Leadership

13 Pillars for Planting Healthy Churches

By Matt Rogers | 04.11.2022

What ingredients are necessary to plant healthy, strong, biblical churches—and sustain them?

The Ordinances: A True and Better Identity Politics

By Bobby Jamieson | 9Marks Journal: Expressive Individualism in the Church | 03.18.2022

What can unearth and uproot and undermine the unbiblical assumptions that animate identity politics and threaten to tear apart what God has joined together? I would submit a simple, perhaps surprisingly obvious answer.

An Ecclesiological Take on “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill”

By Jonathan Leeman | 03.14.2022

My goal here is not to review the series—what I liked, what I didn’t like—but to offer four lessons that I think are a little more timeless, and lessons that point to the worst inevitabilities of bad ecclesiology.

When a Pastor’s Child Strays

By David Gough | 01.17.2022

I write not as a mere observer or sympathized, but as a father and a pastor who prays for his own wayward children. How desperately I long for them to embrace the faith they were taught.

Book Review: Lead, by Paul David Tripp

Review by Raymond Johnson | 01.13.2022

This isn’t another how-to book on the highway to heaven. Rather, it clarifies a vision of leadership in the local church in an age of crisis.

Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah . . . Oh My!—Practical Help for Preaching Longer Books

By Jeff Wiesner | 01.05.2022

I hope the following eight “tips” will help preachers delight in the Scriptures as they prepare to preach—and persevere!—through its biggest books.

Why We Need Pastor-Theologians in the Church

By Kevin DeYoung | 9Marks Journal: Sound Doctrine: The Foundation for Faithful Ministry | 11.16.2021

When I say we need pastor-theologians in the church, I mean that every pastor must conduct his ministry with an eye to declaring theological truth, diagnosing theological error, and discipling his congregation to be theologically informed and articulate.

Book Review: The Care of Souls, by Harold Senkbeil

Review by Brady Bowman | 10.21.2021

The Care of Souls is a gripping reflection on pastoral ministry that commends an older and far richer vision of pastoring than what is typically touted in modern evangelical circles.

Book Review: Charles Simeon of Cambridge, by Hugh Evans Hopkins

Review by Michael Abraham | 10.14.2021

Charles Simeon was a preacher’s preacher and a pastor’s pastor. He was occupied with beholding the Lord Jesus Christ. We’d do well to imitate his ministry.

Must Churches Follow Mask Mandates?

By Jonathan Leeman | 09.20.2021

9Marks doesn’t exist to make any of these judgments for you or your elder board. That’s your job, pastor. But as well as I know how to describe it, these are the principled questions before you.

Want to Be a Pastor? Be Someone Worth Imitating.

By Bobby Jamieson | 09.08.2021

To be a pastor is to live your life in public. Even when you’re off, you’re on. If you want to be a pastor, get ready to be watched, and start setting an example worth watching.

Book Review: The Pastor’s Soul, by Brian Croft

Review by Josh Vincent | 08.26.2021

Croft and Savastio remind pastors of a simple but essential truth: Pastor, care for your soul.

Why the Ordinary Means of Grace Must Be Central in Our Gatherings

By David Strain | 9Marks Journal: The Ordinary Means of Grace—Or, Don’t Do Weird Stuff | 07.26.2021

When we gather, let’s not mess around with our own homespun techniques. In faith, let us read the Word, preach the Word, pray the Word, sing the Word, and see and taste and touch the Word.

Book Review: Bavinck, by James Eglinton

Review by Shane Walker | 07.01.2021

James Eglinton has written an important, elegant, and scholarly introduction to Bavinck’s life and thought.

Finding Elders in Immigrant Churches

By Luis Cardenas | 06.16.2021

As pastors faithfully shepherd those in their care and train new leaders, Christ will continue to make sure his church is supplied with more leaders who are eager to equip the saints for the work of ministry.