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As long as quick numerical growth remains the primary indicator of church health, the truth will be compromised. Instead, churches must once again begin measuring success not in terms of numbers but in terms of fidelity to the Scriptures.

Mark Dever

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Mark Dever
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: August 28
Erudite
Missionary
Pastor
Preacher
Theologian
Writer
the United States of America
Truth
Begin
Scriptures
Must
Health
Churches
Long
Instead
Primaries
Numerical
Growth
Primary
Indicator
Numbers
Quick
Compromised
Term
Scripture
Indicators
Church
Remains
Measuring
Success
Terms
Fidelity

More quotes by Mark Dever

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We can't know at any given time how God will bless our faithful witness. So the apparent numerical growth of the church is never a good guide to how faithful we have been in evangelism.
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Forgetfulness of God's grace is one of the greatest tools in the enemy's war against our souls.
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I guess I tend to see divine appointments everywhere. I am always on the alert for opportunities. So I prefer to err on the side of witnessing too often than not enough.
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Unbelief is like gravity, it's always pulling down on the authority of Scripture.
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If joy or urgency are missing from our presentation of the gospel, then our testimony to Christ will be missing that sort of fullness that we find in the New Testament.
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If you are not offending people, then you are not an evangelist.
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Too often preachers want to deal with people simply at the level of publicly accessible reason. We participate with them in their own epistemology. But this is not New Testament preaching. We have a message that is not from this world it is from God. We don't know it by our own cleverness we know it because God has revealed it.
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For a Christian, our fears about the future are rooted in those places where our will differs from God's will.
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Discipling involves instruction and imitation.
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I think it's unhelpful to suggest that the task of evangelism is essentially the responsibility of ministers.
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As a pastor, I have the opportunity every week to share the gospel publicly in a way that most of the members sitting in our church do not. However, that doesn't absolve them of the responsibility for reaching others with the gospel.
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The church arises only from the gospel. And a distorted church usually coincides with a distorted gospel.
Mark Dever
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A gospel that in no way offends the sinner has not been understood.
Mark Dever
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There is no gospel without the offence. This is God's wisdom. It never seems sensible to us in our flesh.
Mark Dever
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According to the New Testament, the church is primarily a body of people who profess and give evidence that they have been saved by God's grace alone, for His glory alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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We do not fail in our evangelism if we faithfully tell the gospel to someone who is not subsequently converted we fail only if we do not faithfully tell the gospel at all.
Mark Dever
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The truly changed, truly converted, truly Christian heart can say with John Newton, “I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. I am not what I hope to be. Yet I can truly say, I am not what I once was. By the grace of God, I am what I am.
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I think that there are many things in the New Testament that show us that the godliness of our conversation plays an important evangelistic role. The apostles are clear that we mustn't limit the explicit sharing of the gospel to formal preaching. It can also happen in ordinary conversations.
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Suffering can serve us. Suffering tests our trust in God's promises. And we have a great interest in knowing the truth about our trust in Him.
Mark Dever
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Our examples of enduring hardship are often more powerful than our stories of success and triumph.
Mark Dever