All of the following marks I will cover over the next few weeks come from 9Marks ministry. These are not essentials of a church but they are essential marks of a healthy church with healthy members. As I write this I am in preparation and study for our summer family devotions. We have spent the last year in the book of John but as we approach chapter 11 we will be departing for a short time to address the subject of, "Love and Centrality of the Local Church." As my wife and I clear some new ground in our parenting we are discovering many area's in which we take for granted without ever explaining. The local church is something all Christian families do, but why? Do our children understand the essential necessity of the local church? Do they understand why we are dedicated to a local church?
My wife and I allowed them to pear into our search process for a local church a couple years ago. We wanted them to see some of what we were looking for. In fact this first mark we will discuss was the first essential mark we were going to expect. This mark is the first mark I will look for when suggesting a local church to family or friends wherever they live. We first go to two trusted resources. One is Masters Seminary and the other is 9marks church finder. If we cannot find any of those we then go to the local church websites and then go to the resource page, look at past sermons and can determine if this church has this mark or not.
So to embark on this subject, I will be spending much time looking at the effect and result of the local church in the book of Acts and in a few other books after we have gone through the nine marks of a healthy church. When I say centrality I think it is important to explain what I mean. Men by in large over the past fifty to one hundred years have undergone an industrialized reconstruction of how they go about providing for there families. About one hundred years ago most families had farms and worked within the confinements of there own properties. But with the industrialization of the nineteenth century many men began to leave there homes to work within travel distance for there primary means to provide. Today most men do not work in there own homes to provide for there family. I for instance must travel nearly forty miles away every day to get to work. Well one of the subsequent problems of this sort of lifestyle is that we take that same way of thinking to our local church. We do not interact on a constant basis within the body. We may drive twenty or thirty minutes away. We may fellowship on Sunday and maybe on Wednesday night class but other then that we are disconnected with the body. I don't think this is the biblical outline of how church is to be. I believe there needs to be more daily involvement. A dedication to those believers and a commitment to making it more then just a part of our life but the central part of our life. Yes we have unsaved family and friends and we do interact with them. But the church (a group believers) are to be dedicated to one another and to the glory of God. So, with that said, I have much to learn, I much more to model and am praying for grace as I look for those opportunities. So As I begin my studies on the subject I hope to serve you well by putting some of the marks of a healthy church and how to grow in greater love for the local church over the next several weeks.
All of the subjects I will cover over the summer months are based on the premise that you understand that church is for the believer (1 Cor. 12:12,13). In the New Testament we see believers getting together to fellowship, preach, partake in communion, practice church discipline, etc(Acts 2:42, Matthew 18). I know many man centered churches believe the point of the church is to gather, work at, focus on, model programs after the unsaved. Fill our churches with unregenerate people and if we do it in a very cool way then they will stay. I will simply say that is not a church in the biblical definition of the church. The seeker sensitive and emergent church does not have God's glory or your sanctification in focus but entertainment and comfort to the lost. Many of these marks would be offensive to the lost so therefore they will not be utilized as they would remove there biggest crowd. If this is you then I would encourage you to pray for your church, pray for your pastor, get great resources, study and they talk to your elders. See if they are willing to work on these areas. What is there reaction? A good shepherd will be understanding and talk to you with love and respect. If this is not the case then you have much larger problems. This is an important distinction. So with that said, lets begin our list.
MARK ONE: EXPOSITIONAL PREACHING
A healthy church will begin with the foundational understanding that God's word is where we are to go for our growth and sanctification. We must focus our attention to God's Word. This is sufficient for every thing in life and growth in godliness. It reveals to us who we are, who God is and what we are to do. It shows us how to structure our church to glorify Him, how to evangelize, how to parent, do marriage and all aspects of life. A healthy church has a Pastor who is less about his random topics from week to week with an occasion bible verse but the Bible itself is the focal point of the church service and the sermon. This obligates any possibility for a Pastor to get on his hobby horse and it does not skip any of the hard things we must learn. Expositional preaching is when you take a book of the Bible and you preach out it verse by verse. The Word is the focus and all our attention is on it. Our job as members of the local church is to place leaders in our pulpit who are gifted at there ability to discover what the point of the passage is and make that the point of there sermon. Then there task is to apply it to us, in the church, at this time. Topical Sermons can be expositional but only when you preach a topic based on a section of scripture or scriptures that specifically addresses that topic. But by in large your steady diet needs to be verse by verse and book by book exposure of God's Word.
Expository preaching is not something marked by style or personality but by biblical content. Sometimes we will find a preacher reading a section of scripture then preaching a random topic based loosely on the scripture. This is not expository preaching. Again, and this is important, expository preaching is the idea that the verse or section of scripture is the point of the message not used to support a Pastor's message. The Word itself is the authority and in fact a Pastor's authority starts and end's upon the authority of scripture itself. This means that they are accountable to call black what scripture's calls black and white the scripture calls white. They are also not qualified to take the grey areas of scripture and call them essential when God's word does not. It requires careful attention to the context, author, history, genre, etc.
Yes this is a requirement of the Pastor but ultimately it is the responsibility of the congregation and the individual families to make sure this is what they are placing themselves under.If not, it will and does stunt the growth of the believer. It results in immature Christians who (when listening to verse by verse preaching)use terms like, that is a boring style (again this is God's inspired Word we are talking about), well what about worship? (as if the sermon itself was not part of worship), those Pastor's are to legalistic and arrogant (as if the Pastor who is teaching his random topic making himself the focus of the sermon is more humble then the one who submits to God's Word making "it" the focal point of the sermon as more arrogant. Not to mention just an immature understanding of what legalism is). The seeker sensitive, emergent church movement inevitably ends up being more emotion based therefore preaching more from random subject then of consistent truth. But Bible based churches always end up with the Word as there foundation. So in short expository preaching is a correct understanding of the text within the context, correctly preaching that text as to make its main point the sermons main point and finally it requires a correct application. If you belong to this sort of church then your responsibility comes to play in your applying what you are hearing from God's Word as God addresses you each week. Pray to this end.
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