It’s not hard to imagine how a church in Washington, DC, gets attention. The president visits. The press monitors its sermons. The academy studies its history.

No president has ever attended services at Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC), however. You don’t see much mainstream media coverage. And you won’t find great attention from scholars.

So what’s the big deal? I asked Caleb Morell, author of the new book A Light on the Hill: The Surprising Story of How a Local Church in the Nation’s Capital Influenced Evangelicalism (Crossway).

Morell serves as assistant pastor of CHBC, which began in 1878. At least in my ministry I don’t know a more influential church, even if CHBC isn’t exactly a household name among evangelicals the way some megachurches with famous pastors would be. Morell joined me on Gospelbound to tell the surprising story of this influential church.

If you don’t know the story of Carl Henry reaching out in the early 1990s via Don Carson to a Cambridge graduate named Mark Dever—and how Dever led the church to its lowest membership numbers in more than a century—grab a seat and listen to Caleb.