The Mission of 9Marks

9Marks exists to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for displaying God’s glory to the nations through healthy churches. To that end, we want to see churches characterized by these nine marks of health:

Preaching

Want to know how to be utterly counter-cultural and culturally-relevant at the same time? Try opening God’s Word, taking the main point of a biblical text, making it the main point of a sermon, and applying it to life today.   Read more

Biblical Theology

Sound doctrine—a church can’t live without it.   Read more

The Gospel

The difference between a church and a non-church is whether or not it believes, teaches, and lives out the message of the gospel.   Read more

Conversion

God must act, and people must act. God must give life to the dead. People must repent of sin and trust in Christ.   Read more

Evangelism

Biblical evangelism means (i) sharing the message about Jesus’ death and resurrection with non-Christians and (ii) calling them to repent and believe.   Read more

Membership

Church membership isn’t just names on a list or an emotional attachment to your childhood church. It’s attending, loving, serving, and submitting to a congregation of people.   Read more

Discipline

Should the church look different from the world? The fact that Jesus and Paul commanded churches to practice discipline tells us the answer is “yes.”   Read more

Discipleship

Christians learn by instruction and imitation, which means that churches are where both should happen.   Read more

Leadership

The Bible teaches that churches should be led by a plurality of godly, qualified shepherds. What does it call them? Elders.   Read more

Sometimes people wonder why other important elements of the church's life aren't included, like missions or prayer. While these are important for the church's life, churches today generally understand that they should do missions and prayer. We highlight these nine marks simply because they are conspicuously absent from churches today.