Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (4th edition)

4th Edition

By: Mark Dever, H. B. Charles

Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

What Makes for a Healthy Church?

You may have encountered books on this topic before, but not like this one. Instead of an instruction manual for church growth, this classic text points to basic biblical principles for assessing and strengthening the health of your church. Whether you’re a pastor, a leader, or an involved member of your congregation, studying the nine marks of a healthy church will help you cultivate new life and well-being within your own church for God’s glory.

This revised edition includes two new chapters; updated material on prayer, missions, evangelism, and the gospel; and a foreword by H. B. Charles, Jr.

©2021 Mark Dever (P)2021 Crossway

Great one!

One every pastor and church leader should read. Biblical and solid in every way. I highly recommend it.

This book is a blessing.

Very important points and a great read/listen. especially love the chapter on prayer 🙏 I highly recommend.

A must read for Pastors and Ministry Leaders

So thankful that a fellow colleague sent me this book, I feel like every pastor and ministry leader should read this. It's practical and it's what our churches need today.

Biblically Based and Biblically Focused

A wonderful book that points to the truth of the Gospel and God’s design for the local church.

One review stated that the marks presented in the book are not the only marks. Pastor Dever specifically states in the book that the marks he lays out is not an exhaustive list, but instead important marks he has come to understand through the teaching of God’s word over his career. Just wanted to point that out for anyone reading the reviews and considering whether or not to read the book.

Interesting

I don't agree but understand. Your points are subject to interpretation. Your marks are good but not the only means of importance.

Reader is decent, book is very biased

Decent if you are Reformed, but seriously underplays major issues like Character of Leadership. Person reading does a good job - one of the better I have listened to.

Ch 1 - expositional preaching #1 issue; what about character of pastor? Another resource that seems to avoid / dismiss what in reality is biggest issue (first qualification of an elder is “blameless”, several other qualifications are about character.) This should probably be a standalone mark but is seriously under addressed in this book.

Ch 2 - Makes a polarized argument of we are essentially good vs evil. And argues against self esteem. The problem is an anti-self esteem leads to a hyper religious and cruel community. True doctrine is more a bit of both. Honesty and encouragement. Also in this book he implies and in an appendix is a bit more obvious about this - that true Doctrine = Reformed Theology. Not only is that notion very sectarian, that Theology, like many others, has much intellectualism that comes from a secular way of thinking connected. True Doctrine affirms what is taught in Scripture and doesn’t go beyond the Word of God by trying to explain things the Word doesn’t explain.

Ch 3 Confrontational Gospel problem. His view seems similar to someone who told me the Gospel is punching someone in the face and then giving them a hug. I would ask him how many people will let you hug them after you punched them in the face? The reality of the Gospel is you keep punching yourself in the face and the Gospel tells you that you don’t need to do that anymore. Your debt has been paid.

Ch 4 Condescending remark is terrible. Just be honest that a lot of the vipers in church aren’t honest about being hypocrites and sometimes the reprobate actually are more honest.

Ch 6 Critical of preaching Love, but has no criticism of confrontational / Anger and yelling preaching. Good preaching speaks the truth in love.

Ch 7 Again, shocked at the lack of talk about character here and in rest of book. Almost all is devoted to structure and how people should respect, obey and hold leaders in high regard, but very little on character, esp. considering how bad this has been in many churches.

Last two chapters are decent, no major criticism.