9Marks Book Study Highlights-- Part 1

As the Vision Team(Aaron,Jonathan,Chance) has been meeting weekly to plan and prepare for the present as well as the future for The Foundation, we realized that we needed to do a better job of studying and growing together as a leadership team. To accomplish that task we are currently reading a book entitled: 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, written by Mark Dever. So far the book has been awesome and we would like to share some of the things we are learning as we move along through the book. I hope these posts will be helpful to you and that you might see The Foundation putting more emphasis on some of the healthy characteristics for the Body. Here are the notes from the Preface and Introduction:

Preface:

• Unhealthy churches cause few problems on mature-healthy Christians but are serious deterrents in the growth of young Christians.
• Bad churches are very effective anti-missionary forces.
• The local church is God’s evangelism plan.
• The local church isn’t an option for us; it’s the shape of you following Jesus.
• If we want to be more biblical in our evangelism, then we will find ourselves devoting more time to praying for the lost in our personal prayer times.

Introduction:

• Preaching of the Gospel and proper administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper have been regarded as the marks of a true church by Protestants since the Reformation.
• The exaltation of numbers and technique are two easily recognizable hallmarks of secularization in American churches.
• Three Major Church Models: Liberal, Seeker-Sensitive, and Traditional
• All three assume that evident relevance and response is a true indicator of success. (Social Ministries/Liberal—Music/Seeker-Sensitive—Programs/Traditional)
• It is dangerous to assume that the fruit of a successful church is readily apparent.
• God’s word is well-stocked with images of delayed blessing.
• “Biblically, we must realize that the size of what our eyes see is rarely a good way to estimate the greatness of something in the eyes of God”
• A successful ministry is one that is demonstrably faithful to God’s Word.
• The preaching of the message and the leading of disciples are two basic needs in our churches.
• The 9Marks: Expositional Preaching, Biblical Theology, The Gospel, Biblical Understanding of Conversion, Biblical Understanding or Evangelism, Biblical Understanding of Church Membership, Biblical Church Discipline, Concern for Discipleship and Growth, and Biblical Church Leadership.