Don’t Be a 9Marxist!

In a one-star Amazon review of a 9Marks book, the reviewer shared her experience of being a part of a 9Marks church. Technically, there is no such thing as a 9Marks church. We are not a denomination. But I think I understand what she means—the pastors probably identify with our message.

Unfortunately, the reviewer did not have a good experience at this church. She described it as “insufferable, authoritarian, rigid, legalistic, abusive, controlling, [and] spiritually abusive.” Members were “infantilized.” Power was “concentrated at the top” and had no accountability. People with sincere questions were treated as “being factious, deceived, unsaved.” The reviewer claimed that she was excommunicated for bringing a registered sex offender to the attention of the elders. At the end of her review, she promised to never have anything to do with a “9Marks church” again. It was like “the Salem Witch Trials.”

I’ve been the editorial director of 9Marks for over a decade and part of the church behind the ministry for two decades. I don’t often hear criticism with language this strong; maybe one or two other times. When I do, it causes me to feel several things at once. On the one hand, I feel sympathetic and want to say to the reviewer, “I’m so sorry you went through that.” On the other hand, I feel defensive and wish I could say, “What you’re describing, if it’s accurate, is certainly not what we’ve been teaching but rather a perversion of it.” And last, I feel humbled and think, “Perhaps we could do a better job of saying what we’re not saying and guarding against abuses.” In other words, I hope we can learn from our critics.

Several years ago I was asked to speak at a church about cultivating a culture of discipling. The night before, a friend told me the church’s members had a reputation for being spiritually zealous, proud, and a bit judgmental. I realized I had prepared the wrong message. My applications aimed to stir up the complacent. But here was a church that possibly erred in the opposite direction. So beginning at 11:30 p.m on Saturday night, I radically redrafted my applications: Disciple? Yes. But also remember grace and Christian freedom.

9Marks talks a lot about authority in the church—authority in preaching, authority in membership and discipline practices, authority among the elders. The thing is, sinners like us easily abuse the authority that God gives. So even as 9Marks encourages churches to avoid the squishy complacency of nominal Christianity, we also don’t want churches to err in the direction of being doctrinaire and authoritarian.

Think about how God indicts Israel in Hosea 4: “Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away” (v. 3 ESV). Adam and Eve were to rule over those three domains—land, sky, sea—so that all would flourish. But Israel’s rule led to mourning and languishing. Abusive rule wilts the flower, starves the herd, and crushes the soul.

Someone else, commenting on the Amazon review I cited above, characterized 9Marks as “9Marx.” Clever, right? Let’s run with it. Mark Dever helped me brainstorm thirteen marks for not being a 9Marxist, that is, not being a church leader who abuses authority. I’ll explain each.

Mark 1: Embrace the Sufficiency of Scripture for Leading and Pastoring

First, embrace the sufficiency or Scripture for leading and pastoring and do not require what the Bible doesn’t require. One example of how not to do this is seen in the shepherding movement of the 1970s. Proponents of this movement were rightly concerned about the weak commitment, shallow community, and general worldliness characteristic of so many American churches. But they wrongly required things not required by Scripture, such as membership in a house group or having life decisions “covered” by their house group leader, elder, or pastor. Decisions that were covered included things like where to live and work, whom to marry, and even whether to make a doctor’s appointment. They also adopted other unbiblical authority structures.

Of course, we should all agree that Scripture is the standard. However, as someone who has written several books on church membership and discipline, I know how easily we can require too much in those areas. One godly, well-meaning pastor asked me if we should hold on to members who have left our churches until their new pastor calls or emails to confirm that they have in fact joined the new church. I understand logically how he drew this conclusion, but at this point I would hope a little alarm bell would go off in his mind saying, “Wait a second, does the Bible require this?”

Admittedly, a church might require a few things unspecified by Scripture. In order to join our church one must attend membership classes, participate in an interview with the elders, and sign a statement of faith. We believe that these are practical ways of implementing the biblical principle of church membership. You have to adopt some practices, after all, and the Bible doesn’t explicitly say how to join a church. But these few things are the only extra-biblical requirements we have at our church.

Mark 2: Advocate for Christian Freedom

Similarly, we shouldn’t bind the conscience where Scripture doesn’t but instead be strong advocates for Christian freedom. Something I appreciate about Mark Dever is that he’s not short on strong opinions but is also a strong advocate of Christian freedom. I’d even say he cultivates a sanctified irreverence toward many evangelical false pieties.

The modern Pharisee, on the other hand, doesn’t want to break God’s law or to even risk breaking God’s law so he puts a hedge of protection around it and binds the conscience there. This could be regarding matters of drinking, dancing, or voting. An authoritarian view like this one turns prudential permissions (“you may join a small group”) into commands (“you must join a small group”).

Mark 3: Instead, Church Leaders Should Gently Offer Advice Regarding Issues of Freedom Rather Than Firmly Offer Instructions

Perhaps a member wants to do something that I perceive to be foolish or a sign of immaturity: leave this church for another, pursue a certain woman, take a particular job, make a unique fashion statement, or watch a specific television show. And suppose he asks my counsel. It’s good for me to either say nothing, ask questions, or say, as I often do, “That’s a question of wisdom, not biblical principle,” which is my way of reminding myself and them that my counsel is not inerrant. It’s not Holy Writ. It might be wise, but it doesn’t bind the conscience like the Bible does. Keeping these two categories explicit and clear puts things in right perspective for me and them. In fact, I’d say that the vast majority of the counsel pastors are asked to give requires them to reach into the wisdom bucket, not the absolute principle bucket.

Also, many of the decisions a church must make about programs—should we have a Sunday evening service, a Sunday school program, encourage this approach to evangelism or that approach to discipling?—depend on wisdom. Remember that. To be sure, 9Marks might have opinions about what’s biblical that you don’t share (e.g., having multiple Sunday services).

So can you give people strong counsel in matters of wisdom? Sometimes, yes. Can you bind the conscience? No. Even if you’re 75 percent sure that your advice might be a matter of sin and righteousness, based on your deductive reasoning powers from Scripture, I hope that last 25 percent keeps you from pushing too hard. It’s the path to the dark side of authoritarianism.

Of course, we want to people to make wise and good and godly decisions. But such decisions come as we teach them slowly over time through the careful preaching of God’s word week after week—drip, drip, drip—just like with childrearing. We want their good decisions to grow (super)naturally out of changed hearts and love of Christ. Legalism and extra-biblical rules are shortcuts that might produce good decisions today but pride or resentment in the long run. 

Mark 4: Beware Zealous Asceticism

Legalism may also go hand in hand with a zealous asceticism. The Bible certainly warns against the love of money—it condemns the rich man who keeps building bigger barns and praises the faith of the woman who gives out of her poverty. Still, there’s a long tradition of Christian asceticism—going all the way back to Francis of Assisi and the Benedictine Monks—that risks binding the conscience with a self-manufactured piety. It says, “If I’m really holy, I’ll only buy old cars and previously owned clothes” and, more than that, “I’ll look suspiciously at Christians who buy nice cars and clothes.”

Friend, buy old clothes and cars so that, for love’s sake, you can give more money away. But make sure you’re not grounding your sense of righteousness in a man-made holiness. Further, don’t impose your personal beliefs on how other should spend their money. Doing so creates a self-righteous church, and self-righteousness is behind much abuse.

Notice how sensitively Paul puts it: “each should should put something aside as he may prosper” (1 Cor. 16:2) or “according to what he has” (2 Cor. 8:11 ESV). How easy it is to assume that godliness and piety look and sound a certain way and to question those whose prayers and lifestyles don’t match our own! And the more charismatic and powerful of a leader one is, the more one is at risk. I remember when I was in seminary how, in many of our maturing minds, a godly man had to look and sound exactly like John Piper. That’s no critique of John Piper. He’s just being himself. But such an attitude shows how easy it is to impose our extra-biblical ideas on others or ourselves.

Mark 5: Learn to Be Comfortable with Tension by Practicing Christian Forbearance

Theology, to a large extent, works by logical extension, by implications and applications from the biblical text. Those of us given to theological thinking will be inclined to trace out these kinds of implications and applications. But this produces a challenge: some logical implications or applications are spot-on, like the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, yet others are problematic— “Rock music is bad because the backbeat provokes a sexual response,” “Women wearing pants is bad because it blurs the line between biblical manhood and womanhood.”

In general, so many of the decisions we must make pastorally, and so many of the situations we are asked to speak into, are in the realm of implication or application—Can women pray in the church’s gathering? Can parents attend the wedding of their gay son? Can a church member vote for a pro-choice candidate? Can Christian men get vasectomies? Sometimes, we have to make a decision by logical extension from the text. You either have women pray publicly or you don’t. Other decisions, like many in counseling sessions, leave us more room to say, “I don’t know.”

But here is something that should belong to our pastoral instincts: except in those places where Christians have agreed for centuries that a doctrinal or ethical position is an explicit implication or application from Scripture (e.g., the doctrine of the Trinity), we should be very cautious about binding people’s consciences when out on the tree branch of a logical extension from Scripture.

Part of trusting God and his word and avoiding abusive pastoring is learning to live with tensions. Sometimes doing that is a sign of unfaithfulness. But other times it’s a sign of humility and the recognition that we are not God. We need to learn to live with tensions when it comes to assessing repentance in matters of admitting members or disciplining them. There is a tension between correcting sin and forbearing with one another.

Mark 6: Admit When You Don’t Know the Answer to a Question

Pastors should also cultivate the humility and freedom of honest uncertainty. The person who has difficulty saying “I don’t know” will—best case scenario—come across as a know-it-all. In the worst case, he will give answers where Scripture doesn’t actually give them and impose on people what should not be imposed.

Ironically, saying “I don’t know” can help a pastor earn the trust of the questioner. It helps people to listen when he speaks because they know he won’t prattle on and discuss matters he’s unfamiliar with. Part of abusing authority, on the other hand, is claiming to know something you don’t.

Mark 7: Cultivate a Willingness to Be Corrected 

Similar to saying you don’t know is saying that you could be wrong, which means that you should be willing to be corrected. A proud person thinks he always knows, and a proud person is unwilling to be corrected. 

Not too long ago, my wife told me that I’m defensive. I replied, “No, I’m not . . . Let me explain why.” I told her! “Ah, how often we win the battle but lose the war,” the marriage counselors tell us.

So it is for us pastors. Have you ever found yourself backed into a corner and basically pulled rank to get yourself out of it? You put on your best “Now I’m the pastor” tone, speak in a vague and ambiguous way with technical theological vocabulary and then bring the conversation to a close with a sigh of, “Oh, if you only understood.” The member walks away having seemingly lost the argument but instinctively senses that you won that argument by the force of erudition, personality, or position. And trust begins to erode.

Part of being willing to be corrected is being willing to lose elder votes and submit to other church leaders. If a man cannot submit, he should not lead. And that includes the man at the top. Mark Dever is the senior pastor at my church, but I regularly see him losing votes and submitting to the other elders—once or twice a meeting in fact. I also see him building opportunities into his schedule to be corrected. He does this at the weekly service review, for instance. Abuse of authority, as much as anything, is about wanting control and respect, but healthy authortity reliquishes control.

Mark 8: Fear God More Than Man

The best defense against abusing authority is fearing God. When you know that the people under your authority are God’s and that you will give an account for your stewardship, you are less likely to take advantage of them, prize your own wisdom over God’s, or demand respect and honor for yourself because you know that when you decrease, he will increase (John 3:30).

Here’s something unexpected I’ve discovered by watching Pastor Mark. True humility doesn’t necessarily mean what Christians often think it means: not having strong convictions, shrugging your should and saying, “Oh, I don’t know,” or always deferring to what the group thinks. Sometimes it means those things. But sometimes true humility also means standing strongly on God’s word because humility knows that we humans know truly in no other way. It’s easy to dismiss people with strong convictions, always concerned about the truth, as proud. And they might be. But they might also be very humble, and they don’t fear you and your opinions like you want them to.

Mark 9: Don’t Use God’s Truth and Justice As Weapons

On the other hand, a concern with truth can be used in an ungodly way. Something I’ve observed in those who speak harshly or abusively to their wives or children is that they will justify their harshness by appealing to biblical truths. They’ll quote Scripture to back up their claims or they will say things like, “I have such a strong instinct for justice, I couldn’t stand seeing injustice done!” And so with a sense of righteous fury, they attack the wrongdoing. But in the process they destroy and hurt.

Here’s what’s tricky. Sometimes that kind of response to falsehood or injustice might be in earnest, but when there is a lack of faith in God’s power to change someone, we are at risk of pushing too hard. Very often, our best intentions will be combined with other, less sanctified ones, such as the desire for control, honor, or respect. Worse, this desire may be the primary intention while the concern for truth or justice is just camouflage. All that to say, those of us who have strong convictions about truth or justice—of which I consider myself one—must not employ God’s truth to control or hurt others.

Mark 10: Don’t Give More Authority to Your Heroes Than to the Bible

We must also beware of putting someone whose ministry we’ve been influenced by on a pedestal. Praise God for those men and women he has used to save us, build us up in the faith, or redirect our thinking in a more biblical direction. I’ve been greatly influenced by Mark Dever’s life and ministry, to be sure. But I’ve also been greatly influenced by my dad and mom, Tom Schreiner, Bruce Ware, Chip Collins, fellow elders, a number of authors, and many more faithful believers. Each of these men and women have given me a different glimpse of Jesus.

But get this: when we are imbalanced in the reverence and honor we give to a human being over us, we will be imbalanced in what we demand of the human beings under us. After all, we will always invite people to worship what we worship, whether that’s God, a football team, or a pastor. So if I’m placing my theological hero’s words higher than Scripture, I am going to teach that man’s theology in a way that’s imbalanced, overaggressive, and even abusive.

Mark 11: Remember People When Implementing Procedures

As we hold high God’s word, we must also pay attention to God’s people. Wrong approaches to church leadership can occur whenever we rely on regulated processes instead of personal pastoral care. And this is especially a temptation for large churches. The need for economies of scale leads to creating consistent and tidy procedures and precise codes of conduct. Treating each case uniquely and thoughtfully becomes difficult.

But, just as a wise parent treats each child individually, so must a pastor discipline and disciple each member individually. From personal experience, I can say that disciplining and training my children is slow, inefficient work that consumes hours. And so is the work of discipling and training our fellow members. But it is the only way to get the work done, and the journey to get there is peppered with countless beautiful moments of connection and delight.

Mark 12: Love the Church More Than Its Health

There’s a temptation that young pastors and 9Marks-types are susceptible to: we can love our vision of what a church should be more than we love the people who comprise it. We can be like the unmarried man who loves the idea of a having wife but marries a real woman and finds it hard to love her.

Your goal in ministry should not be to cross your membership t’s and dot your programmatic i’s. It should be to shepherd real people toward life-giving, gospel-reminding relationships where they learn to trust God. And they will learn to trust him, in part, as they learn to trust you because you demonstrate that you are trustworthy.

I remember overhearing a church elder complain about a family who let their unbaptized children receive the Lord’s Supper when the plate of communion crackers was passed down their pew. What struck me was the elder’s tone. It was slightly contemptuous, as in, “How could they? What fools!” But these people were untaught sheep. Of course they didn’t know better. And God had given them this elder not to complain about them but to lovingly help them toward a better understanding. At that moment, it felt like this elder loved his vision of the biblical church more than he loved those individuals. 

Mark 13: Respect the Authority of the Congregation

Anecdotally, most (maybe all) of the unfortunate cases of church discipline I have heard about in recent years have occurred in non-congregational churches where the elders are free to impose their will on the congregation. I’m sure congregational churches have failed in this area as well.

But the mere fact that a group of elders or pastors in a congregational church must sit in a small elders’ meeting before the big congregational meeting, scratch their heads, and ask themselves, “How are we going to explain this to the church?” tends by itself to moderate their decision-making. It slows them down. A group of well-meaning but tired elders might get highjacked by a bad strain of thinking in their meeting at ten o’clock on a Thursday night. But Sunday’s congregational meeting will serve as a useful reality check.

Mark 14: Rely on God to Change Minds and Hearts

Pastoral authoritarianism commands the flesh and makes no appeal to the spiritual new man in the gospel. It looms heavily over the will, doing all it can to make the will choose rightly. It requires outward conformity rather than repentance of heart. It is impatient and forceful. Since it does not recognize that decisions have their ultimate foundation in the heart’s desires, it feels successful whenever it produces a “right” decision, whether or not that decision was forced or manipulated.

In contrast, godly pastoral authority is exercised by faith and relies on God to bring change, knowing that the human will cannot raise the dead or change a leopard’s spots. It believes that God always has the power to change people and that he will if he wants to. Godly authority therefore relies exclusively on the power of God’s gospel word and God’s Spirit. It doesn’t rely on persuasion, ethnic similitude, personal charisma, intellectual prowess, manipulative means, or good rhetoric, like the superapostles who criticized Paul did. It relies on an open statement of the truth (2 Cor. 4:1–3). Therefore, godly authority is exceedingly patient and tender, knowing that only God can give growth (1 Cor. 3:5–9). An immature Christian may need to walk a hundred steps before he arrives at maturity, but a wise pastor seldom asks for more than one or two steps at a time.

An emphasis on numbers and outcomes presumes on the power of human wisdom, will, and strength. Pragmatism, like authoritarianism, springs from a reliance on the powers of the flesh. Thus strong-arming people is not that different from strong-charming them. For example, a church leader who thinks that rock music is necessary to make his church grow is going beyond Scripture and relying on human wisdom just like the fundamentalist who says that all rock music is sin. It’s worth meditating on Paul’s ministerial confidence:

But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus ‘sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. 4:2–6 ESV)

One of the best defenses against authoritarianism—perhaps surprising to some—is Reformed theology. We speak or preach the biblical word, but we know only God can do the new creation work of opening blind eyes. So we don’t force. We don’t manipulate. Instead, we pray, speaking more to God about the brother than to the brother about God. And then we rest.