My name is Mark Dever, and this is my calling story. I was brought up in a small town in rural western Kentucky and came to know the Lord after a few years as a self-conscious agnostic. I could understand the Jesus part that I was reading and I could certainly understand the church once it’s there and growing. But how do you get from Jesus to the church being established was a big intellectual question for me. I finally realized I was reading the gospels as if I knew that there was no God. Now, when I didn’t know that I was an agnostic, not an atheist and so I thought, alright, there could be a god. Then I read the gospels again as if there were a God as if it were all true. And it just made sense. I would say the Lord converted me.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a young Christian, I was desiring to tell everybody about the Lord. So, I was immediately in positions where I would be speaking to people. I started preaching pretty soon, even though I didn’t have a desire to be a preacher as such, that was what I kept getting opportunities to do. A church contacted me and asked, “Could you come and preach for us? We’ve lost our pastor recently and we think you might be a good fit for here.” So I flew up there for a weekend, preached and the Lord just turned my heart to the situation. Although my wife was not with me, she was also praying about the situation and felt similarly. Within a few months, I was back visiting the church. My wife had visited the church and we concluded and the congregation that we should actually move there and I should be their next pastor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So beginning in the summer of 1994, I became the pastor of the Capitol Hill, then called Metropolitan Baptist Church, in Washington, DC. In January of 95, we dropped the Metropolitan and became just Capitol Hill Baptist Church. I’ve recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of being the pastor there at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. The congregation has been very kind and encouraging and I have no plans to do anything else. We will continue to try and be a faithful shepherds there and lead that congregation by preaching God’s word, evangelizing, and discipling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Mark Dever, and this has been just a little part of my calling story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My name is Mark Dever, and this is my calling story. I was brought up in a small town in rural western Kentucky and came to know the Lord after a few years as a self-conscious agnostic. I could understand the Jesus part that I was reading and I could certainly understand the church once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":145,"template":"","tags":[],"mere_resource_type":[72],"mere_resource_scripture":[],"mere_media_type":[],"mere_resource_topic":[],"mere_resource_event":[],"mere_resource_series":[],"multi_author":[97],"class_list":["post-144","mere_resource","type-mere_resource","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","mere_resource_type-video","multi_author-mark-dever"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mere_resource\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mere_resource"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/mere_resource"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"mere_resource_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mere_resource_type?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"mere_resource_scripture","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mere_resource_scripture?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"mere_media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mere_media_type?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"mere_resource_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mere_resource_topic?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"mere_resource_event","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mere_resource_event?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"mere_resource_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mere_resource_series?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"multi_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ftc.co\/called\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/multi_author?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}