What should an installation service seek to accomplish?

9Marks

In a nutshell, an installation service should clarify and underscore the responsibility the pastor has toward the church and the responsibility the church has toward the pastor.

What should a pastor do whose people don’t like expositional preaching?

9Marks
Spend more time preparing excellent sermons. Spend more time studying the text, meditating on it, praying over it, making sure you understand it. Spend more time praying for the members of your congregation by name, asking God how the text might apply to them. Sacrifice other items in your weekly calendar so that you can prayerfully prepare excellent sermons.

Why don’t people like expositional preaching?

9Marks
They have no appetite for it. Non-Christians typically have little desire to hear God’s authoritative Word. Yet we who are Christians can have weak spiritual appetites, like children who want only junk food, when the meat and vegetables of expositional preaching will do us far more spiritual good. We may not like expositional preaching because we’ve never been trained on solid foods.  

What are some practical ways for a new pastor to get to know his church and its community?

9Marks
Learn everything you can about your people. Get to know them by name. Learn how they became Christians, what their experience at the church has been like, and what they are struggling with and encouraged by in the church.

Should expositional sermons be evangelistic?

9Marks

Absolutely! Why?

Why doesn’t expositional preaching require a verse-by-verse approach?

9Marks

Some people associate expositional preaching exclusively with an approach that plods through books of the Bible one verse at a time. While this is certainly one way to preach expositionally, it is by no means the only way.

How does expositional preaching differ from other kinds of preaching?

9Marks
Topical Preaching: Topical preaching is preaching in which the preacher picks a topic he wants to address and then finds biblical material to fit that topic. Topical preaching is driven by the preacher’s agenda—what he wants to talk about. Expositional preaching, on the other hand, begins with the Bible. A preacher does not decide what to preach and then look at Scripture; rather, he looks at a text of Scripture and allows Scripture to determine what he preaches.

How can a pastor know when his congregation is ready to practice church discipline?

9Marks

You know your congregation is ready to practice church discipline when:

What are the most important things for a young pastor to do?

9Marks
Preach the Word. The single most important thing a young pastor must do is preach God’s Word. Everything begins here. God’s Word is what converts sinners and sanctifies saints (1 Thess. 1:5; Jn. 17:17). God’s Word is what brings health and growth and godly change (1 Thess. 2:13). Therefore, faithful expositional preaching of God’s Word must be a young pastor’s first priority.

What do people wrongly assume expositional preaching is?

9Marks

Many people wrongly assume that an expositional sermon is

How can a pastor wisely shepherd his church toward the ability to practice church discipline?

9Marks
Encourage humility. Help people to see that they may be mistaken about their own spiritual state. Consider the example of the man in 1 Corinthians 5 as well as Paul's exhortation to the Corinthian Christians in 2 Corinthians 13:5. Paul charges us to examine ourselves to see if we’re in the faith. Do your church members recognize that they should help one another do such examination?

What is an “expositional” sermon?

9Marks

An expositional sermon is a sermon that takes the main point of a passage of Scripture, makes it the main point of the sermon, and applies it to life today.

In other words, an expositional sermon exposes the meaning of a passage of Scripture and shows its relevance to the lives of one’s hearers. That’s it.

This means that an expositional sermon does NOT

Can church members simply resign their membership in order to avoid church discipline?

9Marks

Sometimes church members who are in the process of discipline will attempt to resign their membership in order to avoid the church’s disciplinary action. Is this something that churches should allow?

Definitely not. Churches shouldn’t allow members to simply resign their membership in order to avoid discipline because:

Why should churches discipline members who consistently do not attend?

9Marks

Some church members are prevented by infirmity or necessity (think military deployment) from regularly attending the church. Others, however, deliberately choose not to attend the church of which they are a member. Such non-attenders have a toxic effect on the church:

What should a pastor teach before he leads his congregation to practice church discipline?

9Marks
The authority of Scripture. This, of course, is where it all begins. If your church is not convinced of Scripture's authority over them—over their own lives and over the life and practice of the church—you will not be able to bring them to abiblical understanding of church discipline. The church’s authority, right, and responsibility to practice discipline aregiven solely by the Word of God.
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