“Signs of a Growing Church”

Acts 4:32-35

Acts 4:33-34a: With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them…

For several years now I’ve been reading and hearing about redeveloping churches, transforming churches, the missional church, and the once and future church. When I started unpacking those terms I soon realized that each of them pointed back to that early, early church described in Acts, especially the first twelve chapters.

What does Acts tell us about that church? Quite a lot. The members of this emerging community of faith spent much time together in prayer and table fellowship. The preaching and teaching of the apostles – their testimony to the resurrection of Jesus - was awesome. People were being healed by the power of God through those very same apostles. This was a church that attracted people to itself, adding to its membership day by day.

In this morning’s text we see how that ever- expanding congregation’s members supported and encouraged one another not only with prayer and fellowship, but by also making sure that every member of that young Christian community had his or her physical needs met.

They were of one heart and soul to the extent that the possessions or resources that any of them had became the possessions and resources of everybody in the church. They not only shared one faith, one baptism, and one Lord, they shared the totality of who they were and what they had. They lived out, in a tangible, visible way, our Lord’s command to love one another. People knew they were Christians by their love. And day by day the church’s membership grew.

No church since has totally replicated that church’s particular kind of unity. It was unique to its time and place. As it has been said, necessity is the mother of invention. The early church in Jerusalem had to adjust to the reality of being made up of many transplanted people.

As the church spread, its individual congregations developed many forms of fellowship and governance. Each of them took root in a different culture or environment. Although the basic Gospel message never changed, how it was lived out within each particular congregation was shaped by that congregation’s own unique situation.

Still there are lessons to be learned from those first Christians: about discipleship, about stewardship, about service, mission, and evangelism. That earliest of the churches carried out a powerful witness for Jesus Christ, and did so naturally. For those early Christians witnessing was almost as natural as breathing. The early church existed to witness. Witnessing was its reason for being. As Leslie Newbegin said, “The church is to mission as fire is to burning.” Without fire there can be no burning. Without mission there can be no church, or to put it another way, a church that doesn’t exist to do mission is little more than a parody of a Christian community.

When the term missional church is used it’s often contrasted with the term maintenance or survival-oriented church. If we took verse 33 out of today’s text and then read it in isolation from the rest of the book of Acts, that early church in Jerusalem would have looked like a maintenance church. All we would see is a congregation of people taking care of one another, not in itself a bad thing.

But the church does not exist for the sole purpose of taking care of its own members. The church exists to do what the apostles did in verse 33 – faithfully testify to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in other words, proclaim the Gospel. The church exists to carry out what are described in Acts 2:43 – ministries of healing and compassion. Sound teaching, inspired preaching, dynamic witnessing, and ministries of service and compassion: these are the marks of a faithful, dynamic, growing congregation of God’s people. As Presbyterians we also need to add administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of church discipline to the mix.

Scattered throughout our steadily declining denomination are a lot of congregations in which sound doctrine is taught, the Gospel is faithfully preached, and the Sacraments are rightly administered. Members of those churches are cared for. People truly love one another as people in the family of faith should. They are ministering to one another, meeting the needs of one another. Within these churches there are ministries of service and compassion to the poor and others who are in need in their locality.

To greater or lesser degrees such churches have most of what’s described in Acts 2:43-47 and 4:32-35 down pat. They maintain themselves and their members very well. They may not be thriving but they are surviving, at least institutionally. But there’s more to being a church than carrying out internal ministries of maintenance. There’s much more to being a church than implementing a strategy for survival. A church is not really a church if it is constantly and chronically focused inward on itself.

Where in such churches is the dynamic witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Where is the evangelism? Where is the obedience to Christ’s commission to make disciples of all nations? Within the context of all those internal, congregation-focused ministries and programs, how many, if any, of the church’s members are being trained to be witnesses and evangelists? How many are being mentored in the basics of Christian discipleship?

Usually very few. And that’s just wrong. Tom Donaho, a retired Presbyterian minister who served dynamic, growing congregations, made it clear that everything a church does should be mission oriented. Every Sunday school class, every youth activity, every fellowship event, every worship service, every Session meeting, every Bible study should be built around two priorities: either doing mission or training disciples.

Faithful disciples become faithful witnesses, evangelists, mission directors, and financial stewards. Faithful disciples invite others to join them in discipleship. Faithful disciples beget more faithful disciples. Faithful disciples do mission in the name of Jesus.

All those early Christians described in Acts 2 and 4 were faithful disciples. Faithful discipleship led them to be generous. Faithful discipleship moved them to acts of sacrificial love. Faithful discipleship created a community of Christians whose faith was contagious. People outside the church saw what life inside the church was like and responded to it. They heard the Gospel proclaimed. They saw the miracles occur. But more than anything else they encountered in those early Christians a living, vibrant, inviting faith. They saw something in them that they wanted and needed for themselves – the love of God made real in Jesus Christ.

For the past two days several of us have been involved in a leadership retreat in which we took a hard look at Grace Church in terms of how much of what we do is mission and how much is maintenance. Preparations for that retreat paralleled preparations for this sermon and today’s service. In some ways this worship service and sermon are extensions of that retreat.

As I was writing this I had no idea what would come out of the retreat. Maybe we would come away from it with tiny glimmers of a new vision for Grace. Maybe we would come away from it with a realization that we don’t need a new vision. Maybe we would come away from there feeling as if we’d wasted our time and the church’s money. Maybe when it was all over we would be left with more questions than answers. I had no way of knowing.

But I do know this. Grace Presbyterian Church was not placed here by God to maintain and perpetuate itself as an institution. We have each of us answered a call to be faithful disciples of Jesus: his witnesses, his evangelists, his missionaries in this time and place. Do we need to love one another? Yes, that is how people will know we are Christians. Do we need to care for one another, often in sacrificial ways? Indeed we do. Do we need to go on mission trips, take part in ministries like Warm Nights and Community Café, engage in youth ministry, and carry out a program of Christian education? Of course we do. Do we need to gather for and take part in worship services that glorify God and feed our souls? Do we need a talented and well-led choir, an inspired and energetic Praise Team, and the offerings of gifted musicians? You bet we do.

But every bit of that must either lead to mission and evangelism or teach us how to be better disciples: disciples who form a Christian community that exists to witness to the incarnated, atoning, crucified, and resurrected Christ. A faith community whose primary mission is mission. A faith community that gives its testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ with great power. A community of disciples whose mission is to beget more disciples. Amen.