Mercy Ministry in the Church | 9Marks Journal

The local church, institutionally speaking, is called to teach. That is its job. Lose that, you lose everything. But that institution is made up of human beings who must go and do. And where institutional resources (staff time, budget monies, etc.) are available for something more than teaching, they might be wisely and wonderfully stewarded in helping church members to pursue the good deeds that Jesus commands them to do. For these reasons, 9Marks wants to offer constructive help for how local churches might pursue organized mercy ministry.

Jamie Dunlop gets the ball rolling by offering the best big picture model we can think of. We will not fully endorse any one philosophy and method as “the 9Marks way,” but Dunlop’s model strikes us as very sensible, at least for churches in the wealthy West.

Timothy Keller then takes a step back to provide an even bigger picture: do we really think preaching is primary? Yes. What role does that leave for anything else? Read Keller.

Mike McKinley rightly connects mercy ministry to evangelism, and Kevin DeYoung offers wise counsel on how to discriminate between one need and another. Resources are finite. Where should we spend them?

John Lauber, Jamie Dunlop, and Layla Wilder offer practical advice on more specific matters like how to speak with the down and out. And then David Apple, J. D. Greear, and Justin Holcomb offer three striking examples of how churches have become involved in good work. All three will be the first to tell you that they have not done everything wisely, and not everything may be worth replicating (we learn as we go!). Still, you might find one or two elements to inspire you.