Below is an insightful excerpt from Mark Dever, Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus, 9Marks (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 101–3. I bolded the most punchy paragraph and underlined the sentence that made me laugh out loud. So true.
7. Encourage Godly Authority [Read more…] about When people are skittish over complementarianism, apologizing for it, I know they are probably thinking about authority in a wrong way.
I love Mark Dever’s resources on the church, so I’m not sure why I don’t recall hearing about Church Essentials, which Lifeway published in 2012.
The Leader Kit includes two DVDs, which feature six thoughtful interviews with Mark Dever. Mark is incredibly gifted at speaking off-the-cuff clearly, directly, wisely, and winsomely.
DVD contents:
Two preachers talk shop:
Mark Dever and Greg Gilbert. Preach: Theology Meets Practice. 
9Marks. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2012. 212 pp. 27-page sample PDF.
Excerpts:
What expositional preach is and is not (pp. 36–38):
Expositional preaching is preaching in which the main point of the biblical text being considered becomes the main point of the sermon being preached. . . . [Read more…] about Preach: Theology Meets Practice
Mark Dever. The Church: The Gospel Made Visible. 9Marks. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2012. 16-page sample PDF.
This book is intended as a popular primer on the doctrine of the church, especially for Baptists but also, in so far as the arguments are convincing, for all of those who see Scripture alone to be the sufficient authority for the doctrine and life of the local church.
The book grew out of a chapter I wrote almost a decade ago on the doctrine of the church. [Note 8: Daniel Akin, ed., A Theology for the Church (Nashville: B&H, 2007); see chap. 13, “The Church,” 766–856.] The volume containing that chapter imposed a certain structure that is retained here. (p. xii) [Read more…] about A Popular Primer on the Church
Mark Dever, What Is a Healthy Church? (IX Marks; Wheaton: Crossway, 2007), p. 79:
Quick Tips: How to Find a Good Church
1. Pray.
2. Seek counsel from a godly pastor (or from elders).
3. Keep your priorities straight.
- The gospel must be truly affirmed, clearly preached, and faithfully lived out. A serious lack in any of these expressions of the gospel is very dangerous.
- The preaching must be faithful to Scripture, personally challenging, and central to the congregation’s life. You will only grow spiritually where Scripture is treated as the highest authority. [Read more…] about How to Find a Good Church
Calvary Baptist Seminary hosted the Advancing the Church Conference a few weeks ago, and the conference audio is now available.
Mark Dever was the keynote speaker, and he interacted with Dave Doran, Kevin Bauder, and other fundamentalist leaders in two panels:
Kevin Bauder shares his perspective on the conference in “Reflections after the Encounter: Considering the Current Situation of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism; or, Why I Am Still a Fundamentalist (And How I Am Not).”
So writes Mark Dever in a new book based on a conference honoring J. I. Packer at Beeson Divinity School on September 25–27, 2006:
Timothy George, ed. J. I. Packer and the Evangelical Future: The Impact of His Life and Thought. Beeson Divinity Studies. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009. [Amazon | WTS Books]
Sample pages as a PDF include the TOC, preface, and opening chapter by Alister McGrath.
Here’s the opening paragraph of Mark Dever’s chapter, entitled “J. I. Packer and Pastoral Wisdom from the Puritans”:
There are some people for whom it is an honor to be asked to honor, and J. I. Packer is certainly one of them. And this is a surprising honor, considering that I disagree with him on baptism, church, and the resources of and prospects for rapprochement between Protestants and Roman Catholics. After all, I am a fundamentalist, Calvinistic, separatist Baptist—I barely believe in rapprochement with Presbyterians! (p. 87)
In the final section of his essay, titled “Puritans on the Definition of Justification and Questions of Church Cooperation,” Dever respectfully disagrees with Packer on Evangelicals and Catholics Together (pp. 93–96).
In Packer’s response to this book’s essays, he playfully picks up a metaphor in which he is Robin Hood, Timothy George is “Little George,” etc. He writes,
I saw in my Baptist brother Mark Dever a latter-day Sheriff of Nottingham, giving me a passing grade on the doctrine of grace but a firm “F” in ecclesiology. (p. 172)
Related: Mark Dever interviewed J. I. Packer ten years ago.
WTS Books just stocked this book:
John Wenham. Christ and the Bible. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994. Repr., Wipf and Stock, 2009.
Here’s what Mark Dever says about it in the last paragraph of his essay “Inerrancy of the Bible: An Annotated Bibliography“:
I’ve saved the best for last. If I could just recommend one book on the inerrancy of the Bible it would undoubtedly be this one—John Wenham, Christ and the Bible (Tyndale Press, 1972 [UK]; IVP, 1973 [US]). Wenham’s book has been through three editions and makes the simple point that our trust in Scripture is to be a part of our following Christ, because that is the way that He treated Scripture—as true, and therefore authoritative. (Robert Lightner, a professor of Systematic Theology at Dallas Seminary published a similar book a few years later, A Biblical Case for Total Inerrancy: How Jesus Viewed the Old Testament [Kregel, 1978].) Wenham had first put these ideas in print with a little Tyndale pamphlet in 1953 called Our Lord’s View of the Old Testament. In Christ and the Bible, Wenham, who taught Greek for many years at Oxford, an Anglican evangelical, has done us all a great service in providing us with a book which understands that we do not come by our adherence to Scripture fundamentally from the inductive resolutions of discrepancies, but from the teaching of the Lord Jesus. Only because of the Living Word may we finally know to trust the Written Word. May God use these resources of those who’ve gone before us to equip and encourage us in so trusting.
Dever concludes by giving Wenham his top recommendation:
To get up to speed on this issue, and to help you with your ministry, consider the following recommendations.
MUST READ: Wenham
SHOULD READ: Warfield, Packer’s “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God, Lindsell [The Battle for the Bible and The Bible in the Balance], any one of the edited volumes of your choosing!