The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel

by Paul Alexander, Mark Dever, Paul Alexander

Book Overview

Dever and Alexander propose a model of complete reliance and submission to the gospel when building a healthy church. Great resource for pastors, elders, and others interested in the vitality of their church.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1581347383
• ISBN13: 9781581347388
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Crossway
• Length: 221 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Not you're CEO Pastor!

We live in a day and age where biblical preaching and good old theological teaching has taken a back seat and the CEO Pastor is in the front! This is not the case with Mark Dever. I read this book right before I became an elder, which helped me greatly. Once I finished the book, I thought, is this really, how this church functions? I had to find out, so I took a trip to Capital Hill Baptist to see for myself. It was nice to see that Capital Hill Baptist operated in the exact way described in Devers' book. Not only that, but I "interrogated" one of the interns, and he described their elder's meetings exactly the way the book did. If you are a church leader, I would highly recommend that you read this book. This book was intended to be the sequel to Devers' previous book, 9 marks of a healthy church, which is also fantastic!

Read The Deliberate Church!!!

The Deliberate Church (TDC) is a self-conscious attempt to make some headway into the overblown "The ___________ Church" genre by teaching pastors how to build "the church on and around the Gospel of Christ" (21) with the goal of liberating "both leaders and members from the tyranny of popular growth models and church fads" (202). A deliberate church intentionally infuses absolutely everything it does with the Gospel! My goal here is to overview the book, and give some highlights. On the first page of the introduction the authors write their thesis: "Ignoring God's plan for the church and replacing it with your own will ensure the eternal futility of your work" (25). Let that sink in! Along those same lines they write: "Our power is not in having small groups, or meeting the felt needs of our target audience, or using the right evangelism program, or having funny skits, or providing plenteous parking, or targeting our ministries to postmoderns. Our power is in our unique message--the Gospel (27). The introduction and conclusion alone are worth the retail price. Overall, the book is divided into four sections that help the reader deliberately apply the gospel to the growing of a church, the gathering of a church on Sunday, the choice of elders and the elders meetings. The first section was a 75-page summary of Dever's 9 Marks of a Healthy Church; however, it was geared towards practically doing what was written as theory in 9 Marks. My favorite parts were his understanding of the pastor's job--the 4 P's = expository Preaching, Praying, developing Personal discipling relationships, and being Patient (ch. 1)--his explanation and application of the gospel (43-5), what to avoid in evangelism (54-56) and his biblical case for and application of church membership (60-5). Remember, "God is happiest to entrust His flock to those shepherds who do things His way" (40) and "God's purposes for all of human history revolve around the local church as the visible, corporate manifestation of His Son" (72). Section 2 (the longest in TCD) helps the corporate gathering of the church become Gospel-centered. They begin by arguing that God cares about how we worship (ch. 6); therefore, our Sundays should revolve around Reading, Preaching, Praying, Singing and Seeing (in baptism & the Lord's Supper) the Bible (81-6). In ch. 8 they argue the role of the pastor flows from a biblical understanding of what a church is to be and do, meaning the "most important and fundamental role of the pastor is to preaching the Gospel clearly" (89). There is also a lot of practical help here on staff meetings, the purpose of the weekly church services (ch. 9), baptism & communion (ch. 10), cultivating love in your church (ch. 11) and music (ch. 12). My favorite part is his summary of pastoral ministry: The 3 G's = Graze (feed the people God's Word), Guide (lead God's people), Guard (protect God's people) (94-5) and their conclusion: "every element of the main weekly g

Clear, Concise Guide for Church Leadership

Cover to cover, this book outlines a gospel-centered plan of action for the local church pastor. Dever and Alexander pleasingly blend theology and methodoloy in this practical book. I strongly recommend it for those involved in church leadership - particularly seminary students or young pastors.

Prioritize church health over church growth

What's wrong with church growth? Nothing, necessarily. But here's an excellent book to encourage pastors to pursue church health and allow the growth to be a natural result of a healthy church body. Mark Dever and Paul Alexander advocate a strong dependence on the Word of God and prayer to build a healthy church. Even better, they share how they have sought to promote these aspects of pastoral ministry at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. It is evident that Mark Dever has sought to be "deliberate" in his service as a pastor and he has done a great job of sharing some of the practical wisdom that he seeks to live by in this book. You will find that even when he departs from some more popular approaches to pastoral ministry and church growth (e.g. multiple services, pastoral specialization), he expresses his views with humility and kindly invites you to consider the reasoning behind his position. Among other things, you will learn how the pastoral staff at Capitol Hill Baptist Church conducts public worship, evangelism, membership interviews, discipleship, church discipline and elders meetings - and you will see that it is all done in an attempt to "deliberately" display God's glory to one another and the world around them. Most importantly, you will see that they are always seeking to base their practices on biblical teaching, keeping the proclamation of the Gospel central and relying on the power of God's Spirit to make their work effective. If you are a pastor, I would encourage you to read this book. If you are not a pastor, I would encourage you to read this book and give a copy to a pastor you know.

The best book on church life/growth in recent years

Finally--a book that commends true church health in the context of a church that is growing! This is a book that describes a church (Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.) that can serve as a model for churches large and small who want to minister relevantly in a postmodern world without sacrificing numerical growth. This book moves beyond the "modernist" accounts of church life and growth--with all their facts and figures and statistics and styles and trends and scientific formulas. But it is truly "postmodern" in recovering Reformation ecclesiological wisdom and contextualizing it in a contemporary environment. Yet it does this in a way that does not fall prey to so much that is faddish in the postmodern or emerging church movement (a movement, which, in effect, criticizes the seeker-sensitive movement by saying, "I'm tired of the church marketing to a baby-boomer niche market. I'm twenty-something. I'm the seeker now. Market to me.") This book transcends so much of the same old Christ-of-culture, capitalistic market talk we read these days in church-life and church-growth books. Yet at the same time it is a real-world book that gives real answers and a model by which real churches can attain real growth (numerically and spiritually!). There is an obvious backlash in our time against niche-market Christianity, and this book will be a leading voice in that backlash.