On Green Dot and Red Dot Churches (Pastors Talk, Ep. 229)
What are red-dot and green-dot churches? On this episode of Pastors Talk, Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever discuss how churches should be “green dot” churches, meaning they should be net exporters and focus on sending people out to share the gospel. They talk about how small churches may face more challenges when pursuing an exporter mentality but should strive for it regardless. They address what you should do if your pastor does not have an exporter vision for your church and finish by fleshing out five qualities to try to cultivate if pastors want to make their church a “green dot” church.
- What Are Green Dot and Red Dot Churches?
- Should Churches Be Net Exporters?
- Can Any Size Church Be a Green Dot Church?
- What to Do When a Pastor Doesn’t Have a Green Dot Vision
- Five Qualities to Raise Up
Related Resources:
- “Discipling” by Mark Dever
- “Evangelism” by Mack Stiles
- “Elders–The Church’s Lead Disciple-Makers” by Jeramie Rinne
- “A Foolproof Discipling Program: Corporate Worship” by John Sarver
- “Cultivating a Culture of Discipling” by Mark Dever (video)
- “How can I as a church leader help cultivate a culture of discipleship?“
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Mark Dever:
This is Jonathan Leeman.
Jonathan Leeman:
And this is Mark Dever.
Mark Dever:
And we’re here to talk to you about things pastors are interested in.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yes, and if you want to learn more about our little ministry called 9Marks, visit 9marks.org.
Mark Dever:
That’s it. 25 years old this year.
Jonathan Leeman:
Uh-huh.
Mark Dever:
It’s the silver anniversary of 9Marks.
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen. What a…
Mark Dever:
So we are going to take all the 9Marks silver and melt it all down.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well.
Mark Dever:
And give it out as free articles online.
Jonathan Leeman:
And podcasts like this one.
Mark Dever:
Like this one. How much does this one cost to listen to? By the way,
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s free!
Mark Dever:
Still worth every penny. 25 years of value, I say.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, Lord willing.
What Are Green Dot and Red Dot Churches?
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen. One of the things you’ve been talking about, not over 25 years, but maybe seven or eight. How long you’ve been talking about green-dot and red-dot churches?
Mark Dever:
I don’t know. A couple of years ago, maybe that just came to me as an image.
Jonathan Leeman:
What do you mean by that?
Mark Dever:
Net exporters, net importers.
Jonathan Leeman:
If you’re around our circles at all, you may have heard this phrase because it does seem to be thrown out a lot. I think it’s a compelling idea, which is why I thought maybe it’s worth a 20-minute conversation.
Mark Dever:
You said 20.
Jonathan Leeman:
Go ahead, green dot, red dot, what is it?
Mark Dever:
Net exporters of God’s word, net importers. That is, are you a congregation who by the grace of God is seeing young preachers raised up, men and women in your congregation equipped to lead Bible studies, to teach others, or are you a congregation that tends to have to bring in teaching from elsewhere?
Jonathan Leeman:
Are you just saying, Hey, your church needs to be about making disciples? It seems like you’re saying something more specific than that.
Mark Dever:
I think I’m saying something more specific than that. You’re right. It is a subset of that. You’re exactly right.
Churches Should Make Teachers, Not Just Disciples
Jonathan Leeman:
So you’re talking about teachers.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. And certainly, there’s an obligation for us. I think we want to expect that the Lord give us elders, but I think beyond elders, I think there’s a word ministry that should be typical of all Christians, men, and women, as we obey.
Paul’s commands to speak to each other in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, you know, to counsel one another in Romans 15. So there are one another commands. I think Tony Payne in Australia has just done a dissertation on the word ministry of the average member, the average Christian, not just elders and pastors, but how all Christians have an obligation to minister to each other with the word.
Are Green Dot Churches Biblical?
Jonathan Leeman:
Where do you see this in the Bible?
Mark Dever:
Well, that’s what I was just saying with Romans 15 counseling one another.
Jonathan Leeman:
I thought you were going to go to 2 Timothy 2. Or is that something different?
Mark Dever:
It’s the same thing. It’s more specific.
Jonathan Leeman:
“You’ve heard from me”
Mark Dever:
That’s more specific. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s certainly true. 2 Timothy 2.
Should Churches Hold a Catholic Vision?
Jonathan Leeman:
So you’re talking about having a catholic vision? Like it’s just not you.
Mark Dever:
Certainly not a vision of the Pontiff of Rome.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, not that. Small c catholic. You’re trying to equip and help other churches elsewhere.
Mark Dever:
You want to see God’s word go forth.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Mark Dever:
And that means in your church in a continuing fashion, so into the future, beyond even the current instrumentalities and other churches be raised up and equipped in your area and beyond.
Jonathan Leeman:
So some practical examples of that would be…
Mark Dever:
John Joseph preaching his first sermon here maturing as a preacher, and then you coming and telling me, I want him as my pastor…
Jonathan Leeman:
In Cheverly.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. What else? Because it’s not just that you do lots of stuff to be in that exporter.
Should Churches Let People Who Are Not Ordained Preach?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Trying to make sure that on Sunday evenings we have people preach who are not ordained. Trying to make sure we, Christian Barnes preached this last Sunday night, a physical therapist in the congregation did a wonderful job.
Jonathan Leeman:
And just to fill in the blank, that’s because Christian Barnes then becomes somebody who can handle God’s word as you continue to do that and potentially be an elder in your church or go somewhere else.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
So you’re building up a deep bench.
Mark Dever:
His dad, Clift, is a pastor in El Paso and so he’s heard preaching growing up. So he knows preaching, but here in this church, we have tried to lovingly press him to preach himself.
Alberto Jaquez. Some people asked me questions about that this last summer at SBC. He is a real person, not just a made-up person, but he is a real and genuine elder and pastor of our church, and he can teach God’s Word.
Sam Koo, who is increasingly sitting in for him. As Alberto ages on, there are some of the tasks that he’s handing over now to Sam Koo. Sam is himself trained in God’s Word.
Academically and has a great desire to teach it to other people. I, as his pastor, feel like I have a vested interest in trying to encourage Sam in that and help him find ways he can teach God’s word to others.
But he doesn’t need to wait for me. He can start an evangelistic Bible study with non-Christians he gets to know. He can just start edifying guys in the church and meeting up one-on-one.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. So this is bigger than-
Mark Dever:
And 9Marks. And so far as I work with 9Marks, we try to do things to encourage preachers. So we’re doing that in not just our church, but hopefully through 9Marks and loads of churches.
Jonathan Leeman:
You just gave several, well, I guess not with Sam. I was going to say you gave several examples of raising up pastors and preachers, but this is bigger than that.
Mark Dever:
This is bigger than that. Dear, brother, it’s like your book “Word-Centered Church”, where the word reverberates throughout the membership of the church.
But the pastors are important and the elders are important. They are where the vibrations in the speaker begin.
How Do Green Dot Churches Impact Women in the Church?
Jonathan Leeman:
You said you want green-dot churches to impact the way women think about the church and what women are doing. You mentioned that before. What would be an example of that?
Mark Dever:
Well, a couple of ways. One, sometimes people have said, Mark, this emphasis you have on raising up preachers through your internship programs really is discouraging to the women because it doesn’t focus on women.
And I say, well, I don’t think it’s discouraging to them very long or not if they’re very thoughtful or not if they ever move, but because then they’re going to be glad to have a good pastor where they’re going. So a good pastor helps absolutely everybody else. It helps the old people, it helps the youth, it helps everybody.
Also, the emphasis I’m talking about is not merely for pastors and preachers, but it’s for all of us getting competent, handling God’s Word, understanding it, and being able to teach it. I’m just very desirous of seeing sisters be able to understand and have a desire to share God’s Word with others.
When I have a sermon reading of my sermon that I hope to preach the next morning on Saturday nights here in my study, half the people here are women usually. And some of the best comments, Kelly Miller and Gio Lynch make superb comments, as does Eric Beach.
Jonathan Leeman:
I was going to raise that because Taylor mentioned to me recently that the majority of people sitting in on your Sunday night or Saturday night sermon readings are sometimes women and single women in the church. So…
Mark Dever:
It’s true. Or married when Mary Beth Freeman came in last Saturday night. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, it just encourages me that the ladies in the church have the ability to come and help you in some sense, craft your sermon. I mean, you’re doing a lion’s share, but they’re,
Mark Dever:
It’s my sermon. You know, feel free to give me, your feedback. I might take it. I might not, but it’s really useful for me to have it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
But Kelly, just this last Sunday night or Saturday night, she was incredibly thoughtful. I was in a very difficult passage, Job 3, where Job is lamenting his life. And Kelly brought up the idea that, you know, this is one of the arguments that’s used about abortion and euthanasia, that this life would not be worth living.
Therefore we should end it now, which is a kind of parallel to the way Job was thinking. I didn’t have time to get into that because of all the moral issues it raised, but it showed the quality of her moral and theological reflection to bring that up.
Should Churches Be Net Exporters?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Back to green-dot, red-dot specifically.
Mark Dever:
I think sometimes pastors feel bad about focusing on people who are going to be pastors or preachers. They feel like they should be, you know, ministering to the weakest, ministering to the ones who are in trouble, ministering to the most extreme cases of want spiritually. And while evangelism is good and mercy ministries are good, somebody better be caring for that next generation of elders or you’re going to burn yourself out.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, you have Jesus’ parable about the shepherd going after the one and leaving the 99. So surely that… sheep who’s stuck in the canyon or who’s caught in a wolf’s mouth.
Mark Dever:
Definitely requires attention.
Jonathan Leeman:
Does need to be pursued by the pastor.
Mark Dever:
Definitely, no question.
Jonathan Leeman:
But then you put that against other texts.
Mark Dever:
The overall pattern of Jesus’ ministry, is where he brings the 12 together and hangs out with them a ton. And he does that because he wants to start something that’s going to affect the whole world.
Jonathan Leeman:
Wouldn’t you say Mark though, that your ministry is particularly marked by raising up pastors in a way that is unique?
Mark Dever:
Oh, I wouldn’t know how to assess that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Like that’s a burden and a gift of yours that not everybody shares or needs to share, true or false, every other pastor. Some guys are going to be all about counseling. Some guys are going be all about.
Mark Dever:
I trust just like in the body, the Lord has different gifts. So I assume even among pastors, he distributes different burdens, but I do think it should be a pretty common burden of pastors.
Jonathan Leeman:
If you’re a pastor, you should care about raising up the next generation of pastors and part of what you give your week to.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. You got to have the guy who’s going to take your place.
Jonathan Leeman:
And that plays a central role in being a net exporter of a church as opposed to an importer.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. Of a church. I love the fact that when other churches in our area over the years, whether it’s been sometimes PCA or Acts 29 or E-Free or Bible church, certainly Baptists have needed to have a Sunday out. Maybe they were smaller churches.
They phoned our church and they’ve known that. We’ll send them an expositional preacher and we’re able to do that by God’s grace. And usually not even any guys on staff, I mean just members of the church who are good expositional preachers.
Jonathan Leeman:
Let me ask two questions that kind of fit together.
Mark Dever:
Nick Gardner, Drew Allenspach, Matthew Freeman. Yeah.
Can Any Size Church Be a Green Dot Church?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Praise the Lord. Two connected questions. Number one, I assume this is not just for big churches.
Number two, small churches too, this exporter versus importer mentality, green dot versus red dot. I assume it’s not just for big churches that small churches can participate.
Nonetheless, I also assume true or false, there may be more challenges for the small church. And if so, what does the pastor of the small church do?
Mark Dever:
Pray. The Lord is very clear in Matthew 9 that when you look at the harvest and it seems overwhelmingly large, you pray for the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers.
Jonathan Leeman:
But you want the small church guy to do that as much as a big church guy. Your church was once small.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. Yeah, when I got here there were 130 people attending. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m inclined to think you aren’t doing much different in those days than you are now though.
Mark Dever:
I’m doing exactly the same stuff. So tonight I’ve got, I’m texting right now with a guy who I hope is going to come to Bible study. He’s either not a believer or he’s just become a believer.
And he was texting me yesterday about wanting to be a believer. And so I’m hoping he’s going to come to Bible study tonight and he and I will talk afterward, which is exactly what I was doing with Ryan Townsend 25 years ago or John Fulmer.
Jonathan Leeman:
And giving some of the young guys who are further along opportunities to teach and preach.
Mark Dever:
Like Christian Barnes this last Sunday night.
Jonathan Leeman:
Creating opportunities in your church for that to happen.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Core Seminars or whatnot and Sunday nights.
Mark Dever:
Jonathan Leeman once upon a time had his first Sunday evening address at CHBC.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s true.
Mark Dever:
We probably located and broadcasted it.
Jonathan Leeman:
It might be there somewhere. It’s probably on a cassette tape.
Mark Dever:
That’s true. But we probably got it.
Jonathan Leeman:
So it might not exist actually.
Mark Dever:
Probably got an audio file of it somewhere.
How Do Pastors of Larger Churches Create Green Dot Churches?
Jonathan Leeman:
How should pastors of medium and big-sized churches build this into the culture of the church? Can they do it alone?
Mark Dever:
I think part of your public teaching about what it means to be a Christian needs to be that part of being a Christian is helping other people follow Christ. So that can’t be an added optional extra. That’s like basic.
And what that means is the main implement God will use as you try to help someone else grow in Christ is his word. So you yourself will become more familiar with and skilled in using God’s word in someone’s life. You do that in giving counsel individually, so you can do that in a small group or in a core seminar, Sunday school setting, or in a preaching setting.
Jonathan Leeman:
So it really is a cultural shift you’re looking for.
Mark Dever:
I want a culture of discipling.
Jonathan Leeman:
People are consumers.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Natively in our culture, we are natively consumers.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. But when I met John Joseph and when I met, when I met Jonathan Morgan, neither one of them was preachers. John was just converted and Jonathan was a youngish Christian, who was working for the government, and praise God now, John is your pastor, and Jonathan Morgan pastors with Dave Russell down in Charlotte. You know, we got to see their sort of first steps in ministry here in this church, enjoy having them as elders here at this church, and then see them go out from here.
Is Your Ministry Is Focused On Building Up Your Church?
Jonathan Leeman:
To go back to that word I used before, catholic small c, I’m inclined to say that that’s a huge part of it as well. That is to say, let me, let me provide a contrast like this. Is my ministry focused on building up my church?
And therefore we’re always trying to grow. We’re always trying to reach out and draw people in with good evangelistic and even good disciple-making things in mind versus a more, I would say kingdom-minded.
I want churches everywhere to be getting stronger. And therefore I’m willing to sacrifice a little bit of what’s good for us for the church down the street.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Yes. We do that all the time. You as an elder at Cheverly Baptist do that all the time in the way you go teach for Desiring God or go speak at a church in Florida.
Jonathan Leeman:
Or honestly in some ways more enjoyable is for the church down the street.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s right. Well, you don’t have to travel even. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Steve Unthank or something like that.
Mark Dever:
Or grace. Grace Baptist.
What to Do When a Pastor Doesn’t Have a Green Dot Vision
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. Uh, exactly. Okay. Suppose, suppose I’m a lay elder and I’m listening to this and I’m thinking, you know, my,
Mark Dever:
That’s so funny. That’s what you are.
Jonathan Leeman:
It is what I’m about to say. I’m not talking about John. Let’s just be clear.
Mark Dever:
All right.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m a lay older of a church. I’m an associate pastor. I’m a member of a church. I’m an engaged member. And, my senior pastor doesn’t really have this vision.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
I want to be. Well, that’s maybe my heart, I’m feeling that way a little bit.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Can Elders Carry Out Green Dot Visions By Themselves?
Jonathan Leeman:
And he’s kind of an introvert. He loves to study. He does great sermons.
I have no complaints. He’s a man of integrity. I don’t have a complaint.
It’s just, that, he doesn’t have this net exporter vision. Can we do it without him? Me and the other elders?
Mark Dever:
That’s a good question. I don’t know. Listener, what do you think? If there are two of you in the car right now, pause and talk to one another about this.
I’m sure the answer is yes. I don’t know how normal it would be and I think it would be harder than if the main preacher had the vision to do it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Kind of depends on the guy on top you’re saying.
Mark Dever:
It’s certainly helpful.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
But I would say you’re not going to turn a church’s direction around without the main preacher. I would not quite say that about this discipling culture of the church. I see how that could grow up even apart from the main preacher that the main preacher would be hugely helpful to it.
Jonathan Leeman:
I mean, I can imagine having an associate pastor and this is really his vision. He does a great job of raising people up and doing this sort of thing, even if he’s not the main preacher, certainly.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, Jamie Owens of the Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston is trying to build this kind of culture right now in his church.
Jonathan Leeman:
But he’s the lead guy.
Mark Dever:
He is the lead guy. That’s true.
Do Green Dot Churches Prioritize Missions?
Jonathan Leeman:
How does this intersect with the conversation about missions? I mean, shouldn’t we always be prioritizing churches and unreached places over and against what you’re talking about here?
Mark Dever:
Well, no, in the sense that if I’ve got a brother who’s about to go pastor a church in the next city, that’s not wrong of him to do that. It’s fine for somebody to pastor a church in Baltimore.
Jonathan Leeman:
Fine, but wouldn’t it be better for him to go overseas?
Mark Dever:
No, that’s it. That’s up to the Lord. No, I don’t want to say that. We certainly want people to go to places that are characterized by people not having heard the gospel.
You know, like Paul went to places where the gospel is not yet known. We definitely want people to do that, but we also want people to attend the flocks that are here.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
I would like both. I want people, I want pastors in Brazil and I want pastors in Oklahoma.
Jonathan Leeman:
And pastors in Northwest DC in PG County and in
Mark Dever:
Anacostia
Five Qualities to Raise Up Green Dot Churches
Jonathan Leeman:
Around us. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Uh, now in the past, I’ve talked, I’ve heard you talk about, what is it? The four or five things that you’re trying to raise up to make this green dot vision happen.
Mark Dever:
Well, I told pastors, you know, missions, church planting, raising of elders, evangelizing, and discipling. And I’ve said those things.
Jonathan Leeman:
That doesn’t go in a particular order. That’s just those five things altogether.
Mark Dever:
Right. Those things may seem unrelated, but I think they all have that same germ of understanding.
Jonathan Leeman:
Walk us through them.
Mark Dever:
That you’re following Jesus entails you’re helping others follow Jesus. I think we see that first most naturally with the discipling because it’s the easiest if Sam wants to follow the Lord. So you guys have lunch and you study through Ephesians together.
You know, you, the older Christian are helping Sam follow the Lord and he’s probably helping you follow the Lord by drawing out these kinds of questions and having this kind of conversation. But then let’s say that that goes well.
Let’s say I’m Blake Boylson at Chaffee Crossing Baptist Church in Arkansas. I not only want that discipling to go well, but I want to share the gospel with other people in Arkansas. But once I get that discipling culture going in the church, then people are going to start being more able to verbalize their faith and to share it with others.
So they can, you know, Jonathan and Sam and Blake, when they’re having lunch can even say, Hey, let’s pray for each other that we are able to share the gospel with others. Let’s have opportunities to do this.
So I think the same thing that can, compel you to begin to try to disciple others will also compel you to begin to share the good news with people who don’t know. So that evangelism is actually, I think, pretty vitally related to the discipling.
Those two are not such different animals. All right, those same things are the same way Blake is going to get new elders in his church. It’s going to be by him trying to work to raise up pastors.
Or Curtis Hill has just moved to Brainerd Baptist in Chattanooga, Tennessee as of the date of this thing. So, Curtis, part of what he needs to do at Brainerd is to find the guys there who love the Lord, and who know his word well.
He needs to meet up with them. He needs to start encouraging them in the word and he needs to encourage them to be doing that with others. That’s how an eldership gets built up in a church.
That’s what David King’s been doing for years at Concord Baptist there in Chattanooga. So that’s what pastors do.
Jonathan Leeman:
By the way, I love the way you just throw in positive talk about other pastors.
Mark Dever:
I’m just trying to think of examples.
Jonathan Leeman:
Side note, yeah, it’s a wonderful practice of yours.
Mark Dever:
But so then that building up elders is how a church in Chattanooga can actually have a ministry all over the place. Then you think from that, you go, okay, so then that’s going to help not only my church, but now I could actually help to plant a church somewhere else in Chattanooga in an unreached neighborhood or further out in Chattanooga in a new development where there’s not a church, or where there’s been no good church, or we can reach from Tennessee up into Virginia and try to plant churches.
We can get other churches planted because we have more preachers here than we need. You know, Bobby Jameson is sitting there idling most Sundays here while I’m preaching. You know, he’s doing other word ministry and other things, but you know, at some point people who feel called to be the main preacher to church then can go out and preach somewhere and establish a new ministry and a new pulpit.
And then beyond that, there’s doing that not just here in the U S but around the world and in places that are really gospel deserts. I can go and take the gospel and that’s what missions is seeing new churches established. So those things are all tightly related to each other.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, yeah, you tightly relate them and you talk about them as if, well, of course, they all go together.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
And it’s almost this organic way. You got the root, it’s necessary to go to all those different branches. The thing is…
Mark Dever:
The heart of it.
Jonathan Leeman:
In the heart of, that’s not always deep in the heart of our instincts. In other words, guys will be really good, let’s say, out of evangelism or missions, but not the others. And I don’t want to make this a conversation about multi-service, multi-site, but that multi-service, multi-site instinct seems to work against this, hey, I want to build up, raise up other churches, send our guys to plant churches.
So how is it that some, a lot of guys, as big as the phenomenon of multi-site and multi-service is, which is pretty big? Are getting a couple of these, but not these others. What’s with that, with the division, the wall between, I got three of your things, Mark, but not five?
Mark Dever:
I’m sure there would be individual answers in each case. I think the five are naturally related. So I’m going to argue that, you know, if you see a good pastor, like West Pastor was for years up in New England and Vermont, you’re going to see not just one of these things in isolation, but you’re going to see these like, I hope you’re seeing them in your own church.
Or like Ben Lacey, hopefully, we’ll be seeing him at Trinity River Baptist Church in Fort Worth. Or like, uh, Lig Duncan I trusted at First Pres in Jackson, Mississippi for years and years.
You know, I’m just curious, Jonathan, how are you seeing this at Cheverly Baptist? You’re an elder there. What are you seeing there in this?
Jonathan Leeman:
Repeat the five, evangelism, disciples.
Mark Dever:
I say discipling first because I do think that’s the easiest, the least lipped to it. That’s the one that happens most easily. And then evangelism, I understand a lot of evangelism comes first when I’m thinking about practicing the most Christians. Discipling, then evangelism, then raising up elders, then church planting, then missions. So how are you seeing that at Chevrolet Baptist?
Jonathan Leeman:
Discipling is natural and easy. It’s in our DNA and our blood as is evangelism. It’s hard, but we’re working at it.
Missions are easy to talk about and we’re doing it, at least supporting it and trying to draw missionaries back and encourage them on the field. John Malone, especially, is spearheading that, and doing a great job.
The planting and the raising up of other pastors, frankly, is just hard. Those two are harder because we’re smaller.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
We’re desperate, we’re trying to get into a building where we can have service. We’re trying to figure out how to do Sunday school.
We’re trying to figure out a Sunday evening. So we’re not yet thinking about planting.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
You know what I mean? Maybe we should be in more vigorous ways, but it’s just.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I think Grant Borg, pastor of a church in Sydney, Australia. Grant has experienced this kind of growth where he started a church just a few years ago and they’ve already seen growth.
He’s seen elders being raised up. He’s seen evangelism happening and discipling happening. And I do think it’ll be natural at some point for him to start thinking about church planting. And you may be similar in that. There’ll be some time in which that’s going to happen. That’s what John Folmar experienced at his church in Dubai. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Gratefully in the five years that we’ve existed, you know, a number of new elders have come on board. Praise the Lord. And we’re praying for that and constantly talking about that.
So I hope there’s more. Yeah. So that one for us does come pretty naturally. But Mark, anything else on this?
The Green Dot Vision in the New Testament
Mark Dever:
Yeah. If you want to think more about this biblically, Just work through the New Testament and find all of the other verses or the verses about word ministry put them all together, and see what you notice.
See what should be characterizing the life of the local church. And I think it should be characteristic of the members of the local church that their mouth is full of the word and they’re building each other up and follow on from that all this other stuff we’ve been talking about.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, and not just the one another text, I would say all those salutations and closing texts where such and such church greets you. You see this wonderful care that churches had for one another throughout the New Testament. I think those are crucial for us as well.
Mark Dever:
Amen.
Jonathan Leeman:
Thanks for your time.
Mark Dever:
Thank you, brother.
Subscribe to Pastors Talk
Pastors Talk
A weekly conversation between Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever about practical aspects of the Christian life and pastoral ministry.
Subscribe and Listen to on: