Mark Dever on Evangelism in Church Planting
1 Comments
"In 60 seconds or less I ask membership applicants to define the gospel". Mark Dever has a challenging notion of church membership and its importance in evangelism. He spoke of growing churches by getting the gospel (from Scripture) into the hearts of the people.
In a society that is marked by pastors being hypocritical, Dever shared from his own life about the importance of consistency through all parts of a church planter's life, especially in regards to living out the evangelism that is preached from the pulpit. ‘My life should back up my words' was his cry. He conceded that as the church gets bigger it will be harder to find time for non-Christian relationships but he pleaded to not over-book the church calendar.
After a word on understanding the identity of the church, the centrality of proclaiming the gospel and the cooperate witness he very generously answered questions from the live audience. It was a great reminder that Acts 29 is not just for the hip kids who are too cool to preach from behind a lectern but for all qualified people called by God.
Listen to the full audio here:
Australian author John Dickson has written a very helpful book that addresses many of the issues Dever spoke about. Like Dever, Dickson's book, ‘Promoting the Gospel', speaks of the importance of individual evangelism, centrality of proclamation and cooperate witness to evangelism. Dickson adds prayer, money, works of the church and Christian behaviour to his insightful yet very accessible book.
1 Comments | Login to Post Comments
Andy ORourke on Mar 11, 2008 4:56pm
I absolutely agree with Dever's contention that we (and our people!) must be able to explain the gospel message quickly and faithfully. We proclaim a message about a Person which is both simple enough to be believed by a child and profound enough to be marveled at by a theologian. What a glorious gospel!