Lessons from Mark Dever’s 30 Years at Capitol Hill Baptist Church

In January 1993, Mark Dever received a letter from Carl F. H. Henry informing him of a recently vacated pulpit on Capitol Hill. Dever wasn’t immediately enthusiastic—he thought he was preparing for the professorship, not the pastorate. He’d recently completed a PhD in ecclesiastical history while serving as associate pastor of Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge, England.

Nevertheless, he accepted the offer to preach that summer at the once-prominent Washington congregation that had been Henry’s home church since 1956. And in one of those remarkable and providential turn of events—not unlike William Farel’s convincing John Calvin to remain at Geneva—God turned Dever’s heart to the congregation on Capitol Hill. It happened the first time he preached to them.

“During my quiet time the next morning,” Dever shared, “God just unmistakably turned my heart toward the church.”

September 25, 2024, marks the 30th anniversary of Dever’s installation as senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) in Washington, DC. What lessons are there to glean from a ministry that has spanned three decades and influenced thousands? One answer comes from a response Dever gave in a pastoral candidate interview with the congregation in November 1993.

Asked what his vision for ministry was, Dever gave an answer that has become a staple of his ministry: preach, pray, love, and stay.

Preach

“When I came to CHBC,” Dever explained, “I was very clear with them that I was happy for every aspect of my public ministry to fail, if necessary, except for the preaching of God’s Word.” The hyperbole was intentional. Dever wanted the church to understand the primacy of the preached Word in the congregation’s life.

“Preaching is central to the pastoral ministry,” Dever explained at the congregational Q&A in 1993. “A lot of churches in America don’t think that. I think they’re wrong.”

Dever began by preaching expositionally through Mark’s Gospel. From his time studying the Puritans, Dever realized that in a “Christian culture,” the way you preach evangelistically to self-conscious Christians who may not be converted is by constantly repeating the same truth in sermons: This is what a Christian is like. The Gospels provided the perfect lens to do so through Jesus’s words.

Early on, Henry offered a mild criticism of Dever’s preaching: “You know, Mark, you’re supposed to feed the sheep, not just the giraffes.” In other words, don’t preach so academically that your audience can’t understand you, or push too hard on deep theological concepts.

Dever listened respectfully but disagreed. “I was going to feed the sheep,” he explained. “But I was going to feed the regenerate sheep. That is what I knew would create a healthier church.”

For decades, Dever has heeded the apostle Paul’s instruction to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2). Since 1994, Dever has preached 827 sermons at CHBC, alternating every preaching series between Old and New Testament books. Surveying the church’s spiritual and numerical growth over the past 30 years, Dever often recalls the words of Martin Luther: “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. . . . The Word did everything.”

Pray

The second aspect of ministry Dever emphasizes is prayer. Prayer means realizing everything we do is dependent on God.

“This church began in a prayer meeting in 1867,” Timothy George recounted in his sermon at Dever’s installation as pastor on September 25, 1994. “And out of that emerged a Sunday school, which was the nucleus of what became Metropolitan Baptist Church. And through these years, God has sustained this church through the prayers of his people.”

Shortly after arriving, Dever turned the Sunday evening service into a prayer meeting to emphasize corporate prayer’s significance in the life of the body. He selected topics for prayer that would lead the congregation to Christian maturity, asking God to do what they were powerless to do in their own strength. “We should pray so much in our churches,” Dever likes to say, “that nominal Christians are bored at praying to the God they only pretend to know.”

Prayer also shapes his private devotion. Early on in Dever’s preaching ministry, his uncle told him that “prayer is the best commentary on Scripture.” That contrast between prayer and commentaries stuck with Dever and informed his pulpit preparation.

Additionally, Dever adopted the habit of praying through a few pages of CHBC’s membership directory every morning. “This is my most important book,” Dever likes to say, holding up his Bible. “And this is my second most important book,” he’ll say, holding up his directory.

“Time spent in prayer is never time lost,” Dever reflected.

Love

When Dever applied for the pastorate of CHBC, one quality stood out among others in his references: he made disciples everywhere he went. “If I had to emphasize one gift above others,” Don Carson wrote to the church, “it is his continuing ability to challenge others, in the context of genuine friendship.”

Love involves sacrificially pouring oneself out for the sake of others. It means slowly but surely building relationships to help others grow as Christians. In Dever’s life, the love of good friends has been the foundation for not only the strength of the CHBC body but also the expanding work of 9Marks and the successful years of the T4G conference.

For Dever, focusing on the good of others and even other churches is a basic aspect of pastoral ministry. He has often said, “I am not qualified to be the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church if I am only concerned with Capitol Hill Baptist Church.”

Of course, a pastor needs a special concern for his church, just as a husband needs a special concern for his wife and children. Yet a pastor’s disposition cannot be competitive but focused on gospel expansion in his area of influence. One small example of this at CHBC is the public prayers offered each week for other local congregations.

Stay

The fourth quality Dever emphasized with the pulpit committee in 1993 was patience: “I wouldn’t want to necessarily see something happen quickly,” he told them back then. “Often, things that happen quickly don’t last very well.”

Five years into Dever’s ministry on Capitol Hill, the church’s membership roll had declined to its lowest number since 1892. But under the surface, the tide was turning. The church was slowly moving toward a plurality of elders, more biblical church membership, and a culture of discipling—all of which prepared the church for growth in the 2000s.

Patience is a spiritual superpower that makes pastoral longevity possible. Young preachers often think they don’t need to preach twice on the same topic. But pastoral ministry is more like parenting in the sense that patient correction and repetition are the main tools. “True success,” Dever has often said, “cannot be defined in terms of visible results. Success must be defined in terms of faithfulness to God’s Word. This brings true freedom. If you learn this, you will be released from the demands of immediately observable results.”

Shaped by Dever

I’ve known Dever for more than a decade as my pastor, mentor, boss, and friend. I speak for hundreds, if not thousands, when I say he has shaped my delight in the church and desire to serve in pastoral ministry more than anyone I know.

First Thessalonians 5:12 tells us, “Acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord” (NIV). Pastoral longevity by a faithful pastor is a priceless blessing to a church. For however many additional years the Lord gives Dever in the ministry, my prayer is that he, and the pastors he has poured his life into, will preach, pray, love, and stay.