Readers will likely be familiar with the ministry of Dr. Mark Dever at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Dever has also established an outreach designed to reinvigorate the local church, namely 9 Marks. 9 Marks sponsors a journal and a series of books. The latest book is entitled The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrine of Church Membership and Discipline. The book can be obtained here. Authored by Jonathan Leeman, an elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, director of communications for 9 Marks and editor of the e-journal, the book is very engaging.
Insofar as the gospel presents the world with the most vivid picture of God’s love, and insofar as church membership and discipline are an implication of the gospel, local church membership and discipline in fact define God’s love for the world. That, in one sentence, is the argument of this book. Along the way we will observe that the very things that offend us about church membership root in the things we find offensive about God’s love itself.
What’s striking, therefore, is how most evangelicals have pushed the question of church structure into the category of nonessential and therefore of nonimportance. The gospel is important, even essential, we say. Church structure is neither. And since questions of church structure only divide Christians…it’s best to leave it out of the conversation altogether. Right?
What if that’s wrong? What if God, in his wisdom, actually revealed both content and form, both a message and a medium, both a gospel and a polity, perfectly suited to one another? Couldn’t pushing questions of church structure into the category of ‘what respectable evangelicals shouldn’t hold strong opinions about’ eventually undermine the gospel itself? (From the introduction and back cover)
While we Presbyterians will no doubt differ on certain aspects of church polity with the author, it is a bracing tonic to read an author who actually thinks the church is not incidental to the progress of the gospel. In this day and age of so-called “revolutions” it is encouraging to see such an important subject tackled with biblical conviction.
The book contains 376 pages and has a very helpful outline of the whole book as an appendix. Remember that church discipline is another name for pastoral care and shepherding. It is not an optional extra.
I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve. (Romans 16:17-18)