“…when we come together as Christians on Sunday mornings, we do not gather merely to have our own personal devotions together. The church service is not just your quiet time. We do not gather to pray, sing and read Scripture like we do the other days of the week at home except that on Sundays with more people around because it is more encouraging. No, we come to participate in the life of our church.
And when we come, we come not as individual consumers to do our spiritual shopping for the week, seeing what’s of use down this aisle of singing or down that aisle of prayer, looking over the sermon special, browsing through post-service conversations, and taking it home in our carts for personal use. We actually assemble as a living instistution, a viable organism, one body.”
Mark Dever, The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept (Wheaton: Crossway, 2005) , 170
In Anticipation 