Capitol Hill: Late at Night

—PJ King

Katie and I took a last-minute trip to DC to celebrate her graduation from OU! While we were there we were able to visit Capitol Hill Baptist Church, home of 9 Marks. That trip has turned into a week-long series—Visiting Capitol Hill.

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Earlier, I did not describe one event that transpired during the morning of our visit to Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) in Washington DC: I was able to meet Mark Dever, the Senior Pastor. I had no concern in approaching him because my friend, Ben Arbour, had already let him know that Katie and I would be in town. After I introduced myself, Mark graciously invited us to come back to the evening service and then observe the weekly Service Review meeting.

However, Mark did not just off-handedly invite me. He sat me down (Katie was still in the main hall) and pastorally told me “You need to ask your wife if she would like you both to come back tonight.”

“Of course. We’d love to come!” I responded.

Mark casually replied, “No. You need to ask your wife first. This is her vacation. She probably doesn’t care about this place as much as you do.”

I just smiled and nodded.

From this and other observations, I greatly enjoyed seeing that Mark was available to personally shepherd his flock. Other pastors who are important to the world (or even not so important) can seem to hide from the crowds of their sheep, especially at larger churches. With Mark, however, I was able to see him in the midst of his congregation, throughout the entire day.

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After the evening service at CHBC, Katie and I grabbed dinner so that we could report back to the church at 9 PM for the service review. I didn’t really know what to expect from the service review. I knew, from The Deliberate Church, that the meeting was a thoughtful review of all the church services of the day – but I didn’t know much more than that. Little did I know how acquainted I was about to get with the process.

The review was, as usual, in Mark’s office. His office is attached to his house, which is across the (small) parking lot from the church. The meeting began promptly, with 12 or so CHBC leaders in a large circle. There were elders, assistant pastors, pastoral assistants and interns in attendance. We sat outside the circle, mostly because there was not room within it.

If I were to summarize the meeting in a word, I would describe it as … detailed. The meeting progressed through every event of the day. They began by reviewing each of the Core Seminar (Sunday School) classes. Most of the classes had someone on staff in attendance. The service review leader (Mark Dever, this time) went through each of the classes and opened discussion concerning the quality of the lesson, the quality of the teaching, and anything that needed improvement (for example, one of the rooms had a noisy A/C unit running throughout the entire class).

The group then began to review the Sunday morning service. Apparently, many of the leaders at Capitol Hill are educated in music. They spent a good deal of time reviewing not only the songs chosen, but also specific details of how the songs were played. One time, there was a short debate between the merits of a certain hymn set to one arrangement versus another. I didn’t know the hymn, let alone the arrangement choices – and they knew them well enough to break out into song! For another piece, there was a detailed discussion on how a particular song should transition from verse to verse, someone suggested that “after verses one and two, we need to add a full four-four measure; however, after verse three, we should keep the two-four and go straight into verse four”. The knowledge these men had of music in general, and church music specifically, enabled almost everyone to participate in a detailed review of the musical worship, more so than I would have ever expected.

Another topic which was reviewed was the prayer. As I mentioned before, the morning service included a significant amount of prayer, and the prayers were led by different leaders in the church. This time of the review was spent critiquing each other’s prayers. You may think this is sacrilege, but it seemed quite beneficial. One pray-er was pointed out because of his abnormal use of high language during his prayer. It was recommended that he speak in a more conversational manner; “use contractions,” Mark suggested. Another prayer was brought up because, due to a slip of the mind, something was prayed that was incorrect and unbiblical. At another point, the younger leaders asked the Senior Pastor for advice on how to prepare for leading the corporate prayer. Overall, it seemed to be an uplifting review session.

Most of the review time was spent, unsurprisingly, critiquing Geoff’s sermon. I was amazed by some of the detailed responses some of these men were able to offer. At one point, someone quoted an entire sentence from the sermon, verbatim. Although the details of the critiques are not terribly important to communicate here, it was very clear that the more experienced preachers had much to offer Geoff, who had considerably less pulpit experience, and that Geoff gratefully received the advice.

The evening service was also reviewed, but because so much time had been spent on the sermon, this was dealt with quickly; it took no more than 15 minutes. All aspects of the service were considered again, just quickly this time. The man who taught the homily was not in attendance at the review, so his material was considered ever-so briefly. We finally concluded at 10:30 PM.

Walking away from the service review, a few things stood out in my mind. First, the events of that Sunday were reviewed in detail by the church leaders. Surely, one reason so many people look to this church as a model is because of the deliberate nature of CHBC’s leadership. Secondly, the critiques were given and received with humility. When an individual (especially the older ones) was critiquing someone else, the critique consistently began with praise before anything critical was brought up. Surely this made it easier to receive the critique. Everyone seemed to take critiques well, especially the more senior elders. Feathers were not ruffled and morale was not reduced by anyone’s comments. Creating and maintaining a leadership culture which can accept criticism humbly surely requires much effort – and is definitely worth it.