Episode 148: On How A Culture of Discipling + Lay Elders = Church Planting
How can you cultivate a culture of church planting? Find out on this episode of Pastors Talk, as Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman dive into how cultivating discipleship and promoting lay elders creates a culture of church-planting. In this discussion, they walk through how to disciple your church members and encourage lay elders to rise up among your congregation. They deliberate the kind of person who should be a lay elder and finish their conversation by explaining how this culture of discipleship creates mature leaders who desire to plant churches.
- A Plurality of Elders Promotes Church Vitality
- The Importance of a Culture Of Discipling
- How to Cultivate Discipleship
- Who Should Be an Elder?
- How Does Discipleship Create a Culture of Church Planting?
Additional Resources
Book: Discipling: How To Help Others Follow Jesus, by Mark Dever
Article: How Did Charles Spurgeon Address Contemporary Issues in His Preaching?, by Alex DiPrima and Geoff Chang
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
On How A Culture of Discipling + Lay Elders = Church Planting
Mark Dever:
Hello, that’s Jonathan Leeman over there.
Jonathan Leeman:
Those words came from the one and only Mark Dever.
Mark Dever:
And we are here for Pastors Talk.
Jonathan Leeman:
Where pastors talk about building healthy churches. Learn more at 9Marks.org.
Mark Dever:
For the glory of God.
Jonathan Leeman:
And the joy of the nations.
Mark Dever:
Amen.
Jonathan Leeman:
Mark, I thought—
Mark Dever:
What did Alex Duke tell us to talk about today?
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you want to talk about that?
Mark Dever:
Not really.
Jonathan Leeman:
He said, let’s talk about—first he said sabbaticals, but then we changed that to cleaning the membership rolls. I think that’d be a good conversation to talk about.
Mark Dever:
That is valuable. It’s necessary for there to be holiness in the church and reflect the character of God.
Jonathan Leeman:
Sometimes though, you have bees in your bonnet.
Mark Dever:
So true.
Jonathan Leeman:
And I saw a tweet of yours recently in which—is this a bee in your bonnet? Culture of discipleship or discipling, what it?
Mark Dever:
Discipling.
A Plurality of Elders Cultivates Church Vitality
Jonathan Leeman:
Discipling, plus plurality of elders equals new churches being planted.
Mark Dever:
Here’s what was behind that. I have all kinds of conversations with pastors or other Christians who are interested in seeing churches prosper.
And they’ll say, listen, on paper, everything you’re advocating, this church seems to have, and yet it doesn’t seem to be vital. It doesn’t seem to be reproducing other churches or doesn’t even seem to be raising up more and more elders itself.
Jonathan Leeman:
They’re saying this to you?
Mark Dever:
To me.
Jonathan Leeman:
Saying, Mark, everything you’re advocating,
Mark Dever:
It’s good.
Jonathan Leeman:
With your 9Marks, that’s great.
Plurality of Elders
Mark Dever:
It’s good, but in this church over here that I know of or that I’m a part of, we’re not seeing the vitality that you seem to experience and advocate for these things. And so I don’t remember who I was having the conversation with, but it was somebody in the last few days. I said, yeah, I think it’s really the combination of having a plurality of elders so that you don’t just have people whose job it is to be a preacher, but every man in the church can aspire to this.
Jonathan Leeman:
So you mean non-staff elders, lay elders.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s right. Having a plurality of elders in a context where the yeast of that discipling culture, where everybody realizes their responsibility for the other members of the church. You don’t have to be on staff, you don’t have to be an elder.
As a Christian, I’m responsible for the other Christians in the church. I want to do others good spiritually. That’s my basic stance as a follower of Christ, to help others follow Christ.
Jonathan Leeman:
That and Ordinary Christianity is that.
Mark Dever:
Yes, that I would say is missing from a lot of churches. It’s not clearly taught and it’s not clearly an example or experienced.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Raising Up Elders
Mark Dever:
But when you do have that as a typical part of a church, not perfectly, but actually work through the whole of it, the whole thing is kind of like a pot that’s boiling. And then when you give structure to that through a plurality of elders, it’s not capped.
There’s just a preacher that you’re paid or the staff and that’s it. You either do this your job or that’s it. But where it can, individuals can be raised up to serve as elders. So to do even more formal official work in leading the church and in teaching God’s word in the church without it being their job.
If you have that structure, then that tends to act as an updraft on all the people and it tends to create more leaders in the church. And what happens is that eldership then tends to grow and expand.
And you start getting more people who are more interested in handling God’s Word publicly and more competent at it. And what naturally happens from that as things fall over and their fruitfulness coming out of the pan as it were, is you start having other churches planted or pastors going to dying churches and trying to help them turn around.
It’s interesting because as I was reading this dissertation by Geoff Chang on Spurgeon’s ecclesiology, and I see the effect his church had on the churches in London. I think by the end of his ministry, like half the Baptist Church in London really had come about or been revitalized through the work out of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Spurgeon’s Church.
And I reflected on the ministry of John Piper in Minneapolis, and I reflected on the ministry of John MacArthur in Los Angeles. I think I saw these men are committed to preaching God’s Word.
The Lord causes their church to prosper. Spiritual life and vitality become more common in the church. There’s a large eldership, interesting, Spurgeon set up elders when he got there. There were no elders when he went to New Park Street, as it was then called.
Piper had no elders when he got there, he set up elders. I don’t know that Grace community if they had elders or not, but I’m sure John had a hand in sort of redoing what they did.
Jonathan Leeman:
He wrote that book, Elders, early on.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, as did Piper. Piper wrote one too.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, both of them, that’s right, that’s right.
Mark Dever:
And so Spurgeon was one of them…
Jonathan Leeman:
I just say it’s something they knew to emphasize.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I see these commonalities of…Where you can move any one of them and things are missing. So for example, you can want to see churches revitalized and planted and you can have a lay eldership, but if there’s no basic culture of discipling, if there’s no yeast at work, nothing’s happening in the loaf.
It’s just kind of laying there. There’s not that pressing expectation on every member. Like you talked about, and I think Congregations Authority, your little book, and certainly in your book on Congregationalism, Don’t Fight Your Church Member, how… Every member of the church has a responsibility to help others grow in Christ, especially other members of that local congregation.
Well, if you don’t have that, then you’re missing this crucial element and you don’t find more pastors being raised up and therefore pushed out with new churches getting started or old churches in the area being revitalized, let alone people going overseas as missionaries and pastors in other lands.
Creating More Leaders for a Church Plant
Jonathan Leeman:
So step one, a culture of discipling. That culture of discipling, Creates Step two, more and more leaders. Those more and more leaders have a way
Mark Dever:
Harnessed, trained, cultivated as elders.
Jonathan Leeman:
Those leaders are doing that. And what they’re doing is raising up still more people and helping redefine what ordinary Christianity looks like. Hey, Christianity folks looks like caring about other sheep. Whether you’re an elder or not, and elders are modeling that, that creates this bubbling up, boiling over, spilling out—
Mark Dever:
With God’s help.
Jonathan Leeman:
With God’s help into other churches.
Mark Dever:
Yes, I don’t want to treat it like it’s a mechanism, you just set it up, turn the wheel and it goes, but those are the normal means it seems God uses.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now you started by saying, you started with that illustration of the guy who said, Mark, we have what you have on paper, but we’re not seeing it here.
Mark Dever:
You know, I’ve seen that over the years.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. Okay. So what is that guy, that church missing?
Mark Dever:
Let’s say that they believe in regenerate church membership. They are more or less vigilant about practicing it. They have an exposition ministry, they’re committed to biblical theology, but for whatever reason, they haven’t really emphasized personal discipling and therefore they’re not really seeing a lot of people grow or be involved in helping people grow spiritually and therefore they’re not seeing a lot of new elders raised up.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right, right.
Mark Dever:
So the whole thing becomes a bit stagnant.
The Importance of a Culture Of Discipling
Jonathan Leeman:
And at that point, you essentially have a professionalized version of… Christianity because you have the pastor being the holy one, being the righteous dude who’s… But then you have everybody else. And do you think that’s pretty common? Churches to lack that kind of culture of discipling?
Mark Dever:
I think the church that we’ve described that lacks that culture of discipling is better than most churches.
Jonathan Leeman:
Because most churches don’t even have the plurality of elders, they don’t have expositional preaching.
Mark Dever:
Correct.
Jonathan Leeman:
But you’re saying this is another crucial bet.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I’m saying you get a number of these other things right and yet what seems to be the fruitful pairing is that culture of discipling with the plurality of leadership. It’s when you get both those things going that then the pot begins to boil, it seems in a practical sense.
Christianity Means Discipling
Jonathan Leeman:
I was having a conversation a little while ago with a higher up at a missions agency. And we were kind of thinking through church planting and how to do it and so forth, especially as an overseas. And he wanted to classify everything in terms of, advanced Christian, medium Christian, basic believer Christian, right?
Like the mature folk, tier three, and then the kind of average folk, tier two, and then tier one, your new believers. And he wanted to come up with programs for each of those different tiers.
And as he was describing that, I remember thinking about how what I’ve seen you do at Capitol Hill Baptist, which is almost everything is in one tier, Christianity. Christianity means caring about other sheep. Christianity means discipling.
There’s a strange sense in which you flatten those different tiers just down to one track. Love your neighbor, love God, love fellow church members, share the gospel, get to work, everyone.
Mark Dever:
I don’t want that geometric pressure from 1 John to love your neighbor or you’re lying about loving the invisible God. I don’t want that pressure to be taken off anybody.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right, exactly.
Mark Dever:
And that pressure exerts itself differently on the one-day-old Christian, the one-year-old Christian, the superzealous still at five years old, and the 30-year Christian.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right, right, exactly.
Mark Dever:
And that’s great. It kind of self-regulates, I think, as to how much the person feels that pressure, what they can see to do, what opportunities are there. So you don’t have to cut it up in baby bits for them.
You can, through staff, definitely cut up some ministry. In small bites to begin to get people going. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think we do that. Small groups do that. That’s a fine thing to do.
But people have to realize that is not the golden elixir. That’s like a very minor part of helping some people get started.
What is an Elder’s Job?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, and you think about what the Bible, what structure the Bible does give us in the elders, two things occur to me based on this conversation. Number one, what is an elder’s job? An elder’s job is to exemplify ordinary Christianity.
You know, the Carson quote about the elder qualifications, not being extraordinary things, but ordinary things that he does extraordinarily well. In other words, the elders, the guy who comes along and says, hey, fellow Christians, live like me.
I’m not this separate class aristocracy versus non-peasant. I’m just, I’m one of you and you’re called to live like me. Follow me as I follow Christ, right? Here’s how you play the piano, here’s how you swing the golf club.
So number one, an elder’s job as this separate office, Is simply to do what everybody else is called to do. The other thing that occurs to me is how relatedly, how mere that structure is.
The Bible doesn’t say a lot. It doesn’t develop these big Roman Catholic-looking hierarchies, right? It’s pretty mere, which would make sense of what you’re describing as the connection between a culture of discipling and this fairly mere office of Lay elders.
Mark Dever:
It lets you concentrate on the bottom line on what’s actually happening, not a thousand different metrics that you can fill in reports on and then compare month to month, year to year, decade to decade, and then get your sense of fulfillment or I’ve been faithful through that. Rather, you’re looking at it.
It’s like watching your kids grow up, man. I mean, you’ve got this right now with your kids at home. You see them over the years developing. And as they develop, you’ve got this joy, though you often don’t take time to look at that.
I don’t mean Jonathan in particular, but in parents when they’re in the middle. But they look at some things they weren’t looking at a year ago, that this really needs to happen now, or that really needs to happen. Well, you don’t need to build a whole formal program for it.
You know what it is by your competencies as a human being yourself, and by your love for these younger human beings who are your offspring. And it’s the same way, I think, in a church with…
We know what it is to go through the Christian life, those of us who are Christians and are mature. We still have things to learn, we will till we die.
And yet, it’s not rocket science to figure out with this person who’s been walking with the Lord for one week or one month or one year some of the issues that they’re facing. And what you do is just again and again, you do the same kind of work as you encourage them to think through things, you help them do that, you bring scripture to bear on it, you pray with them.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now you’re not saying all of this is more important than the proclamation of scripture and expositional preaching and the proclamation of the gospel.
Mark Dever:
Certainly not.
How to Cultivate a Culture of Discipling
Jonathan Leeman:
But you are saying, hey, church planter, missionary, and overseas context, as well as, you know, downtown Washington, DC, Baltimore, whatever, I want to make sure these two things are prominently on your to-do list, cultivating a culture of discipling and establishing a plurality of elders, by which you mean not just paid, but also unpaid elders.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, both of those are worth separate conversations all by themselves, but can you give us a thumbnail sketch of, okay, Mark, I got you. I haven’t had time to go listen to the podcast on cultivating a culture of discipling, but you’re walking in Capitol Hill Baptist for the first time or some other church. What do you do to do that?
Mark Dever:
I wrote a little blue book called Discipling. You can get a copy of it and read it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Buy my book.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. It’s, brother, seriously, those are sermons I preach here specifically to engender that in our church and to instruct in that. So yeah, it’s a matter of looking at scripture, hearing the commands to love, specifically yoking them to membership in a local congregation that is a stated set group of people, and then looking at what happens when you cultivate those kinds of relationships.
So I’m holding in my little hand something from the mid-20th century when Broadman supplies, as it then was, B&H, Lifeway, published a little card with the church covenant on it. You know, that, cause those kinds of obligations used to be front and center in the minds of members, that is of Christians in their local churches.
And it’s not so much that way anymore. When you read stuff in polity or in, you know, from 17th, 18th, 19th century and pastors are laying out expectations, responsibilities of church members, we’re many times scandalized today cause we think, oh, we’re just trying to get people to join.
We want to make it seem as attractive as possible. We want to treat them kind of like consumers. And what we see is folks who went before us were like, well, really there are very specific things that we’re supposed to do to show the love that we have for one another. And part of that love is going to have to be a caring for each other in such a way that will bring about spiritual growth.
Jonathan Leeman:
I appreciate your answer because the first thing I was thinking when I said, okay, how do you cultivate a culture of discipling was something like, I don’t know, you know, spend time with younger men or women, model what disciple you want.
Mark Dever:
Read my book.
Jonathan Leeman:
Whereas you went right to the church covenant, that is to say, cultivating a mindset within the congregation as a whole who are responsible for each other.
Mark Dever:
And the only thing I’m doing with the church covenant is just a summary of scripture. I’m going to scripture.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right, right, right.
Culturing Discipleship Means Loving Well
Mark Dever:
It’s just the one and others, it’s the commands to love, it’s the commands, specific commands of how we care for each other, how we encourage, how we advise, how we admonish.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, you’re going to Scripture, but you’re going to Scriptures that call attention to my corporate identity. To be a Christian means I’m united to these brothers and sisters.
Mark Dever:
Well, it doesn’t just mean I’m a part of the universal church. Very often, people say, you’re a Christian, hey, by virtue of the fact that I’m a Christian, I’m a member of the church. Well, yeah, in the sense of the universal church, the invisible church.
But for that to become most meaningful for you in your experience and for others, you need to be a member of the local visible church. And that means a particular set of unsperically sanctified centers like yourself.
Jonathan Leeman:
Which is to say, cultivating a culture of discipleship, discipling, depends upon teaching church membership, cultivating church membership, helping people understand that.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, thank you. That church membership is simply the reification, the sort of making a thing in and of itself of those obligations and the experience of living that Christian life together.
It’s stepping up to a certain group of people, these 70 people right here, and saying, hey, brothers and sisters, I mean to be accountable to you and for you. So, I expect to, with some degree of seriousness, to be involved in your business and you in mine.
Jonathan Leeman:
So, number one, cultivate a culture of discipling. Number two, raise up—
Discipling is a Part of Discipleship
Mark Dever:
And on discipling, because you misspoke and said discipleship, we started doing it a moment ago, and just the distinction I’m always trying to make, because I think it’s very helpful, discipleship, I would just mean it’s our following Christ.
Jonathan Leeman:
Me and Jesus.
Mark Dever:
Well, yeah, it’s all we’re called to do. Discipling is one part of our discipleship where we turn and help others be disciples.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. Okay, so number one, that needs to be prominent on my agenda list, stepping into a church. Prominent also is—
Mark Dever:
Brother, that’s specifically for you even as a pastor. That’s not—
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s what I mean, as a pastor.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. It’s not just this is for every member. It is for every member, but every member is not going to know it if the pastor is not thinking about it, the pastor is not teaching it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Mark Dever:
The pastor has to set the expectations for the members, for the average Christian.
Who Should Be an Elder?
Jonathan Leeman:
Number two then is raising up lay elders, setting that as a standard, helping that to be something that all the men in the congregation in a sense aspire to. I think I’ve told a story before about how you said to my younger brother when he was first here, this was like 20 years ago, and I think he would say, if I can quote him, you know, a fairly immature Christian, not walking and living quite like he should.
Mark Dever:
He’s taller than you are.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s true, a couple of inches. You said to him, Philip, have you aspired to be an elder or do you want to be an elder? And the thought had never occurred to him.
And just your planting of that seed made him go away and think, no, why not? Why shouldn’t I? And that’s what I mean when I say you’re planting this idea of ordinary Christianity means, in some sense, aspiring to, whether formally and recognized or not.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Help other sheep. Any other things that you’ve done, you did to cultivate that in the hearts of the men in the congregation when you got here?
Can Women Be Elders?
Mark Dever:
Well, yeah, I think I was clear in my public teaching and I was clear with women. This involves the sisters. This is not, I understand sisters can’t be elders in the same sense, but they’re half the congregation, you know.
In many congregations, they’re more than half the congregation. They need to understand all of these same things. These are not just obligations for men. These are obligations for women.
The women need to understand that yes, they’re responsible for their own families in a special way, praise God for that, but they also have responsibility for the other members of the church. Now, the closer they are to those other members, the more those responsibilities are realistic, the further away they are, the more attenuated they are.
But the sisters are an absolutely essential part of this sort of experience of the church. And what I find again and again is mature sisters, and I can just rattle off names in our congregation of women who, yeah, I’m not surprised she’s doing that. I’m not surprised she’s doing that.
The women who are going to be looking out for others, who are going to be actively caring for others, spiritually taking initiative, looking to make sure this newborn is like, you know, getting cared for spiritually speaking. I mean, they’re the people who are doing that kind of mothering in the church, just like the elders are doing the fathering.
And they are going to understand the emphasis on men teaching. Because when the men are teaching God’s Word, that’s going to encourage everybody. The whole thing gets lifted up by that.
And you have to be clear on that with the sisters in the congregation, not so much for the ones who are doing it because they kind of get it already, but for the younger ones who are coming along, and particularly because we’re in a very aggrieved culture. And so, if they step into a place where they’re told a negative, women cannot be elders.
Yeah, most men cannot be elders, but I mean, okay, I understand you’re given a category that seems very significant there. You need to be clear, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bear immense spiritual possibilities and responsibilities in this congregation.
Jonathan Leeman:
And do great good.
Mark Dever:
Oh, yeah, our church was founded by a sister, you know. So, women can do a lot of good.
Jonathan Leeman:
So, you’re thinking simultaneously, I want to create a culture of men as fathers, but also women as mothers.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
And these two things help each other out.
Mark Dever:
Oh yeah. The whole thing, I think, you certainly have spiritual cross-pollination between genders. You have men who are helpful to women, although they’re not discipling them in the same way they would a man.
Women are helpful to men, they’re not discipling in the same way they would a woman. But there’s a lot of working togetherness and it’s that that creates this whole sort of ecosystem of spiritual growth being normal. One of the things I think first got me on the 9Marks stuff was, after I became a Christian as a teenager, looking around my church and realizing that it seemed to be a little unusual when somebody was obviously growing as a Christian.
It’s like they stuck out. And I thought, why isn’t it more unusual when somebody’s not growing as a Christian? Why isn’t that Christian growth just sort of normal? Not universal, but normal in a church.
And it’s more unusual for people who are spiritually sick need to go to the spiritual hospital. You know, instead of everybody living in the spiritual hospital as it were. Well, noticing that, then you begin to think, okay, well, what’s gone on that’s made us all okay with settling with this desultory low level of spirituality?
And it’s all the stuff we talked about, 9Marks, it’s not entertaining conversion, it’s unregenerate membership, no effective membership, it’s the church not being full of expectations for you as Christians.
How Does Discipleship Create a Culture of Church Planting?
Jonathan Leeman:
So, a culture of discipling plus growth of a plurality of elders equals more and more church planning because you have mature and maturing Christians bubbling over eventually wanting to lead eventually. It’s like, we don’t have enough spaces here for all of you to teach.
We got such a deep bench. You got to go elsewhere and people, their hearts are spilling over to go elsewhere.
Mark Dever:
And they’re coming from all over the place. And so a clump of them live in Chevrolet. Well, let’s, let’s see if let’s grab a teacher and go there, start something there. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
So by God’s grace, we’ve seen, you’ve seen a lot of that here.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, some I’d like to see more, but yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Other churches where you can think of that happening. I’m thinking of, for instance, John Fulmer’s church, UCCD. You see a lot of that there. Other positive testimonies
Mark Dever:
Tim Keller’s church, Redeemer in New York City.
Jonathan Leeman:
A lot of growth of leadership there and planting of others.
Mark Dever:
Yep, yep. Certainly the churches I’ve mentioned, John MacArthur’s, John Piper’s. You’ve definitely seen that with Michael Lawrence’s church at Hinson in Portland.
Aaron Minnicoff is encouraging that at his church, Mount Vernon. Yeah, those are, I think, are sort of normal things in healthy growing churches. I think Paul Martin’s church in Toronto, I think—
Jonathan Leeman:
Ken Bugwas, he seems to be doing that.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I think certainly Matthias Lohmann’s in Munich.
Should Every Church Be Church Planting?
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s funny, we think of, okay, you know, sometimes you use a phrase, oh, that church is a leadership factory. And again, what you’re saying is, shouldn’t every church be increasingly that?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I think some churches are placed in more propitious circumstances. So, you know, this church here is in a metro area with a bunch of colleges. I understand. We have kind of optimal circumstances.
Jonathan Leeman:
There’s a supply.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. We have optimal circumstances, which if I’m in a town of 790 people that’s declining in an agricultural area with a stagnant population, it’s going to feel a little different. Faithfulness is going to feel different.
But there too, there are advantages to knowing somebody for three decades. And there is a kind of depth in spiritual growth that you can experience. It’s much harder in a setting with a lot of turnover like Spurgeon’s Church would have had in London.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. So more commonly urban contexts have that potential or at least a supply of college students or something.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Good B to have on your bonnet, Mark. Any other thoughts on this? And then I’m going to change the subject very briefly.
Mark Dever:
Sure. Yeah. I would just pray for your church that the Lord would help you to have more and more of this culture of discipling and more and more supply you with the gift of elders and through them would just redouble the efforts to grow in Christ.
When Should a Pastor Tell His Church He Has Decided to Leave?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, amen. Well, as I mentioned in our last episode, we’re going to try this new feature where we throw in a mailbag question right at the very end, something somebody’s written and said, hey, what about this?
And if you do have a question for a future episode, send your questions to mailbag@9Marks.org, that’s mailbag@9Marks.org. Somebody asks, Mark, if a pastor is considering leaving a ministry, How much should he involve his current church in his decision to leave, especially if he’s leaving on good terms?
Mark Dever:
I just had this conversation right before we were recording this talk. I was exhorting the brother who is looking at going to another church who said he could happily remain in the church where he is now for the rest of his life, which is something he wouldn’t have said maybe a few years ago, but praise God for the work he’s done.
But he’s looking at another situation that seems needy and that he and his wife would be happy to go look after. And he figures that his church is in good shape that somebody else can more easily step in and take that. I said, well, listen, have you talked to your elders about this? He said, no.
I said, dear brother, you must involve them as soon as you can because they need to understand what’s going on in your soul. They’re worthy of that kind of trust.
You need to tell them this is not a way to manipulate them to give you a raise or because you really are committed to going someplace else. You really do mean you are happy to stay here the rest of your life, you need to tell them that. Let them believe that.
Jonathan Leeman:
And tell them before you’ve decided while you’re still thinking it through.
Mark Dever:
Let them be a part of the decision process, the releasing you to go or maybe the imploring you like, no, we think your work is not done here. We do think you need to stay. And perhaps even getting the elders of those two congregations together on a Zoom call to let them speak with each other and sort of negotiate and think together and pray together.
Jonathan Leeman:
What’s best for the kingdom.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
And telling the whole church.
Mark Dever:
Depends on kind of what the decision is, how the decision will be received, what the maturity level of the church is, how you think, how much time you have for the window of decision. So it depends on circumstances. But yes, as much as possible, being as open as possible.
Jonathan Leeman:
Can you envision telling the church before you’ve made the decision?
Mark Dever:
Oh yeah. I’ve always had a heart for Southeast Asia and we know a friend who’s been there for several years who’s thinking about coming back to the States because of their parents. So, my wife and I have been praying about this.
We’re so happy here. This church is a joy to us. If this had come five years ago, we might have left for other reasons. Laugh, laugh, laugh.
But now, we would love to stay here for the rest of our lives. But we feel that maybe it’s because the church is at such a good place that the Lord has now brought this to us.
Jonathan Leeman:
All of that presumes a pretty healthy, mature church. You could certainly envision a situation where you wouldn’t tell them before the decision is made.
Mark Dever:
I think so, though. I think every time you do that, you do teach the congregation to be a little suspicious of the pastors and not trust them as innocently as we would like them to.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. You want to veer the whole ship in the direction of more transparency rather than less.
Mark Dever:
I do.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Good answer. All right, man. Thanks for your time.
Mark Dever:
Thank you, brother.
Pastors Talk
A weekly conversation between Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever about practical aspects of the Christian life and pastoral ministry.
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