Recently I ordered Mark Dever’s, “Twelve Challenges Churches Face.” Mark Dever is the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. and the founder of IX Marks, a resource for the sanctification, edification and growth of the local church.
In “Twelve Challenges” Pastor Dever confronts issues in the church such as:
Division
Imposters
Thoughtlesness
Selfishness
Legalism
What I quickly discovered in reading the book was that it is basically a sermon series he preached through I Corinthians (available for download by searching in the audio section of his website HERE if you’re interested). Pastor Dever is clearly a gifted speaker and preacher. His gift easily translates to the written form of his explanation of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. I highly encourage those of you who are interested in supplementing yourself with additional resources as we preach through I Corinthians to invest in this book.
Allow me to share a selection that struck me the other day.
On the subject of the “Sin” challenge in the church and why the church must confront this challenge he states,
“Paul was pointing out here (I Cor. 5:6-8) that the entire community is endangered by indifference to continued, unrepentant sin. The man’s sin (a sexual relationship with his father’s wife) is heinous enough, but it is the church’s lack of discipline that has Paul yelling through this letter. The man’s sin was a single serious infection, but the church’s lack of discipline a complete failure of the immune system. We see here the spreading infection that sin is among those who tolerate it. Sin that no one deals with becomes sin that everyone will have to deal with” (p. 53, emphasis added).
Eventually, this book will be available on the resource table. Until then, I highly encourage giving it a look. It is available at a very reasonable price HERE.
