Mark Dever
LANSDALE, Pa—Stepping to the pulpit, Mark Dever was well aware of his fundamentalist audience. The noted author and conservative evangelical pastor had been invited as keynote speaker for the Advancing the Church conference, an event sponsored by Calvary Baptist Seminary, Lansdale, Pa.
“Keep clear fences. Keep them low. Shake hands often,” Dever says to the conference guests, advising them to continue observing denominational and movement labels, but also to recognize their limitations. “If our focus ever becomes that label, then it is sin,” Dever says.
Much of the preconference buzz had centered on the choice of speakers. Host pastor Tim Jordan, David Doran, and Kevin Bauder are all familiar speakers at independent Baptist events. But the choice of Dever was the cause of some discussion in circles where “sharing the platform” with evangelicals is considered a violation of fundamentalist ideals.
Tim Jordan told the conference crowd that he first heard Dever preach at the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference, an event that helped Jordan understand the relationship between fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals.
“Wow. Here are some fellows who are fighting for something that is worth fighting for—the gospel,” Jordan says of the T4G leaders. “These are men who, when it comes to the fundamentals of the faith, we are in agreement.”
Jordan says he invited Dever because “I believe him to be a man who loves God, loves the truth, has integrity in his personal life, and is committed to building churches.”
Dever structured his sermon as a brief survey of 1 Corinthians, somewhat of a departure from his normal pattern of preaching from a single passage. “I would not normally do this on a Sunday morning, but with you guys I can do it,” he said, noting that the purpose of the book “is to teach the Corinthians what the church is supposed to be like, and why the church is to be that way.”
Dever, the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., was certainly not a stranger to the conference guests. Most have read his well-regarded books such as Nine Marks of a Healthy Church and The Deliberate Church. After the Tuesday sermon, each guest received a copy of What Is a Healthy Church?, a gift from Dever’s Nine Marks Ministries.
Two different conversations appeared to be in progress at Tuesday’s conference, which had about 350 registered guests and many more in attendance for the evening session. As visiting pastors stood during the evening service, it was evident that the conference was attracting several different regional constituencies, including churches from the GARBC, Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International, IFCA, and many independent Baptists loosely affiliated with the educational institutions that were represented. Together, the overall effect was one of fundamentalist convergence—overlapping constituencies that historically did not meet together for such events.
Mark Dever’s appearance was the second subtext. Interestingly, Dever did not portray himself as a fundamentalist and Tim Jordan did not present him as such. Rather, Jordan invited Dever as a conservative evangelical with common Baptist roots, one who teaches profitable lessons about the nature of the church. In the minds of the conference organizers, the fences are still in place.
Or as Dever put it, “Keep clear fences. Keep them low. Shake hands often.”
Dever brought seven pastoral interns with him to the conference, all of them arriving in a church van after a three-hour drive. Part of their five-month internship involves taking two road trips with their mentor. During supper, the interns asked polite questions about the fundamentalist label: “Do your churches describe themselves as fundamentalist? Would you use the label to describe yourself?” The questions were fair. Both groups—fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals—have questioned whether existing terms are accurate descriptors of current issues.
Jeff Tuttle, dean and professor of pastoral theology, calls the conference one of the seminary’s best recruiting events, hosting 45 students from colleges such as Clearwater Christian College, Maranatha Baptist Bible College, Northland International University, and Appalachian Bible College.
The seminary’s conference is the successor to its National Leadership Conference, which ran for 15 years and developed a reputation for addressing difficult contemporary issues such as Calvinism, sanctification, worship styles, and social justice.
“Pastor Tim reached out to the younger people in fundamentalism to show our position was right, but wanted our attitude to change,” Tuttle says.
The church and seminary were founded by E. Robert Jordan, Tim’s father, who set a goal of planting 100 churches before he died (a goal he ultimately reached, Tuttle says). Now seminary president Sam Harbin has set a new goal to graduate 100 church planters in the next 10 years. The seminary retains its local church roots by having a majority of its trustees as members of Calvary Baptist. As the seminary has grown, it has also attained regional accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
- View a photo gallery from the first day of the Advancing the Church conference.
- Listen to the conference audio.
