Tolle Lege: The Deliberate Church

Readability (1-3):  1

Length:  202 pgs

Author:  Mark Dever and Paul Alexander

There is an ocean of contemporary books being written about the church.  They are an ocean.  They are ever changing, never steady, constantly fluctuating.  If things appear calm from the surface there is either turbulence underneath, or a storm approaching.  In this ocean of pragmatic, novel, faddish, and often unbiblical approaches to church there are a few solid islands to set your feet on, islands that are grounded and steady.  Mark Dever is one such Island.  If someone were to ask me who was a good contemporary author to read on the church, I would first think of Mark Dever.  Mark’s concept is very simple and sadly radical to the western church – that is the Word of God which should shape our church.  Here are the first six paragraphs of the introduction.

What are we building?

It would be patently stupid to start construction on a building without first knowing what kind of building we plan to construct. An apartment complex is different from an office complex, which is different still from a restaurant. They all have different blueprints, different kinds of rooms, different materials, uses, and shapes. So the process of building will be different, depending on what kind of structure we’re planning to build.

The same goes for building a church. A church is not a Fortune 500 company. It’s not simply another nonprofit organization, nor is it a social club. In fact, a healthy church is unlike any organization that man has ever devised, because man didn’t devise it.

It only makes sense, then, for us to revisit God’s Word to figure out what exactly He wants us to be building. Only then will we understand how to go about building it. Negligence here will result in both temporal and eternal futility. Temporally, a church is a spiritually heavy thing to build, and it is designed for heavy relational use. It requires the strongest materials, and those materials must be placed in the correct, load-bearing positions specified on the biblical blueprint so that structural integrity is built in. No matter how beautiful the facade, our structure will crumble if we build on a sandy foundation or with shoddy materials.

Eternally, our work will withstand the fire of the last day only if we build with the “gold, silver, precious stones” specified on the biblical blueprint (1 Cor. 3:12). Building without that blueprint will virtually guarantee that we will build with the cheaper and more abundant resources of “wood, hay, straw,” all of which will burn in the end (vv.

13-15). Ignoring God’s plan for the church and replacing it with your own will ensure the eternal futility of your work. Here at the outset, then, it is critical to reflect biblically on this foundational question: What is a local church?

Fundamentally, God intends the local church to be a corporate display of His glory and wisdom, both to unbelievers and to unseen spiritual powers (John 13:34-35; Eph. 3:10-11). More specifically, we are a corporate dwelling place for God’s Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Cor. 3:16-17), the organic body of Christ in which He magnifies His glory (Acts 9:4; 1 Corinthians 12). The Greek word for church is ekklēsia, a gathering or congregating of people. The church is God’s vehicle for displaying His glory to His creation.

The uniqueness of the church is her message—the Gospel. The church is the only institution entrusted by God with the message of repentance of sins and belief in Jesus Christ for forgiveness. That Gospel is visualized in the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, both instituted by Christ. The distinguishing marks of the church, then, are the right preaching of this Gospel and the right administration of the biblical ordinances that dramatize it.