity degree from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, a master of theology degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in ecclesiology (church history) from Cambridge University in England.
Ideas being tested
Dever is pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., where some of his ideas about developing healthy congregations have been tested. He says that when he arrived at Capitol Hill, membership was about 500 and average worship attendance was about 130. Today, the congregation has 300 members with an average attendance of more than 400.
Dever’s ministry at Capitol Hill has emphasized what he calls the “Nine Marks of a Healthy Church” — expository preaching, Biblical theology, Biblical understanding of the good news, Biblical understanding of conversion, Biblical understanding of evangelism, Biblical understanding of church membership, Biblical church discipline and Biblical church leadership.
Dever said his “nine marks” are built upon the foundation of Calvin’s marks of the true church — where the Gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments are rightly administered. He said there can be a true church without it being a healthy church, and that there can be an apparently healthy church (numbers, dollars) without being a true church.
He warned against the “shared assumption” that the “fruit of a successful church is readily, immediately apparent.” He termed that expectation “an incalculably dangerous assumption” because God’s blessings are often delayed. “He calls us more to a relationship of trust in him.”
‘Loss of the gospel’
Culture, Dever said, calls on the church “to conform to be relevant” — but that can mean a “loss of the gospel.” A healthy church, he adds, must be “consciously distinct from the culture.”
He told lay people that they are largely responsible for the health of a congregation. “You are responsible for the preaching that you tolerate. You paid us [ministers]. You continue to come to our churches and pay us more.”
Dever disputes the idea that church membership means simply having one’s name on a roll. “If we are Christians, we must be members of the Church.” Neither is response to an altar call sufficient for mature Christianity, he said.
“We need churches that teach that evangelism that does not lead to discipleship … is entirely misconceived. We need to tell them [new Christians] to count the costs.”
Why discipline is needed
Dever said healthy congregations should use discipline to demonstrate that not every kind of behavior will be tolerated.
But isn’t use of discipline judgmental? “‘Judge not lest ye be judged’ is probably the most quoted verse in the Bible,'” Dever said. “But in the same Gospel, Jesus calls on us to rebuke others for sin.”
Dever said the New Testament Church was instructed to exercise judgment “for redemptive purposes” and not to excuse conduct that dishonors God. “I don’t see that I have the option not to exercise church discipline.”
The web site for the Center for Church Reform is www.churchreform.org.