Build Your Church around Theology, Not Preference
Where to Begin
I’ve used the phrase “Theology drives method.” What I mean by that is that what’s most fundamental to our church is God and what God has said, not how I, you, or someone else might think up how to do something.
Maybe we like a drum with our songs. Maybe we like to pray and then take up the offering. Or, maybe we like to make sure that there is always air-conditioning blowing strong in July. But none of those things are crucial.
How to Build a Healthy Church
Mark Dever, Paul Alexander
In this practical guide, pastors Mark Dever and Paul Alexander have compiled a practical handbook for pastors and church leaders on how to build a healthy church grounded in the gospel.
What you call your church isn’t crucial. What’s crucial and important are the things God has told us about what he is like and what we are like, what he’s done in Christ, and how we’re to respond to that.
That theology that we have will determine so many things about what our churches are like, and we shouldn’t try and reverse engineer by saying, We like this, now how can we push our message into a certain shape so that we can have things as we like them?
We want to begin with the big, raw truth of who God says he is and who he tells us we really are.
No, we want to begin with the big, raw truth of who God says he is and who he tells us we really are, what he’s doing in Christ, and how we’re to respond. Then, everything else gets shaped by that message being in the very center and core.
Mark Dever is the coauthor with Paul Alexander of How to Build a Healthy Church: A Practical Guide for Deliberate Leadership.
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