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8 Acts of a Healthy, Growing Church

40 Days of Love

What's Driving Your Life: A 10-Day Turnaround for a Fresh Start

Life's Healing Choices

[caption id="attachment_21853" align="alignright" width="340"] photo credit: marfis75[/caption] B. H. Carroll, a famous Bible scholar, in his commentary, estimates that there were probably a hundred thousand members in the Jerusalem church after 25 years. Peter Wagner and many have agreed. G. Campbell Morgan estimates a minimum of 60,000. In any Bible dictionary it will tell you that in New Testament times that the city of Jerusalem was approximately 200,000 people. What we have here is a church with 100,000 members in a city of 200,000 people. Half the city had come to Christ. No wonder they said, “you’ve filled Jerusalem.” When you look at the book of Acts, you find at least 8 characteristics of the early church that positioned them for this kind of blessing from God. If we echo the actions of the early church, we can expect God’s blessing on our church as much as those ancient leaders saw a blessing on the church in Jerusalem.

1. We must minister in the Holy Spirit's power.

Acts 1:4 says, “Don’t leave Jerusalem but wait for the gift My Father promised which you’ve heard Me speak about. John baptized with water but in a few days you’ll be baptized with the Holy Spirit…” If you're a Christian, you already have the Holy Spirit living inside you, but we must rely on His power on a moment by moment basis. The power of God is given for witnessing, for ministry, for mission. To minister in the Holy Spirit's power means to have Spirit-filled, Spirit-controlled members. One of the characteristics of people who try to minister in a church without God’s Spirit is simple – tiredness, fatigue. You end up running on your own steam rather than running on the power of God’s Spirit. So the starting point is to minister with the Holy Spirit’s power. He said, “Don’t leave Jerusalem. Wait until you’ve got My power.”

2. We must maintain a warm fellowship.

Next, according to Acts 2:42-44, “They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and to the fellowship and the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wondrous and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All believers were together and had everything in common.” This is a perfect example of fellowship. They loved each other. When God has a bunch of baby Christians, He looks for the warmest incubator He can find. The church that has warmth and fellowship and harmony, God blesses that church with new believers because He wants them to be in an environment where they can grow. Ten times in the first five chapters of Acts it says, “they were unified”. He uses phrases like, “they were of one accord… one heart… one purpose… one spirit… all united in thought.” God can overlook a lack of facilities, a lack of programs, and a lack of leadership. But one thing He will not overlook is disharmony in the church. Harmony, unity, must be maintained at all costs because the church is a fellowship. We need to build fellowship into each other. Notice the results of fellowship: v. 47 “The Lord added to their number daily.” The result of people being close to each other and celebrating warmth and harmony was that other people wanted to get involved.

3. We must multiply small groups.

There are four advantages to meeting in small groups house to house:

It is infinitely expandable.
It is unlimited geographically.
It is good stewardship.
It promotes relationships.

There’s benefit, wisdom, in God’s way of multiplying small groups. As a result the Lord added to their number daily those that were being saved.

4. We must magnify our vision of God.

In Acts 4:24, the apostles were essentially praying, “God, there are rulers and there are leaders and there are people against You but You’re in control. You’re the sovereign Lord. You made everything in heaven and on earth.” We are children of the king. We’re on the winning side. We’ve read the last chapter. We know how it’s going to end. Jesus Christ has broken our chains and Jesus says in the Bible, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” We’re attacking hell with squirt guns! And we’re trying to snatch people right out of the jaws of hell. There are a lot of churches that want to play it safe. They get as far away from unbelievers as they can so they don’t get tainted. I want to get so close to hell that I can smell it! That’s where you set up your rescue station. Don’t be afraid to rock the boat if Jesus Christ is the captain of the boat. We need to magnify our vision of God.

5. We must maximize the power of prayer.

Forty-eight times in the book of Acts it says, “they prayed.” We will have the power the early church experienced when we pray like the early church prayed. Spiritual warfare requires the use of spiritual weapons. Notice Acts 4:31, “After they prayed the place they were meeting was shaken.” When was the last time you were in a prayer meeting like that? “They were all filled with God’s Spirit and they spoke the word of God boldly.” We must maximize the power of prayer if we’re going to be like the church of Jerusalem.

6. We must model Christlike generosity.

The New Testament church in Jerusalem was a giving church. Acts 4:32-37 says, “ All the believers were one in heart and one in mind [there’s unity again]. No one claimed any of that which was his possessions as his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and grace was with them all. There were no needy persons among them.” Notice there were three results of their generosity. - v. 32 says there was unity in the church. - v. 33 says it was a powerful testimony to the community. - v. 44 says there were no needy people.

7. We must mobilize every member for ministry.

Acts 6 describes a problem that arose in the early church between the Greek-speakers and the Aramaic-speakers. One felt that the other was receiving special treatment and needs were going unmet. So, they chose seven guys to oversee this area of ministry to people. They presented these men to the Apostles who prayed and laid hands on them. Then the Bible says, "So the word of God spread and the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly.” When every member is a minister, discovers their God-given SHAPE, and serves someone else, the church moves from just a leader "adding" more people to the church "multiplying."

8. We must move out with God’s mission.

Acts 8 records God's reminder to the apostles of the Great Commission, “Go! Go into all the world and make disciples!” They initially started sharing the faith and the church at Jerusalem started getting bigger and bigger. But God never said, I want just the church in Jerusalem to be big. He said, I want you to go not to just Jerusalem but Samaria and to Judea and to the uttermost parts of the world. But they didn’t do it. They didn’t spread the gospel. So God applied pressure by allowing persecution to get them to spread. The Bible says, “On that day a great persecution broke out against the church of Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered through Judea and Samaria.” Notice that: the pastors stayed home but all the people were scattered into Judea and Samaria. Why? Because that’s where He wanted them to go. They scattered everywhere and shared the good news. Jesus never said, “I came that you might have meetings.” He said, “I’ve come that you might have life.” Where is life lived? In the marketplace and in the family. We will be the New Testament church when we magnify the vision of God, pray like they prayed, when we are filled with the Spirit and when we are generous with each other. I am a believer and I know I’m going to heaven. Nothing can take that away from me. But between now and when I go to heaven, I want to take as many people with me as possible. I hope you’ll commit to that same thing.

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What Catches the Crowd after Your Big Day

You likely have a big launch coming some Sunday this fall. A kickoff weekend, small groups restarting, one hard push to gather people back after a scattered summer. Let me tell you what that day can do for you, and what it can't.The room will be full on that launch morning. But then October will come, the crowd will settle back down, and you’ll start wondering whether any of it mattered. It did, but not for the reason you were hoping. Big days create momentum; they don't keep it. So the real question isn't: How big can your launch be? The real question is this: What catches the crowd once it gathers? Momentum is far easier to keep than to create.Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives" (John 12:24 NLT). The harvest is real, but something has to be buried first. In a church, it's rarely a program. It's usually somebody's tradition, or somebody's sense of control.A big day creates the crowdBig days work by pyramiding. You're down at one level, and then you go high on a big day. When it's over, you come back down, but not as far down as you were before. Then you plan another big day, and when it’s over, your numbers are a little higher again.Before our first public service at Saddleback, we were running about 20 people in a home Bible study. We did a big mailout for Easter, and 205 people showed up. Then we averaged 120 for the rest of that month. So, during that Easter month of April 1980, we ended up picking up 100 people.After that, we tried to make Easter the mental picture of what we wanted to be averaging a year later. That's the real work a big day does. It hands your people a photograph of what you're asking them to believe in.New units catch itBut a photograph doesn't hold anyone. A crowd with nowhere to go on the second Sunday is just a good memory by the third. So you have to create new units so there's somewhere for new people to go. That might look like new classes, new small groups, or new services.The loudest objection to starting a second service is usually the exact reason you need one. When people say, "If we go to two services, I won't know everybody anymore," they've just told you what the real ceiling is. A church of 80 or 90 people probably has eight small groups of about 10 people each. Once a small group gets past 10, it stops working, because somebody quietly stops talking.This is why new groups have to keep coming. Consistent growth is the result of a consistent process, not of an unrelated schedule of big events. Churches that pull off the big event and open nothing new afterward watch the church sit at the same size and wonder why they even bothered. Growth happens month by month by month.So before you print anything for your fall launch, count the new places a person could land afterward. If the answer is none, you're about to spend six weeks of energy filling a room you can't hold.Control is what drops itIf the answer is more than none, brace yourself. Those new places will fill, and the first complaint you hear won't be about the crowd.Right when growth starts working, you'll hear something that sounds like a shepherding failure. "Pastor just isn't around anymore. There are so many people here now, I don't feel like anybody cares about me."I call this the care/control conflict. People often complain about not being cared for when the real issue is that they're losing control. What's often underneath it is this: “I used to be a big fish in a little pond, and now the pond got bigger and I didn't get bigger.”The average person knows 62 people, whether the church has 70, 700, or 7,000, so nobody needs to know everyone to feel like it's their church. Care is legitimate, and you meet it by multiplying small groups. Control is a need you cannot meet in a growing church.The worst thing you can do is turn all the decision-making back into a bureaucracy to soothe it. That feels responsive. It's how a church chooses its old size on purpose.So if you can't hold a crowd by caring harder, and you can't hold it by handing the church back to a committee, how can you hold it?People are what hold itPeople are what hold a crowd. I learned this the expensive way. In our first year, I worked 18 hours a day with no staff, and on the last Sunday of that year I stood up to preach and fainted in front of everybody. I was in my mid-20s and completely emotionally and physically out of gas.In January of 1981, I took a month off and went out to the desert. At the end of it, God said to me, "Rick, you focus on building people and I'll build the church. It's my church." What we later called “purpose driven” was never a church-growth strategy. It's a people-development strategy, and growth is the byproduct.So plan the big day, pastor. Fill the room and let your people see what a crowd looks like. Then go build the small groups and classes that will still be there in October, and loosen your grip enough that God has room to work. That's what catches a crowd.You already know how to create momentum. It costs six weeks and a mailing list. Keeping it costs a few new classes and a looser hold on the church. The crowd is God’s to keep. The people you build are your job.

Discouragement Is Curable

"Then the people of Judah said, 'The work crews are worn out, and there is too much rubble. We can't continue to rebuild the wall.'" Nehemiah 4:10 (GW)Pastor, when discouragement hits, you probably reach for a passage that has helped before. Next time, I suggest you try Nehemiah.Discouragement is curable, but you can't cure it until you know what's causing it. Nehemiah led people who were doing good work. They were rebuilding something that mattered, something God had called them to. And partway through, they wanted to quit. Nehemiah understood there were four reasons for that. And their reasons may be the reasons for your discouragement too.First, you get fatigued. The work crews in Nehemiah 4:10 were simply worn out.Human beings wear out. You can't burn the candle at both ends, and ministry gives you a lot of ends to burn. If you're discouraged this morning, you may not need to change anything major. You may just need rest. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap.Second, you get frustrated. Nehemiah's people said there was too much rubble. Debris piled up everywhere, getting in the way of the actual building.You know your rubble. The email thread that won't die. The maintenance issue nobody else will handle. The meeting that could have been a text. None of it is the work you were called to do. All of it eats the hours you meant to give that work. Rubble doesn't clear itself. You have to recognize it and get rid of it, or it will quietly stop your progress.Third, you think you've failed. Nehemiah's people couldn't finish as fast as they had planned, and their confidence collapsed. They probably thought they had been foolish to believe they could rebuild the wall at all.Maybe the attendance goal didn't happen. The program didn't take. The family you invested in left anyway. Missed the date? Set a new one. That's it. Don't quit over a calendar. Everybody fails. The issue is not that you failed; it's how you respond to it. Do you sink into self-pity? Do you start blaming other people? Do you decide the whole thing is impossible? None of that gets you anywhere. Refocus on what God intended and start moving again.Finally, you give in to fear. Nehemiah 4 suggests the people most affected by fear are the ones spending time around negative people.You may have a few of those in your congregation. Maybe your fear sounds like, “I can't handle this; it's too much responsibility.” Maybe it's the fear of the next criticism. Maybe it's the quiet conviction that you don't deserve for this to go well. Fear will wear you down if you let it. Spend less time around negativity, and pray honestly: "God, help me get my eyes off the problem and keep them on you."You don't have to stay stuck. Before you dive into this week, ask God to show you which of the four it is: fatigue, frustration, failure, or fear. Name it, deal with that one thing, and get back to work on the wall.

Does Your Sermon Lead to Life Change?

Pastor, you can preach a sermon that's completely accurate and still fail to help your people become more like Jesus. That's an uncomfortable thing to admit, and I've felt it myself. So how do you preach in a way that helps people become more like Jesus? That's what I want to show you.The Bible says, "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29 NIV). That's God's purpose for every person he's ever made: to shape us into the likeness of Jesus. If that's God's purpose for the people in your pews, it has to be your purpose every time you stand up to preach.Many ministry leaders have said, “If there's a mist in the pulpit, there's going to be a fog in the pew.” A sermon without a clear purpose is a misuse of the Bible, a waste of people's time, and a frustration to the preacher who gave the week to it.Information alone doesn't change peopleAfter decades in the pulpit, I've learned that the problem in most churches isn't a lack of information. People already know far more than they're doing.George Gallup put it plainly after a national survey: Never before had the gospel made such inroads in America while making so little difference in how people actually live. People walk out with full notebooks and empty obedience.D. L. Moody said the Bible wasn't given to increase our knowledge, but to change our lives. If your sermon explains the text but never calls people to obey it, you've just given a very good lecture.Build the whole bridgeThe best picture for preaching is bridge-building. On one side are the people sitting in your congregation this weekend; on the other side is the ancient text. Your job is to build the bridge that gets them from one side to the other.Some of us can spend six days studying the text but never show our people how it applies to their lives. Others are quick with a fresh illustration but light on Scripture. Neither approach builds the whole bridge. Biblical truth must reach the lives people are actually living.Change starts in the mind, not the willThe bridge connects the text to people's lives, but information alone still won't change them. Change begins when God's Word renews the way they think. Romans 12:2 says to "be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (NIV). Not your willpower. Your mind.The Bible's word for that is “repentance,” or metanoia in the Greek. It means changing your mind. Lasting behavior change begins when God's Word changes what a person believes.That's why preaching for life change calls people to repentance. You want them to leave believing God's truth and ready to obey it.Ask yourself before you preach againHere's my challenge to you, the same one I've had to ask myself more times than I'd like to admit: Are you preaching to be understood, or are you preaching for people to be changed? You can succeed completely at the first and fail completely at the second. Before you step into the pulpit this weekend, decide what response God's Word calls for, not just what information you want to explain. Then build the whole bridge from the text to obedience.

Your Courage Strengthens Others

“I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end.” Daniel 6:26 (NIV)Pastor, it’s hard to stand firm when your convictions cost you something.Sometimes the pressure is obvious. Other times it’s just a tense email or a quiet look across the room, and the worry that someone will misunderstand your motives. Ministry gives you plenty of moments when sitting down feels easier than standing up.But when you stand, people notice. You don’t have to impress anyone. Steady faith points past you to God.Courage is contagious. You never know who may be strengthened when you take the next faithful step.That’s what happened in Daniel’s life. Daniel kept praying to the true God even though the law told him to stop. He would not give his worship to King Darius. Because of that, he was thrown into a den of hungry lions.But God rescued him.And Darius noticed.The Bible says, “Then King Darius wrote to all the nations and peoples of every language in all the earth: ‘May you prosper greatly! I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end. He rescues and he saves; he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.’ So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian” (Daniel 6:25-28 NIV).Pagan kings don’t usually talk like that. Daniel’s courage gave Darius a reason to publicly honor the living God.The same can be true in your ministry. Your courage may help you personally, the way it helped Daniel. But God can also use it for the good of the people watching you.When you stand for God in your church, your family, your community, and the private choices no one applauds, people take notice. Some will criticize or misunderstand you. But others will find strength to obey God because they saw you trust God first.Pastor, your people do not need you to be fearless. They need to see you trust God when obedience costs something.

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