Mark Dever

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Mark Dever (born approx. 1960 in rural Kentucky) serves as the senior pastor of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.. Mark began preaching at Capitol Hill Baptist Church on Sunday, October 2, 1994.

He is also the executive director of 9Marks Ministries (formerly known as the Center for Church Reform), a ministry he co-founded "in an effort to build biblically faithful churches in America." ^[1] His most important written work is Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, which Dever intended as a prescription for some common problems that plague many Evangelical churches today.

Mark Dever's wife, Connie, is writing a systematic theology for children entitled "Praise Factory." Mark and Connie met each other as undergraduates at Duke University. They have two children: Anne and Nathan.

1 Dever's Ecclesiology and the 9 Marks
2 Dever's Influence
3 Education
4 Writings Available on the Internet
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Dever's Ecclesiology and the 9 Marks

Dever is a Baptist. However, today this distinction does not provide much in they way of specifics because Baptists practice a variety of ecclesiologies. Dever's brand of Baptist polity is notable for its emphasis on an elder led, congregationally ruled church. In addition, Dever believes that Baptist churches should be led by a plurality of elders as opposed to a single elder. His arguments for these positions can be readily accessed in his writings, specifically A Display of God's Glory: Basics of Church Structure, Deacons, Elders, Congregationalism, & Membership, By Whose Authority?: Elders in Baptist Life,"" The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel (co-written with Paul Alexander), and a volume he edited that is simply called Polity. Dever's writings on these subjects offer his biblical rational for his positions, but they also show that these views are consistent with a significant stream of Baptist history.

Dever's main emphasis, as evidenced by hs 9 Marks Ministries, is in the realm of ecclesiology. He aims to help Bible-believing churches become healthy by recovering a biblical view of the church. The 9 marks he provides are his positive prescription for church health. He does not intend the book as a comprehensive ecclesiology or even a comprehensive diagnosis of all the problems that may be found in contemporary churches. The nine marks are:

1. Expositional Preaching

2. Biblical Theology

3. Biblical Understanding of the Good News

4. Biblical Understanding of Conversion

5. Biblical Understanding of Evangelism

6. Biblical Understanding of Membership

7. Biblical Church Discipline

8. Promotion of Christian Discipleship and Growth

9. Biblical Understanding of Church Leadership ^[2]

[edit] Dever's Influence

In the last several years, Dever has become a more widely-recognized name among conservative Evangelicals. This is due in large part to his appearance at large, nation-wide conferences such as the Desiring God National Conference, the Ligonier Ministries Conference, the Shepherd's Conference, and the Together for the Gospel conference (which Dever co-founded with his friends C. J. Maheney, J. Ligon Duncan III, and R. Albert Mohler). But Dever and the remarkably active congregation that he serves in Washington, DC are also making an impact by training church leaders on a smaller scale. For the past 4 years, 12 interns a year have passed through the church's internship program that is in essence an intensive study of ecclesiology. In addition, 9 Marks Ministries hosts semi-annual weekend conferences at the church where pastors, elders and seminarians come from around the country to experience a unique immersion into the inner workings of a healthy Baptist church.

At present, Dever's influence on the Southern Baptist Convention (the association of which his church is a member) is limited. Most churches that are associated with the covention have not yet bought into his view of what a biblically healthy church looks like. Yet he does serve the convention in an important way as a trustee of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he narrowly missed being elected as the covnention's first vice-president in June of 2006.^[3]

Moreover, under Article XIII of the Constitution for the Southern Baptist Convention: "The District of Columbia shall be regarded as a state for the purpose of this Constitution, the Bylaws, and all actions of the Convention."^[4] As a result of this article, Capitol Hill Baptist Church has significant influence on the SBC.

It may be that Dever has a greater influence outside of his own association of churches than within it. He serves as a board member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and he chairs a regular conference call that includes a variety of Evangelical Leaders from different denominations.^[5] Many non-Baptists who identify themselves as Reformed or Calvinistic Evangelicals look to Dever as a leader.

[edit] Education

"Dr. Dever received his Doctor of Philosophy in ecclesiastical history from Cambridge University. He also has a Master of Theology from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a Master of Divinity, summa cum laude, from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Duke University." ^[1]

[edit] Writings Available on the Internet

Two writings listed above can be downloaded, free of charge, in their entirety from the 9 Marks web site. In addition, a condensed version of Dever's Nine Marks book can be downloaded at no charge.

A Display of God's Glory: Basics of Church Structure, Deacons, Elders, Congregationalism, & Membership"

Nine Marks of a Healthy Church Booklet

Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life