Ecclesiological Issues For The Local Church Today

By Mark E. Dever

[This is the fourth article in the four-part series “A Puritan Vision of the Church,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 4-7, 2014.

Mark E. Dever is Senior Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC, and President of 9Marks.]

What significance does a right ecclesiology have for the church today? A right ecclesiology matters for the church’s leadership, membership, structure, culture, and even character. Ultimately, a right ecclesiology touches on God’s glory itself. The church is not only an institution founded by Christ; it is his body. In it is reflected God’s own glory. How will theology, the Bible, and even God himself be known apart from the church? What community will understand and explain God’s creation and providence to the world? How will the ravages of sin be explained, the person and work of Christ extolled, the Spirit’s saving work seen, and the return of Christ proclaimed to coming generations if not by the church? The theology expounded in every chapter of the Bible presses outward to be known, and it presses outward through the church. Therefore, getting the doctrine of the church right becomes a benefit to people, as the truth about God and his world is more correctly known, taught, and modeled.

This Matters For The Church’s Leadership

Pastors in churches today must recover the understanding that their primary role is to preach the Word of God. This must happen both for the sake of the flock and for the sake of reaching those outside the flock. The purpose of preaching God’s Word to God’s people is to build up, or edify, the church. Whether numerical growth results from biblical preaching in any given congregation at any given time, Christ’s church will experience true growth and edification through teaching and instruction. To this end pastors must also lead the church toward a recovery of corrective church discipline. This will be accomplished only when the leadership itself understands the Bible’s teaching about the church and then gives itself to patiently teaching the congregation in these matters.

Whenever pastors recover the centrality of preaching in their ministry, beneficial effects follow. Congregations are better fed and healthier, and then they become better witnesses in their communities. Too often leaders promote church growth exclusively through evangelism, but they fail to consider that an untaught and unhealthy church is a poor witness. And a poor church witness will undermine the evangelistic ministries of the congregation. The pastor who recommits himself to feeding the congregation well will best prepare his congregation for evangelism and growth. Healthy organisms naturally grow.

God’s Spirit creates believers through the preaching and hearing of the Word, yet God also intends for those believers to be collected together in congregations that are pure and protected. To this end, pastors must take greater care in scrutinizing candidates for baptism and in encouraging the congregation to scrutinize themselves before partaking of the Lord’s Supper. If baptism functions as the watery moat separating church and world, and if the Lord’s Supper manifests the ongoing appearance of the church, then pastors today must recover the sense of gravity each ordinance requires.

Hebrews 13:17 promises that leaders will give an account for those under their charge. Will today’s leaders give an account for carelessly admitting wolves into baptism or the Lord’s Supper? Will the condemnations heaped on Israel’s shepherds in Ezekiel 34 be repeated upon undershepherds of the church today who have left Christ’s sheep to wander scattered and unprotected? The leaders of our congregations must be reminded that the right preaching of God’s Word and the right administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper form the basic calling of their lives.

This Matters For The Church’s Membership

A right ecclesiology also has implications for the church’s membership. Therefore, the reasons and requirements for membership should be widely and clearly understood. Most evangelical Christians today seem to treat the church as one more assistant in the Christian life, perhaps along with this Bible study, that music, those authors, this retreat, and keeping a journal. In other words, the Christian thinks that one’s spiritual life is fundamentally one’s own business, managed by selecting among various helps. This approach contrasts with an older and more biblical way of thinking about the Christian life that is congregationally shaped, where the demands of the gospel are made concrete in a particular local church (cf. 1 John 4:20).

Being a member of a local church should seem normal for the Christian. Lives lived in regular accountability make the gospel clear to the world. Jesus said that Christians’ love for one another would enable the world to recognize Christians as those who follow Christ (John 13:34-35). In that sense a vigorous practice of church membership helps a congregation’s evangelism. It also helps Christians gain a proper assurance of their own salvation. As Christians observe, teach, encourage, and rebuke one another, the local church begins to act as a cooperative that corroborates assurance of salvation. Church membership is good for weak Christians because it brings them into a place of feeding and accountability. Church membership is good for strong Christians because it enables them to provide an example of what a true Christian life is like.

Committed church membership is also good for the leaders of the church. How will God’s work go forward if Christians do not organize together to serve him? And how will Christians receive the gifts God gives them in their leaders if there is no flock marked out for those leaders to steward? Finally, practicing church membership glorifies God. As Christians gather together to form the body of Christ, his character is reflected and expressed. Recovering this understanding of church membership should be one of the chief desires of congregations today.

Before one quickly points to the parachurch as accomplishing the same objectives, one should remember that the parachurch neither has the same commitment to systematically proclaiming the whole counsel of God, nor does it have the mechanisms of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and church discipline for drawing a clear, bright line that says to the world, “Here are the people of God.” The parachurch is and always means to be a particular subset of the church, centered on a specific shared task.

The idea that membership in a local church should only require a profession of faith in Christ is an idea that is both common and destructive to the life and witness of the church. Historically, many Christians have realized that any profession of faith should be tried and deemed as credible. After all, a saving profession of faith includes repentance. A Christian life will be revealed not only by participation in baptism and the Lord’s Supper but also by regular attendance at the congregation’s gatherings and a submission to the discipline of the congregation. This includes regularly praying for the congregation and giving. When congregations do not give attention to lifestyles of repentance, nominal Christianity quickly comes to characterize the church to the world, hurt its witness, and lie about the character of God. Individual congregations have the responsibility for deciding what membership standards are appropriate for their own churches.

One of the areas in most need of reexamination in today’s churches is the relation of the children of church members to the church. In some Protestant congregations, this relationship begins with infant baptism and is usually completed by confirmation around age twelve. In others, children were traditionally recognized as having an important role. They were regarded as the objects of all natural affections, but they were also recognized as specially entrusted to Christian families for training in the Lord. Conversions could occur at early ages, of course, but it was generally thought most wise to delay baptism until maturity tested the reality of conversion. Earlier Christians understood that time is necessary for seeing a Christian profession lived out, especially in those who are not yet mature. (There seems to be little doubt that, at least in Southern Baptist churches, the last century has seen an increase in nominalism while the average age of baptism has been decreasing. It seems likely the two statistics are not unrelated.)

Moreover, concerns with false baptisms (leading to a growing number of rebaptisms) should not be limited to the adverse effects a local church bears when pagans are welcomed into membership and called saints, as serious as those effects are. The effects borne throughout eternity by unbelievers to whom pastors and churches give false assurance of salvation beggars the imagination and at the very least discourages haste.

This Matters For The Church’s Structure

A right doctrine of the church should affect not only a church’s leadership and membership; it should also affect its structure.

Too many in the last generation have derided authority. Authority may well be, as one book title suggested a few years ago, “the most misunderstood idea in America.”[1] “Americans do not distinguish authority, which is something good, from authoritarianism, which is something bad.”[2] A suspicion of all power because of abuse by some power holders has created a strain of misshapen Christian piety in which the powerlessness of Christ on the cross is viewed as the sole paradigm for all who exercise authority. While humility should inhere in all Christian exercise of authority, God has also placed leaders within the body to teach, give direction and guidance, be examples, and make decisions (Gal. 6:1; Eph. 4:11; Heb. 13:17). Exercising trust in almost every sphere, whether marriage, family, work, the state, or the church, is for the Christian ultimately a reflection of trust in God.

Denominational battles within the Southern Baptist Convention in the last century have spawned a virulent strain of novel and naive Baptist history that suggests it is the essence of Baptist identity to be individualistic, cantankerous, and divisive. The rich Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, originally formulated to oppose a mediatorial class of ordained Roman Catholic priests, has been transfigured into the optimistic and simplistic early twentieth-century phrase (championed by E. Y. Mullins) “soul competency.” A biblically faithful emphasis on the sole mediatorship of Christ (the Reformation emphasis) has been traded (wittingly?) for a mistaken defense of human ability.

At best, the idea of soul competency simply restates one implication of the fact that humans are created in the image of God—that we are made spiritual beings who are able to have a relationship with God. At worst, the idea degenerates into a semireligious humanism in which proclaiming Christ’s work becomes unnecessary. Following in the train of this misused doctrine, every locus of theology is reshaped—from the atonement to the inspiration of Scripture. In ecclesiology it tends to undermine ideas of authority and leadership in the church. But leadership is a gift from God and should be received by churches as a gift. Rejecting leadership deprives the church of Christ’s gift, impoverishes the body, and hinders the church in its life and work.

One factor that has led many local congregations either to adopt or avoid an elder-led model has been the increasing controversy in popular culture over gender-based distinctions. After all, the New Testament is relatively clear on reserving the office of elder for men. But a society that has dismissed gender as an appropriate boundary marker for marriage is a society that has long ago lost any sense of gender roles in the church. Historically, the church took the New Testament’s teaching on male eldership at face value. But that position was slowly abandoned in twentieth-century America. In 1924, the Methodist Episcopal Church voted to ordain women. They were followed by the main body of northern Presbyterians in 1956, the Episcopalians in 1976, and finally the main Lutheran body in 1979. Among the new Pentecostal movements, Aimee Semple McPherson, Kathryn Kuhlman, and other women had prominent teaching ministries.

Among Baptist churches, the movement toward female ordination has been slower, but the process has undoubtedly been aided by extrabiblical structures such as committees, church councils, and staff positions. These structures are neither mandated nor described in Scripture and have, therefore, been more easily filled with women—even in otherwise biblically conservative churches. Moving to a plurality of elders brings to bear biblical passages that clearly support male leadership in the congregation.

This Matters For The Church’s Culture

Along with the hard and defined skeletal structure of a church’s leadership and membership, there is also the more subtle, changeable, variable, and enveloping culture of a church. The culture of a church is constituted by the combination of peculiar expectations and practices that do not make the church a church, but that do in fact typify a particular congregation. Suppose then that a congregation is marked by graciousness, a concern for truth, and a zeal for missions. These qualities are certainly appropriate and consistent with the scriptural presentation of a church, but they are not specifically required of every congregation in order to be recognized as a true church.

That said, the soundness of a church is greatly improved when the congregation cultivates a culture of discipleship and growth in which individual Christian growth is normal, not exceptional. One indicator of growth is an increasing level of concern for the spiritual state of others. A concern for others should include non-Christians around the world (thus an emphasis on missions) and in the congregation’s own local area (thus an emphasis on evangelism), and especially other members of the congregation (thus an emphasis on discipling one another). A culture of discipling, evangelism, and missions will best encourage the church to be what God has made it to be—a reflection of his own character.

Ranged against this radiant vision of the church is a large and growing nominalism in many evangelical churches. Congregation after congregation is marked by membership roles filled with nonattending “members.” Even among members who do attend, too many live lives indistinct from the nonbelievers around them. This nominalism dulls and undercuts Christian evangelism; pushes the church and individual Christians toward disillusionment, apathetic discouragement, or division; and ultimately dishonors God. Surely if ecclesiology is to have any relevance today, this situation must be addressed. Evangelicals have advanced various answers to today’s decline in churches; the following are only a few.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the rise of Pentecostalism has arguably been the most significant sociological development in world Christianity. The Christian landscapes in Africa and South America have been transformed, and more established churches in Europe and North America have been affected. Many of these Christians think the answer to the church’s problems lies in rediscovering the biblical teaching of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Many Pentecostals say this experience, which includes speaking in unknown tongues, signifies conversion. Many newer charismatics say the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a second experience intended for every believer after conversion. They believe that Christians invigorated by this baptism would replace the lamentable and dull witness of many Christians and their congregations.

Other groups of Christians have suggested that the answer to nominal Christianity lies in recovering the dynamic of smaller groups, in which no function exists for inactive members. This has been variously advocated through the use of small groups, the cell church structure, and the house church movement. Some have even advocated setting low quantitative limits on congregations, saying that anything beyond the set limit turns churches into mere “preaching points” and undermines the ability of the pastor to pastor as well as the ability of members to meaningfully involve themselves with other members in ministry.

Still other Christians have given up on the traditional local and heterogeneous congregation. This despair or rejection can be observed in the growth philosophy that recommends forming whole congregations around a single vision statement. It is also seen in some “purpose-driven” models. The rejection of heterogeneity is even more pronounced in congregations who set their mission on one homogeneous group, whether defined ethnically, generationally, sociodemographically, or otherwise. Behind this approach lies the homogeneous unit principle—the recognition that in mission settings, like reaches like. Members of a given caste in India, for example, will find it easiest to reach individuals from the same caste. Yet the homogeneous unit principle has reordered the ecclesiology of many churches in the name of evangelism. Its logical conclusion is the rejection of the whole congregation in exchange for a missional parachurch subgroup, though they may continue referring to themselves as a church.

Still others who call themselves Christians have perceived the doleful state of many congregations and have concluded that organized congregations should simply be rejected. This rejection can occur publicly, as with the late radio preacher Harold Camping’s pronouncement several years ago that Christians should desert the churches because the church age had ended. Or it can occur more quietly, as when individuals simply stop attending church. In both cases, self-defined Christians will emphasize something like Jesus’s teaching on the heart or doctrines like justification by faith alone in order to justify their rejection of the congregation’s role in the Christian life. In short, nominalism and hypocrisy in churches are used to justify noninvolvement.

Others place the church’s hope for recovery in re-creating excitement. They appeal to a convert’s experience of newness, a historical church’s experience in a time of revival, or even the young church in the book of Acts in order to argue the best way forward is to replicate such excitement. While specific diagnoses of problems vary, most solutions tend toward a “give them what they want” pragmatism. Evangelism begins to resemble marketing, and church membership begins to resemble consumerism.

Still others believe the problems in the churches stem from a wrong (or at least unnecessary) focus on the subjective appropriation of the Christian faith by individuals. In response, they advocate refocusing on the objective ordinances, or sacraments, of the church, not on individual responses of piety. Such sacramentalist responses can be found in great variety. Some multiservice congregations are offering alternative high-church services. Some in the Emerging Church movement are re-engaging with pre-Reformation (and in some cases pre-Christian) practices of spirituality without fully comprehending the pre-Reformation understanding of the gospel often latent in such practices.

Among the Reformed, some are calling for an objectivism in the Christian life and profession that seems to deny any role for personal piety and subjective response to the gospel. Instead, they are promoting a “federal vision” built specifically in opposition to what they regard as problematic evangelical pietism. More generally, many Protestant evangelicals are increasingly rejecting whatever is specifically evangelical or Protestant and replacing such distinctives with “the Great Tradition.” To these and many other putative solutions to current problems in the churches, recourse must relentlessly be taken to Scripture. A clear understanding of the gospel is foundational for any genuine renewal in evangelical churches. Solutions treated as normative that are not found in Scripture must be rejected as latter-day tradition that lacks the authority of the apostles. Ecclesiology cannot be reduced either to evangelism or to self-enhancement. In the Christian church the reigning consumer must become the repenting sinner, and the Christ-ordained sacraments are better not received than received without personal faith (1 Cor. 11:30). God creates his church by his Spirit through his Word. All other answers to the lack of discipleship in too many of today’s churches compound the problems they intend to address.

This Matters For The Church’s Character

The culture of the church, like the life of an individual, simply reflects the church’s character. If the doctrine of the church enunciated in this message is to be applied, the practice of corrective church discipline must be recovered.

The recovery of church discipline will require viewing it as a natural part of church membership. It should be taught in new members’ classes. It should be addressed in sermons, testimonies, and newsletters. Books on the topic should be recommended when necessary. Too many people treat this topic apologetically and act as if admitting to the practice of discipline is regrettable. While the sin requiring discipline and its tragic consequences are of course regrettable, the attempt to correctively discipline unrepentant sin is not. When done in humility, prayer, and love, it edifies the body and glorifies God.

One caution is in order here. Church discipline will seem odd and even offensive if introduced into a congregation not marked by a culture of mutual care, a desire to be involved in one another’s lives, and a passion for discipling in the faith. A pastor may desire to be obedient to Scripture, but congregations will feel that the deep involvement in their lives required by the practice of discipline is unnatural and wrong if things like church covenants and membership expectations have not been clearly taught. The first step toward practicing church discipline in a congregation is simply teaching the people to pray and care for one another. Learning to love and disciple one another—truly practicing the priesthood of all believers—is a prerequisite to introducing corrective discipline. Formative discipline must precede corrective discipline.

Church discipline provides one part of the necessary response to the nominalism prevalent in churches today. Pastors must consider that following biblical instructions in every area of church life—including their practices of membership admission and discipline—may be the key to health lacking in their churches. If pastors desire sinners to repent, they must realize that discipline is a biblical way to pursue that goal. If church leaders want their congregations to be characterized by thankfulness of heart and holiness of life, they should reexamine their practice of church discipline. The health of the whole church would be radically improved in many congregations by excommunicating members who are committed to sins like nonattendance, divisiveness, adultery, or fornication more than they are committed to God’s glory. The action of excluding the unrepentant enables the church to give a clear witness of the gospel to the world. And it ultimately brings glory to God, as his people more and more display his character of holy love.

This Matters For God’s Glory

John L. Dagg concluded his introduction to his Treatise on Church Order with this appropriate admonition:

Church order and the ceremonials of religion, are less important than a new heart; and in the view of some, any laborious investigation of questions respecting them may appear to be needless and unprofitable. But we know, from the Holy Scriptures, that Christ gave commands on these subjects, and we cannot refuse to obey. Love prompts our obedience; and love prompts also the search which may be necessary to ascertain his will. Let us, therefore, prosecute the investigations which are before us, with a fervent prayer, that the Holy Spirit, who guides into all truth, may assist us to learn the will of him whom we supremely love and adore.[3]

Many Protestants have begun to think that because the church is not essential to the gospel, it is not important to the gospel. This is an unbiblical, false, and dangerous conclusion. Our churches are the proof of the gospel. In the gatherings of the church, the Christian Scriptures are read. In the ordinances of the church, the work of Christ is depicted. In the life of the church, the character of God himself should be evident. A church seriously compromised in character would seem to make the gospel itself irrelevant.

The doctrine of the church is important because it is tied to the good news itself. The church is to be the appearance of the gospel. It is what the gospel looks like when played out in the lives of people. Take away the church and you take away the visible manifestation of the gospel in the world. Christians in churches, then, are called to practice “display evangelism.” The world will witness the reign of God begun in a community of people made in his image and reborn by his Spirit. Christians, not just as individuals but as God’s people bound together in churches, are the clearest picture that the world sees of the invisible God and his will for them.

Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Paul would add, “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:10-11).

Notes

1. Eugene Kennedy and Sara Charles, Authority: The Most Misunderstood Idea in America (New York: Free Press, 1997), 1.
2. Ibid.
3. John L. Dagg, A Treatise on Church Order (Charleston, SC: Southern Publication Society, 1858), 12.