Discipling in a Vacuum

"If you are discipling your child and you are doing so apart from baptism, then you are discipling in a vacuum. If you are washing your children in the Word but have not brought them forth to be washed by the waters of baptism, then you are not getting them fully clean. Baptism is essential to discipleship in a similar way that sticking a flag in the ground is essential to conquering a nation. It is a reference point. It is a lasting sign lest we forget whose land we're living on. And we forget far too easily."

(Pure Water: The Beauty and Mystery of Baptism by Chase McMaster, p. 68)