The Deliberate Church | Mark Dever & Paul Alexander

Mark Dever, Paul Alexander. The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel. Crossway, 2005. 224 pp.

Before you start reading in earnest, let us clarify what The Deliberate Church is not, just for truth in advertising. First, it’s not new. It’s old . . . really old. We’re not claiming that any of this stuff is original with us; it’s not a “fresh take” or a “unique approach”—it’s not innovative. In fact, we don’t even want to be innovative (there, we said it!). Second, it’s not a program. It’s not something you can just plug into your church and press PLAY. It’s not dependent on technique; we don’t have a set plan for spiritual maturity, or systematic steps for building a church; there’s no flashy lingo or professional diagrams or cool metaphors. Third, it’s not a quick fix. In other words, don’t expect to read this book, implement its suggestions, and see immediate, observable results. Healthy growth takes time, prayer, hard work, patience, and perseverance.

“Well, if it’s not a new program, then what is it?” Simply put, it’s the Word building the church. . . .

Deliberate, of course, means well thought through or careful. What we are trying to be careful about as church leaders, then, is building the church on and around the Gospel of Christ. More specifically, we are trying to be careful about building our church according to the pattern that God has given us in Scripture. At its best, the deliberate church is careful to trust the Word of God, wielded by Jesus Christ, to do the work of building the local church. It is an attempt to put our money where our mouth is when we say that we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture for the life, health, and growth of the local church. Our goal isn’t to see how innovative we can be. Our goal is to see how faithful we can be.

What follows, then, could be called a model of ministry. But it’s really just an attempt to be deliberate about treating the biblical Gospel as that which feeds the church’s growth, drives its progress, and governs every aspect of the church’s corporate life and leadership. In whatever we do, we want to be careful about allowing God’s Word to set our trajectory, power our progress, and govern our methods. From our preaching and evangelism, to the way we take in new members; from our discipleship and discipline practices, to our leadership models; from the structure of our Sunday morning services, all the way down to the agenda at the elders’ meeting, we want our procedures to reflect reliance on the biblical Gospel, submission to its claims, and awareness of its implications for our corporate life together.

The words of God in Scripture are the building blocks of the church. As pastors and church leaders, then, our first priority is to make sure that the Gospel enjoys functional centrality in the church. That is, we must make sure that the Gospel governs the way the church functions. When the Gospel enjoys functional centrality, the church gains traction in the culture, because the Gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:17-18). The Gospel is what gives people new spiritual birth (James 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23). The Gospel fights the church’s enemies, such as doctrinal error and moral wickedness (Acts 6:7; 12:24; 19:20). In short, God’s Word, encapsulated in the Gospel, builds the church. . . .

Many church leaders today are saying that the church will be catapulted into the future only when her methods catch up with the times. We’re saying the exact opposite. In a sense, our goal is to take the church into the future by reminding her of who she was originally intended to be. We think the church will be catapulted into the future only when the most noticeable thing about her corporate life is that it is carefully governed and powerfully driven by God’s age-old, time-tested Word. . . .

What Are We Building?

A church is not a Fortune 500 company. It’s not simply another nonprofit organization, nor is it a social club. In fat, a healthy church is unlike any organization that man has ever devised, because man didn’t devise it. . . .

It is critical to reflect biblically on this foundational question: What is a local church?

Fundamentally, God intends the local church to be a corporate display of His glory and wisdom, both to unbelievers and to unseen spiritual powers. . . . The church is God’s vehicle for displaying His glory to His creation.

How Should We Build It?

How then do you go about building such a healthy church? Countless answers have been offered from different quarters of evangelicalism. Some think it takes knowing your target audience and attracting them by meeting their needs. Others propose that the key is to have a vibrant network of small groups, where “real community” can happen. Many advise that we need to jettison the “old” methods that worked fifty years ago and embrace new ones that work in our postmodern context. Some advocate a return to religious symbols in worship to give people the sacred experience and connection with the past that they’re looking for at church. Others say the way forward is to sell our church buildings and start developing house churches. Still others say we are free to do whatever works in our own local context, as long as it is ethical. . . .

What these and many other ministry models assume is that method isn’t really all that important to God. “If it brings people to church or helps them feel like they’ve really worshipped on Sunday, it must be a good thing, right?”

When it comes to building a people for His own name and glory, God cares how we go about participating in His redemptive purposes. As we’ll see in chapter 1, the Gospel itself is God’s constructive power for building the body of Christ (Isa. 55:10-11; Rom. 1:16; 1 Pet. 1:23-25). The Word builds the Church. Our power is not in having small groups, or meeting the felt needs of our target audience, or using the right evangelism program, or having funny skits, or providing plenteous parking, or targeting our ministries to postmoderns. Our power is in our unique message—the Gospel (Greek, euangelion)—not in our innovations. As such, our primary method must be to clearly communicate that message as widely as possible. Biblically, that means that we must faithfully preach it (Greek, euangelizō), fearlessly calling for repentance and belief as the only saving responses (Mark 1:14-15).

So before we start talking about the nuts and bolts of building the church responsibly, let us be clear on the relationship between the Gospel of Christ and the method of its ministers.

• Theology drives method.
• God’s methods determine ours.
• The Gospel both enables and informs our participation in God’s purposes.
• Faithfulness to the Gospel must be our measure of success, not results.

The Four P’s

When I was interviewing with Capitol Hill Baptist Church before they called me to be their pastor, someone asked me if I had a program or plan to implement for growth. Perhaps to this person’s surprise (and perhaps to yours too!), I responded that I didn’t really have any great plans or programs to implement. I was just armed with four P’s—I would preach, pray, develop personal discipling relationships, and be patient.

Taken from The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, copyright ©2005, pp. 20-28, 33. Used by permission of Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL 60187. For more information, visit www.crossway.com.

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