God Wants a Megachurch....
Today I want to look at how God has designed a growth pattern for the church.
The church is the people, not the structure, organized religion, etc. While structure and order are always necessary I want you to remove your preconceived thoughts, experiences with church structures and think of the church as the people in this living room. We have to stop thinking of churches as brick and stone and see them the way God sees them, made of flesh and bone.
Do you consider yourself a disciple of Yeshua? Then we need to walk in the community. What is a healthy community?
Turn with me to Acts chapter 2. (38-47)
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
The Fellowship of the Believers
42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe[a] came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
1- Repent and be baptized and adhere to the words and works of God
2- Share in resources and participate with each other who are in agreement
3- Break bread together (table fellowship)
4- Pray and worship God
Luke in his writings intentionally frames these four main actions by mentioning the extensive growth of the church through those actions. This type of literary structure is called an INCLUSIO. This literary structure is commonly used to highlight areas that the author wants a reader to focus on. So this tells us that there is a reason why this was written this way.
Before Luke gets into the growth He outlines and ties back into themes that were prevalent before and during Yeshua’s time. Forgiveness of sin (we see this in the sacrifices, and through repentance in Yeshua’s time), Repentance we must turn from our sin and error of not walking out the commandments (Torah), and be baptized, just the like the Israelites were baptized before they met with God at the mountain, just like Yeshua was baptized before He started his ministry. These must happen before one can become empowered by God’s Spirit. A cleansing of the flesh to adopt a radical new way of living out the commandments of a Holy God.
The first section of Acts 2 is stated as an order for empowerment and solidifying the elements of the
section portion of Acts 2. Then Luke turns to the new way of life. This isn’t new as different from the old. This is a turning back to the way God had originally instructed the church/Israel to live.
- Honor God’s words and works
- Share in the resources of the faith
- Break bread together
- Praise and worship God
The teaching of God’s works and instructions give us a solid foundation of security by which we can then come together to share resources. These could be physical resources, this could be spiritual giftings. When resources are then shared within a community everyone has the relational, physical, and spiritual support they need to come together to break bread and praise God. This is the unity of God. These four practices empower us to receive God’s spirit corporately and express the freedom and joy that we see in the early church. These four aspects of living and walking in a community reflect God’s perfect design for healthy churches and communities.
Why does Luke want to focus on extreme growth? I have heard many make negative comments about the church I helped found (HFF) that we are attempting to be a mega-Saturday-church looking to constantly grow. According to Luke, it seems that growth is a good thing, not a negative thing. Why would he have that impression and some in our walk of faith have a different impression? I believe he is tying this back to a key commandment.
“Be fruitful and multiple.”
God Wants a Mega Church! He wants thousands of churches made up of flesh and bones to come into salvation every day.
In Genesis God created humans in his image and shared his resource with them and taught them to be fruitful and multiply. In the story of Noah, we see the same thing. A new creation, a fresh start with the command to be fruitful and multiply. While knowledge and evil continue to increase in every generation
God wants the good and His name to multiply and be fruitful for all nations. Abraham and Sarah, we just saw in a recent Torah Portion. They were childless yet God assured him he would multiply His descendants. Through that multiplication, God would bless (share resources) all nations. With this be fruitful and multiply background in mind we see that in Acts God’s people can now bear fruit by the power of His Holy Spirit living in them and multiply like never before. This is just another way God kept his promise to Abraham. If you are in Messiah you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.
The Torah movement was great, the Jesus movement was great, but Jesus himself said we would do greater things than He had done when the Spirit came. This only happens if we don’t forsake what has come before, and apply it to what is here now. Those four main elements of a healthy church.
Acts 2 is a magnification by Luke to show us the Church multiplies and fulfills the commandment of being fruitful and multiplying to bless all nations when followers of Messiahdevote themselves to these four things. As the church, disciples of Yeshua, we have made our way back to the works and words of God. Yet we are still wrestling with how to share resources with a common goal, breaking bread together, and praise together. Yet despite this numbers are still growing. So let me ask you, are you sharing the gifts of the Spirit God has given you for the growth of the community? Are you sharing the physical resources God has given you for the growth of the community? Cause if we don’t start there we are forsaking one of four major components to the growth of God’s blessings to the nations. Many in the Messianic denomination forsake to come together on the Sabbath to praise God, break bread. The answer to a healthy church is not just Jesus, not just the Torah, not just worship. All of those have to come together with our willingness to genuinely participate in what God wants to do in our communities. If you have been given a gift by the Holy Spirit and you only want to use it for your personal glorification and not for the shared resource of the Kingdom then you have squandered your gift and nullified its power. God doesn’t need you, He wants you.
I can’t speak for other churches but I do speak for HFF.church. HFF doesn’t need you, they want you. As we go about our daily lives let the Lord dig deep into your soul and urge you to stop sitting on the sidelines watching His perfect will play out.