Pastors' Talk

Jonathan Leeman interviews four seasoned pastors—Mark Dever, Burk Parsons, H. B. Charles, and Jeramie Rinne—about leadership.

Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman continue their conversation about racial division in the church, highlighting the ways pastors can both educate themselves and work against it.

Mark Dever reflects on his friendship with the late R.C. Sproul.

Mark Dever chats with Jonathan Leeman about America's racial history, and how Christians should learn from brothers and sisters who aren't like them.Join the 9Marks community:GET THE APP: http://9marks.link/appTWITTER: https://www.twitter.com/9MarksFACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/9MarksINSTAGRAM: https://www.instragram.com/9Marks

What goes into planning the Sunday gathering? Who should pick the songs, the Scripture readings, the types of prayer? Should all these choices be thematically related to the text that will be preached?In this episode of Pastors’ Talk, Matt Merker—a hymn writer and a pastoral assistant at Capitol Hill Baptist Church—asks Mark Dever all these questions and more.

How long should a preacher prep for his sermons? When and how should he consult commentaries? What’s the best way to involve others in the process?

Almost everyone agrees pastors need to be trained, both practically and theologically. But does this mean they must receive formal theological training from a seminary?In this episode of Pastors’ Talk, Jonathan interviews both Mark and C. J. Mahaney about how pastors should be trained, and what seminaries have to do with it.

How should a church find its next pastor? Who makes this decision? A search committee? A group of elders? The pastor all by himself? And once such a search begins, how should it start?In this episode of Pastors’ Talk, Jonathan interviews Mark about “one of the most important decisions a church makes,” that is, finding its next pastor.

Over the past several decades, the multi-site church model has become quite popular. Recently, however, The Village Church, pastored by Matt Chandler, announced it was transitioning all of its sites into independent local churches. In this episode of Pastors' Talk, Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman interview Matt to talk about the reasons behind this decision.

What is the mission of the church? Is it to preach the gospel and make disciples—or is that too narrow? What about good works? What about seeking transformation for our neighborhoods—or is that too broad?

Pastoring can be lonely. But it doesn’t have to be.

Does church order really have anything to do with discipleship? Isn’t one polity—presbyterian, congregational, etc.—just as good as another?In this episode of Pastors’ Talk, Jonathan Leeman sits down with Mark Dever to talk about these questions and more.

Evangelicals are always in danger of losing the gospel because they don’t appreciate the role of the conscience and Christian freedom.The conscience is there to protect Christian freedom—and Christian freedom protects us from legalism. This is important because when legalism is indulged, it can actually threaten the gospel itself.

Jonathan Leeman sits down with Mark Dever to talk about how local churches can more wisely support overseas work.

In conjunction with the Fall 2017 Journal "The Reformation and Your Church," Jonathan Leeman interviews Mark Dever on the Reformation and its usefulness for Christians today.

We just released a Journal on church planting and church mergers. Because neither Mark nor Jonathan wrote an article for it, we devoted this episode of Pastors’ Talk to the topic.Also: this will be our last Pastors’ Talk until September, though we’ll be recording them all summer, so send us your ideas if you have them!SHOW NOTES:— Have you (Mark) ever been a church planter? (2:30)— Why are the topics of planting and mergers worth thinking through? (4:10)— Is there a different skill set for the church planter and someone leading a church merger? (8:00)— What’s some bad advice you often hear for church planters? (9:20)— Do some of the problems stem from a dependence on agencies as opposed to churches? What are agencies useful for? What should they not do that they tend to do? (11:00)— What common wisdom do you have to offer those involved in church mergers? (13:10)— When does the “church plant” become a church? (19:00)— Who should leave a church to go with a plant? (20:00)— Do you have elders first, and then me

In a few weeks, we’re releasing a new book, Conversion: How God Creates a People, in which Michael Lawrence makes the case that one’s doctrine of conversion has massive effects on one’s philosophy of ministry. In this episode of Pastors’ Talk, Mark and Jonathan talk about this connection.SHOW NOTES:– What’s this new book Conversion about? Why is conversion one of the nine marks? (1:55)– How does conversion affect one’s philosophy of ministry and even preaching style? (5:30)– Do liberal Christians have a doctrine of conversion? Same-sex affirming churches? (7:10)– How does Genesis 3 inform our doctrine of conversion? (9:00)– Is the doctrine of conversion going to become more and more offensive? (14:40)– Biblically speaking, what is conversion? (15:40)– Does “belonging before believing” undermine a biblical doctrine of conversion? Open communion? Spontaneous baptisms? (17:20)– How does a biblical doctrine of conversion affect a pastor’s preaching? (20:00)– How is church discipline an implication of the doctrine

One of the most important and time-consuming tasks for a church and its pastors involves receiving and releasing members, bringing them in and seeing them out. And yet, it's almost never talked about in books on the church or in seminary.To fill in this gap, Mark and Jonathan devoted this episode of Pastors' Talk to the one topic: receiving and releasing members.

In many evangelical churches, the public prayers are casual, short, and few. Is that a problem? How does this contemporary situation compare to the history of Protestant churches? How should pastors seek to reinvigorate their churches’ prayer practices?Jonathan sat down with Mark to discuss all these questions and more.SHOW NOTES:– In your experience, what does the public prayer look like in the average evangelical church? How does this compare historically? (:50)– Without impugning motives, why do churches play so little? (2:50)– Is there a pattern of corporate prayer in the Bible? (4:00)– Is a church being disobedient if they’re not giving ample time to corporate prayer? (5:25)– What does should the public prayer look like? What is a prayer of praise of confession? Should only men pray publicly? (6:30)– How should a pastor think through his “pastoral prayer” (14:00)?– This amount of prayer can be tough to get through for those not used to it. It slows people down and causes us to actively participate in a s