Leadership

13 Pillars for Planting Healthy Churches
By Matt Rogers | 04.11.2022What 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 | 03.18.2022What 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 | 03.14.2022My 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 | 01.17.2022I 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 | 01.13.2022This 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 | 01.05.2022I 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 | 11.16.2021When 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 | 10.21.2021The 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 | 10.14.2021Charles 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 | 09.20.20219Marks 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 | 09.08.2021To 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 | 08.26.2021Croft 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 | 07.26.2021When 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 | 07.01.2021James Eglinton has written an important, elegant, and scholarly introduction to Bavinck’s life and thought.

Finding Elders in Immigrant Churches
By Luis Cardenas | 06.16.2021As 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.