Quotes from Mark Dever

Being united to Christ means being united to every Christian. But that universal union must be given a living, breathing existence in a local church.

Our individual lives alone are not a sufficient witness. Our lives together as church communities are the confirming echo of our witness.

we preach with the goal of spurring believers on in their maturity in Christ and of awakening nonbelievers to their need for the Savior.

Yet the Bible teaches that the local church is the natural environment for discipling. In fact, it teaches that the local church is itself the basic discipler of Christians. It does this through its weekly gatherings and its accountability structures (this chapter), as well as its elders and its members (next chapter). These in turn provide the context for the one-on-one discipling we have been considering so far.

Can we say anything further about what discipling is? I've said it's helping others follow Jesus. It's doing them spiritual good. But to fill all that out, discipling is initiating a relationship in which you teach, correct, model, and love. It takes great humility.

Too many churches today have preachers who look to the culture around them not simply for the most effective methods of communicating their message but for the most effective message to be preached.

But if you define success in terms of faithfulness, then you are in a position to persevere, because you are released from the demand of immediately observable results, freeing you for faithfulness to the Gospel's message and methods, leaving numbers to the Lord.

Ask your friends what God has been teaching you about himself. Small groups can also be useful for facilitating these kinds of relationships.

A cold heart that does not love suggests one of two things. Either it has never been forgiven, or it does not appreciate the depth of its forgiveness. In fact, much of our growth in Christ is simply growth in our understanding of what Christ has done for us.

Churches don't need programs so much as they need cultures of discipling, cultures where each member prioritizes the spiritual health of others.

The covenant language in the Bible is not cold, legal language, but relational language.

Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34-35). The church is the gospel made visible.