What Makes a Church Healthy? | Mark Dever

2 days ago 14

An image of Mark Dever and Kirk E. Miller with design from the show, Logos Live, in the background.

In this Logos Live episode, host Kirk E. Miller welcomes Mark Dever, longtime pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, and founder of 9Marks, to discuss what makes a healthy church. Dever draws on his decades of pastoral experience and deep engagement with church history and ecclesiology to challenge modern assumptions and reframe the conversation. They discuss common misconceptions, overlooked essentials, and practical convictions needed for cultivating a faithful church community.

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What you’ll find

Episode guest: Mark Dever

Mark Dever is the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, where he has served for 30 years. In addition, he serves as the president emeritus of 9Marks and has authored a number of books, including Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. He and his wife, Connie, have two adult children.

Episode synopsis

What defines a healthy church?

At the heart of this conversation is the question: What makes a healthy church? Mark Dever’s answer is theologically rich and historically grounded. A healthy church, he says, is one that reflects the glory of God through a clear presentation of the gospel, both in Word and in deed. Mark observes that the most important marks of a healthy church are those which true churches hold in common.

Historically, a “true” church has been understood to be marked by:

The preaching of the Word of God
Right administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper
The exercise of church discipline

As the Belgic Confession declares,

The marks by which the true Church is known are these: If the pure doctrine of the gospel is preached therein; if it maintains the pure administration of the sacraments as instituted by Christ; if church discipline is exercised in chastening of sin; in short, if all things are managed according to the pure Word of God, all things contrary thereto rejected, and Jesus Christ acknowledged as the only Head of the Church. Hereby the true Church may certainly be known. (Article 29)

From these commitments flow other important traits, like meaningful church membership, sound conversion, discipleship, prayerfulness, and gospel-driven mission.

Recovering the centrality of Scripture in the church

When asked, Mark suggests that the biggest blind spot in the contemporary church is a deficient understanding of the authority and role of Scripture. Many churches, he warns, operate on assumptions from cultural norms or felt needs, rather than evaluating those assumptions based on Scripture. As a result, what seems self-evident or pragmatically effective often trumps what God has revealed.

One way to correct this error, Mark argues, is to re-center churches on expository preaching, wherein the message of the sermon is driven by and tethered to the message of the text itself. According to Mark, expository preaching serves as the primary driver of church life and health. Without Scripture, churches drift into consumerism or self-styled Christianity.

The Bible’s priorities for the church vs. ours

Mark cautions against evaluating churches based on demographic-based programs or affinity groups (e.g., youth ministries, hobby-based groups, etc.). While these may not be inherently bad, they should not replace the biblical blueprint for the church.

The most important qualities of a church are not the things that make it unique or trendy, but the things it shares with every faithful church throughout history: the preaching of God’s Word and the right use of the ordinances.

This understanding of the church also shapes how Christians choose a local church. Rather than prioritizing personal comfort, programs, or social fit, believers should ask:

Does this church preach the Bible clearly and faithfully?
Is the gospel central to its teaching?
Are the members’ lives being shaped by sound doctrine and rich community?

As Kirk adds, we shouldn’t just seek churches based on what make us feel good, but based on what will challenge and shape us. In fact, discomfort is often a means of grace—especially when we’re stretched by generational, ethnic, or personality diversity within the body of Christ. Church isn’t about convenience, it’s about conformity to Christ.

The dangers of assuming conversion

One of the biggest threats to church health, according to Mark, is a casual or unclear approach to conversion—taking for granted or assuming too quickly that someone is a Christian and has truly embraced the gospel. Instead, churches must be crystal clear on:

What the gospel message actually is (i.e., what God has done to save us)
What it means to be converted (i.e., what it means to repent and believe in that gospel)

If conversion is misunderstood, everything downstream—discipleship, membership, leadership, mission—will inevitably become distorted and church health impossible. Churches are gospel communities. If the gospel is misunderstood, conversion is misunderstood—and if conversion is misunderstood, the church’s identity is compromised.

When conversion becomes blurry, so do the boundaries of the church. This proves dangerous to the lives of individuals, but also to the witness and integrity of the church as a whole. In contrast, proper use of church membership, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and church discipline all serve to visibly mark out the people of God.

Nominal Christianity seeks minimal alignment to the claims of Christianity but without genuine discipleship. Instead, churches must lovingly help people see what it really means to know and follow Jesus.

Contextualization & the importance of maintaining the true gospel

Mark emphasizes that evangelism must offer the actual gospel—not a sales pitch for moral improvement or life enhancement. In Mark’s opinion, many seeker-sensitive approaches dilute the message to appeal to popular desires (e.g., “Do you want purpose?”), which can obscure the true gospel’s centered on the need for Christ’s sin-atoning death and its call to repent and believe.

Although we want to contextualize (or apply) the gospel to our particular setting, Mark warns against trading clarity for cultural palatability. We should ask: Are we really presenting Jesus as Scripture presents him? Contextualization is good and necessary, but it should never result in altering the message. Good contextualization diagnoses what the culture needs and then offers the gospel as the true solution.

In fact, as Kirk observes, the best contextualization will not only identify connection points but also contrasts with culture. Too often we confuse contextualization with cultural fawning. In contrast, even the best marketers don’t simply reflect where people are: They point them toward where they truly need to go and provide an authentic, uncompromised solution to get them there.

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Church health is not about methods or trends

Much of the current discourse around church health—especially in books, conferences, and social media—focuses on programs, growth strategies, and branding techniques. Mark pushes back against this, calling us instead to attend to the essential elements found in Scripture. Contextualization happens naturally as churches live out these truths faithfully in their particular culture.

Rather than innovate, churches should recover and recommit to what God has already said. The best blueprint for church health is not found in the latest best seller or demographic study. The best strategies aren’t Mark’s or Kirk’s or anyone else’s. They’re God’s. God has already presented his own blueprint for the church. Our job is to attend to it, not invent our own.

The role of church polity in a church’s health

Kirk invites Mark to weigh in on church polity—how the church is governed—and its relation to church health.

While many see specific forms of polity as negotiable, Mark argues that the Bible provides a specific approach to church government that we ought to follow. Although Scripture doesn’t spell out every detail (like service times), Mark believes it nonetheless clearly teaches:

The nature of the church’s offices (elders, deacons): Elders provide shepherding and leadership (1 Tim 3:1–7); deacons serve practical needs (1 Tim 3:8–13).
Congregational authority: Every Christian has a role in upholding the gospel, not just pastors (see e.g., Galatians, 1 Corinthians), and congregations must take responsibility for handling sin within its community (e.g., Matt 18:15–20; 1 Cor 5).

While good polity can’t guarantee health (no polity makes a church immune from the damaging effects of sin), it nonetheless provides the God-designed structure, organization, and accountability for a church to thrive. According to Mark, dismissing the Bible’s prescribed polity in favor of self-made business-style governance undermines the church’s long-term health.

An underrated ingredient: prayerful catholicity

Asked about the most underrated contributor to church health, Mark answers: prayer. Churches often neglect corporate and private prayer, even though the church’s work depends on God. To this end, Mark prays through his church’s membership directory regularly and encourages members to do the same.

Additionally, a healthy church is marked by a spirit of catholicity (universal fellowship). As it prayers for God to work, it prays not only for itself but for growth among other gospel-preaching churches. Mark asks: If revival broke out at another church in your town, would you rejoice or feel jealous? If the latter, perhaps your prayers were really about your success, not God’s glory. Our church’s prayers ought to reflect, not a spirit of competition, but “your kingdom come” in the lives of all God’s people.