Deconstructing... 9 Marks

Here, I am going to do something very simple. I am going to expose 9 Marks as subject to deconstruction, that is, susceptible to having incoherences pointed out.

I will follow a simple strategy: assume that "The 9 Marks of a Healthy Church" are, in fact, correct and normative.

1. Preaching: "An expositional sermon takes the main point of a passage of Scripture, makes it the main point of the sermon, and applies it to life today."

The deconstructing Christian is very happy with this point. Indeed, one of the calls many of us are making is just this: you have read things into Scripture which are not there, and you have been blind to this because of your privilege and pride.

2. Biblical Theology: "Biblical theology is sound doctrine; it is right thoughts about God; it is belief that accords with Scripture."

Here I want to introduce a very postmodern niggle: sound according to who? The main point of the passage of Scripture according to who? This is the deconstructive quest for full understanding. We are all for sound doctrine, but we are asking questions about what counts as sound doctrine--indeed, what makes us "deconstructing" is that we are (at least) wondering if what we have been told is "just sound doctrine" really is sound at all.

3. The Gospel: "The Good news is that: ..."

Oddly, 9 Marks seems to think that the good news includes the news of the Fall. That is a tenable view--felix culpa and all that--but I wouldn't think one had to have such an account of the Gospel to be a healthy church. Indeed, it seems to me that the Gospel is the good news that Jesus died for us. If you want to say that such a definition is too minimal, I agree. I think you need 66 books of various narratives to fully describe the Gospel.

In fact, I do not think the Gospel contains even as a part, "He now calls us to repent of our sins and trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness (Acts 17:30, John 1:12)." That is not news, that is a command. Perhaps it is news of a command, but nevertheless, the Gospel is not the news of a law to be obeyed "Repent! Trust!" For we will never either repent fully enough or trust deeply enough if it is a law that measures it.

Is the Gospel that we must submit to Jesus as Lord? Perhaps it can be told in this way. We do, after all, submit to him as Lord. But the oddity of 9Marks's gospel is found here: it is an escape-clause gospel. There is a wrathful God and a sinful humanity, but if we are really sorry and trust God to forgive us when we're bad, and if we submit to whatever he says (even when it's really some old white dudes misreading the Bible to oppress us?), then we get eternal life (whatever that means).

4. Conversion: "A biblical understanding of conversion recognizes both what God does and what people do in salvation."

Here, 9 Marks tells us that all Arminian churches are, ipso facto, unhealthy. So much for unity. More under "Evanglism," next.

5. Evangelism:

Evangelism is simply telling non-Christians the good news about what Jesus Christ has done to save sinners and urging them to repent and believe. In order to biblically evangelize you must:

1. Preach the whole gospel, even the hard news about God’s wrath against our sin.

2. Call people to repent of their sins and trust in Christ. 

3. Make it clear that believing in Christ is costly, but worth it.

Again: God's wrath isn't good news. I don't know why they think the good news contains as an explicit part "God hates you, but if you repent, believe the gospel, and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, he won't anymore."

There's a weird formulaicness to this account of "biblically evangelizing" that I just find weird and off-putting. Suppose I accept it, though: how much do I have to say before I've said "the whole" Gospel? I'd better play it safe and just quote the 9 Marks presentation from earlier, right? Do I tell someone who is desperately anxious about their badness, perhaps even suicidal, that they are worse than they imagine? Really? Isn't that kind of tone deaf?
I'm not claiming that 9 Marks has not response to what I'm saying, only that their introductory material--and, likely, what people a couple steps down the road are learning--has deep fissures that can result in either great harm or deconstruction. "Sure," they'll say, "timing and tone are important, but you really need people to understand the whole truth of the gospel." Well, in the spirit of deconstruction--in the Spirit of God who leads us in humility!--I'm pretty confident that I do not understand the whole Gospel, nor will I until, at least, eternity, and I expect to plumb ever further the depths of God's love, revealed in the Gospel, throughout eternity.

And if I have to preach the whole Gospel to be doing it right, then I can't do it. And if I can't do it, then I'm a bad Christian, and if I'm a bad Christian, then maybe I'm not saved... And here is deconstruction: are you a Christian, or does being a Christian require all this?

6. Membership: "According to the Bible, church membership is a commitment every Christian should make to attend, love, serve, and submit to a local church."

Let us suppose they're right about this (it strikes me as a pretty tendentious reading of the Biblical text for a "mark of a healthy church," but whatever). In what ways must I submit? What if there is no "good" church in the area? What must attendance look like? Do I have to serve in measurable ways? That is how it can often feel.

The danger is that "attend, love, serve, and submit to..." becomes "go to even when it's unhealthy or feel guilty; protect unconditionally, even from legitimate criticism; fill in to serve the needs, even when I am not gifted in those ways and am losing any Sabbath rest I might have hoped to get; and believe whatever the pastors and other approved teachers tell me to, even if they can't muster an argument for it."

7. Discipline: "In the broadest sense, church discipline is everything the church does to help its members pursue holiness and fight sin." Great, who could object? "In a narrower sense, church discipline is the act of correcting sin in the life of the body, including the possible final step of excluding a professing Christian from membership in the church and participation in the Lord’s Supper because of serious unrepentant sin."

When I hear people talk about this point, it is almost always the narrow sense they mean. What counts as "serious, unrepentant sin," though? Deconstructing Christians are often deconstructing in part because we have seen "church discipline" applied only against those who are "other" and never against the charismatic leader, the people with right beliefs, those with "acceptable," yet still incredibly serious sins. The interpretation of what counts here is, we have seen, fraught.

8. Discipleship: "churches should exhort their members to both grow in holiness and help others do the same."

Awesome! I am totally game for this. Here, let me try to help you see how the church has been complicit in racism... oh.

Discipleship is great, but it involves change. So, since it applies to all of us, and since, as 9 Marks admits under Biblical Theology, "Christians grow by learning and living in light of the truth—in other words, by sound doctrine" our worship and doctrine will change. It is not as if that is a one-way street, after all.

If we are all imperfect, all in need of growth, then no one can stand as lone arbiter of the truth. All of us stand in need of correction from time to time.

9. Leadership: "The Bible teaches that each local church should be led by a plurality of godly, qualified men called elders."

Heh. Men. Anyway...

This is actually pretty fine, ignoring the context, but let's actually take a step back and take a look at the 9 Marks as a whole:

Expositional preaching, biblical theology, the Gospel, Conversion, Evangelism, Membership, Discipline, Discipleship, and Leadership.

What picture do we get of this church?

There are 5 points about how we have to be "good Christians" and believe the right things, read the Bible correctly, and tell other people about the Gospel, including how bad they are.

There are 4 points about how the church is supposed to relate as a congregation: members submit to the church, the church tells them what to believe and how to act.

What has been left out?

Discipleship entails growth, and I'm sure they mean Evangelism to be spurred on by love, and discipline is probably supposed to involve growing in love (although the word is strikingly absent there...), but the very biblical notion that we must be ever seeking to understand the love of God more and more is absent. In fact, there is little mention of God's love! Where Christ himself says that the mark of the Christian (to borrow Francis Schaeffer's reading) is that we love. We love one another, and we love this lost and broken world.

And love is the root of deconstruction which makes us seek another perspective. 

How can it be a mark of a healthy church to emphasize "godly leadership" but not even more so self-sacrificial service for our neighbors and our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Why the emphasis on what appears to be hierarchical submission to "the church," rather than mutual submission one to another?

Why is "church" used as this weird external entity? It seems odd to talk of "submitting to a local church." We are a body, no? So, does your foot submit to your body? Perhaps there is a way of talking like this, but the point is that 9 Marks is not clear about this and, as crises keep happening where pastors abuse their power in the church, it is important that they be clear about what this submission amounts to.