What Is a Healthy Church?

What is a Healthy Church has helped our church leaders examine our own ministry, and rethink our priorities. The book helps a Church consider what a healthy church believes, and the steps a church should take to become a healthy church. It is thought provoking and challenging.

Take Mark Dever's The Deliberate Church and 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, condense them down to their core ideas, and you have What is a Healthy Church? This small book (128 pages) published by Crossway serves as a splendid introduction to Dever's practical insights into the reformation of the evangelical church. What is a Healthy Church is divided into three sections. The first focuses on the biblical vision of church - a people, not a place - a family, a fellowship, a body - and the people through whom God's glory is most brilliantly displayed. Dever emphasizes the importance of commitment, church membership, and theological integrity. The second section lists three essential marks of a church. These are the marks that Dever claims must never be compromised. He considers expositional preaching, biblical theology, and a biblical understanding of the gospel as the three core elements that are essential to church health. The third section lists six other marks of a healthy church (though he calls these "important" rather than "essential.") These marks are a biblical understanding of conversion, of evangelism, of membership, biblical church discipline, discipleship and growth, as well as biblical leadership. Dever warns his readers to not abandon weak or struggling churches and their ministries too quickly. He offers "quick tips" for those who consider leaving their church. His tips include prayer, motivation-checking, reconcilation, and an emphasis on humility. Dever also gives sound advice to those who do leave a church, passionately pleading for unity and forgiveness instead of schism and heartache. Throughout the book, Dever weaves personal testimony and memorable illustrations into the text in order to elucidate his argument and to keep the book light and practical. Though Dever makes some weighty statements, this book can be read quickly and with relative ease. Busy pastors might be inclined to pick this book up before trying Dever's other, longer works.

This book needs to be read by all pastors desiring to have healthy churches. Mark has captured the biblical mandate for healthy churches. It was a easy read and once I started I could not put it down. At times while reading I had to stop and ask for God's forgiveness. The world needs healthy churches today more than ever and as pastors God has given us the responsiblity to work with Him to grow healthy churches.

In Mark Dever's remarkable style, this small text is both poignant and concise, delivering a remarkable amount of information in a credible and easily digestable way. He writes from experience, often giving personal examples, but also from a heart focused on a Christian vision grounded in biblical truths. There are excellent principles stated with motivational certainty of God's church alive and well when His followers are obedient and worship and work together in a covenantal relationship. Mark Dever has other more intense and well-developed books on church life and integrity, but this one is a gem and an easy "starter course."

I spoke to Mark Dever just about a year ago and asked him if there were any new books in his future. At that time he mentioned that he'd soon have a book out dealing with personal evangelism but that he had nothing planned after that. It seems that his plans changed! The book on evangelism is due for release in just a few days (September 11). It has been preceded by What is a Healthy Church and will be followed by The Church and Her Challenges. What is a Healthy Church? is a shortened, introductory version of Dever's previous book 9 Marks of a Healthy Church written primarily for people in the pews rather than the men in the pulpits. After all, church health is not the sole responsibility of a local church's leadership. "If you call yourself a Christian but you think a book about healthy churches is a book for church leaders or maybe for those `theological types,' while you would rather read books about the church life, it may be time to stop and consider again exactly what the Bible says a Christian is." Said even more forcefully, "you and all the members of your church, Christian, are finally responsible before God for what your church becomes, not your pastors and other leaders--you." Despite this, we might rightly ask, How many Christians have ever read a book about church health? If you are familiar with Mark Dever's ministry you know that he can be provocative, though always in a sanctified way. This book is no exception. Consider this, a portion of a short anecdote he shares: "If you call yourself a Christian but you are not a member of the church you regularly attend, I worry that you might be going to hell." Why would Dever extend such a warning and do so at the beginning of the book? "I want [the reader] to see something of the urgency of the need for a healthy local church in the Christian's life and to begin sharing the passion for the church that characterizes both Christ and his followers." Church health and church membership really are that important. The book falls into three parts. In the first, Dever answers the question of "What is a healthy church," ultimately defining it as "a congregation that increasingly reflects God's character as his character has been revealed in his Word." In the second part he looks at the first few of the nine marks of a healthy church, defining three of them as essential: expositional preaching, biblical theology, and a biblical understanding of the Good News. In the final part he looks at the remaining six "important" marks, which are: a biblical understanding of conversion, a biblical understanding of evangelism, a biblical understanding of membership, biblical church discipline, biblical discipleship and growth, and biblical church leadership. Those who have read 9 Marks of a Healthy Church will recognize parts two and three as a summary of nine chapters of that earlier book. My wife and I have been members of an unhealthy church in the past (though, thankfully, we are now privileged to be mem