Explosive Church Growth

SERMON: 2009-07-19--ac0925--explosive-church-growth SOURCE DURATION: 00:42:31.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidates 0 through 3 constitute the final theological reflection and pastoral application of the sermon. Candidates 4 onward transition into structured liturgical responses (prayers/hymns like the Creed or Gloria Patri), which are considered non-sermon material in this context. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:39:00.760-00:42:30.740 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Now the chances are this morning that the term liquid church doesn't mean much to you. And no, the liquid church is not a church that meets at the bar, floats in the ocean, or has sprung a leaky roof, or is otherwise in imminent danger of drowning. The term liquid church, as best as I can figure out, was first popularized in 2002 when an English professor by the name of Dr. Pete Ward published a book by that title. And Dr. Ward's contention in his book is that if the church is to successfully engage our culture in the 21st century, it has to learn to be liquid like water. That is to say, flexible, fluid, and changeable. Instead of trying to ride the waves of our changing culture, he says we need to be merging with our very culture, identify with it, and try to lead it to faith in the Lord Jesus. The opposite of liquid church, he says, is solid church. And if liquid church is modified by the adjective flexible, fluid, and changeable, then solid church, he says, is modified by the adjectives heritage, refuge, nostalgia. Solid church, he says, is stuck in the past, finds its security behind the fortresses of its isolation, and is virtually irrelevant to the culture of its day. Now Ward's book, like a lot of books that have been coming out on this particular postmodern trend in recent years, has a fair bit to commend for itself. It's certainly true that for every generation, the challenge for God's people is what does it look like to be in the world, but not of the world? How do you connect with the world, speak its language, get close enough to them to be able to share a common humanity and to share with them the gospel of the Lord Jesus, while at the same time not being polluted by the world and being dragged down by the world? And if the solid church has erred too much in returning to heritage, refuge, nostalgia, if the solid church has sometimes withdrawn itself so far from the world that it doesn't have the social connections nor the ability to communicate with the world because it is so far removed from it, then I suspect the danger the liquid church faces in this day and age is to go to the opposite extreme, become so much identified with our culture that in the process of trying to reach the culture, the culture reaches us and the church ceases to be light and salt. And so as always the challenge then is how do we be in the world, but not of the world? How can we maintain a strong, solid Christian conviction and lifestyle and yet not look down our noses at other people, have friendships and relationships with the world that can be redemptive so that we can reach out to them and bring them back to ourselves and hopefully back to the Lord? And what's interesting about scripture is that somehow or another God invites the church to find that balance because in order to have the ability to communicate to a dying world, we've got to be close enough to them so that we can connect with them, but we have to be far enough removed from them so that we've got something to invite people to. And so I find it rather interesting here in Acts chapter 2, as Luke continues to describe now what happens when Peter is preaching and what happens when the church gets formed, that God's people are clearly identified as a unique people with unique characteristics. Listen again to how this scripture puts it. With many other words, Peter warned them, pleaded with them, save yourselves from this corrupt generation. In other words, don't go to hell with everybody else. Then he goes on to say in the verse of our text, those who accepted his message were baptized and about 3,000 were added to their number that day. As we take a little bit of time this morning then to look at that particular verse, there are three things in that verse that I want us to note. And the first is this, entry into this community is by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So here is this distinct Christian community. How do you enter into this community? You enter into it by personal faith. Notice how Peter puts it, those who accepted his message were baptized. Now what's the message? Well, the message is Peter's Pentecost sermon and his Pentecost sermon is probably best summarized in verse 36, "Let all Israel therefore be assured of this, God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ." We'll deal with this in more detail Lord willing as time goes on, but the apostolic message in all of the New Testament is the exaltation, the supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. You killed him, but God raised him from the dead. That message can be summarized like this, "God made the world, God made it good, humankind fell into sin by rebelling against God, brought untold troubles upon itself, from the very beginning, God has been operating a rescue mission, calling people out back to himself. This rescue mission was most clearly manifest in the person of the Lord Jesus who was born in our flesh and in our likeness, lived our life, died our death, was raised from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father for once he is coming again to judge the living and the dead." That's the message centered on God's rescue plan reconciling all of creation to himself in the person of Jesus Christ. To accept that message then is to believe this not only intellectually, but to believe it in my heart. That is to say, I know that I'm a sinner. I know that I'm under the judgment of God. I know that God doesn't owe me anything. I know that God sent Jesus as the lifeboat to pluck me out of these waters. I cannot swim the distance on my own and I allow him, so to speak, to pull me into the lifeboat and now my life belongs to him. Entrance into Christian community is not by virtue of birth. It's not by virtue of going to church. It's not by virtue of having read your Bible or wanting to undergo some kind of internal transformation. No, entry into the kingdom is the narrow gate of repentance and faith. John in his gospel puts it this way, "To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but born of God." You can't come into this body of believers unless you've been to the cross of Jesus. And so the first question we always need to ask ourselves, particularly if we face feelings of not belonging or I don't seem to be in the same wavelength as other Christians are, is the question, "Have I been to the cross? Have I been to Jesus? Have I confessed my sins and have I made a commitment that says, 'Lord Jesus, by your grace and by your mercy, I want to love you and I want to serve you and I want to do your will.'" Go to that. You'll never feel that you belong because fact is, you don't. Ultimately, you can only become part of this community by saying yes to Jesus. Now, it's very helpful to appreciate and understand that this process of coming to faith is indeed a process. Sometimes in evangelical circles in particular, we think we preach the gospel, we give an altar call, and you need to respond and you need to do it now, and there's a place for that. But understand that most things in the spiritual world as well as the natural world are a process, a process whereby God works in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, shows us what our sin and misery is, and then leads us to faith and ultimately brings us to a point of commitment and helps us grow. And a good many years ago, a fellow by the name of James Engel, who for years was director of the Billy Graham Graduate Program of Communication at the Wheaton College Graduate School, developed what is now known as the Engel Scale. Let me show it to you here. Notice that here you have the new birth, which is that point where we climb into the lifeboat. Leading up to the new birth, he has scaled eight varying levels of awareness to bring us to the new birth, and then beyond here, what growth in Christ looks like. And so down here is awareness of supreme being, no knowledge of the gospel. Many people when you meet with them out in the world, know next to nothing about God and next to nothing about the gospel. Then as time goes on, those people have to have an initial awareness of the gospel. They need to have an awareness of the fundamentals of the gospel. They need to grasp the implications. They need to develop a positive attitude towards the gospel. They have to recognize that the gospel applies to their personal situation in life. They have to come to a point where they make a decision to act, and then they come to a place where they're ready to pray the sinner's prayer. Now, that process can take days, months for most people. That will take years. Don't under appreciate how big a mind shift people have to go through in order to become Christians if they have been thoroughly secularized or in many cases insulated against the claims of the gospel. Now, once you come to new birth, then of course, life continues to grow because it's not just about being born into the family of God. It's all about growing up. And growing up involves what he calls the post-decision evaluation. You know, I just responded to an altar call. Now, what does that mean for my life? I just said yes to Jesus. Is that going to change my life? Baptized into one body. We'll talk more about that in a moment. Conceptual and behavioral growth. You learn how to grow in Christ. It goes on that way. Interestingly enough, in his little chart, your wallet is the last thing to get sanctified because that becomes the most expressive of our surrender to the Lord Jesus. Now, it's only a chart, and no chart can nail it down perfectly. But I show it to you this morning because it helps us to understand that while each person needs to cross the line, people find themselves in very different places. And so the implication of that is this for you and me. In terms of presenting the gospel, it makes a huge difference where the person finds himself. It makes a world of a difference if I am down here where I'm either an agnostic or an atheist, or if I'm up here and I understand the gospel and I have a positive attitude towards it. The further people are removed from the reality of surrender to Jesus, the more basic your gospel communication has to be. And so again, I say the challenge for the church throughout the years is that as the church grows to maturity in Christ, as the world grows darker and darker, how do you bridge the gap between these two cultures? A lot of you that are new converts or relatively new converts will know the reality of that. When you first came to faith, you had all kinds of connections out in the world, didn't you? Family and friends. But as time went on, you grew in the Lord, and those relationships, I dare say, probably got strained as time went on because you no longer shared the same common interests. And at the same time, you discovered more commonality with other people who are part of the community of faith. And so, as I said earlier, if the solid church has created barriers between church and community in an effort to remain holy and in an effort not to be polluted, what the liquid church is trying to do is bridge that gap and somehow live in the world without being of the world. So as to by all means save some, that's how Paul talked, didn't he? He said, "I've become all things to all men, that I might by all means gain some." It has huge implications for how you do church because it means that instead of demanding the world come to us and be like us, we step into their world as Jesus stepped into their world. But the trick is to do it without sinning. Do you understand what I'm saying? Jesus pulled that off, and the challenge for you and me is to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that we can be in the world but not of the world. Sounds simple, but it's very difficult, and that's why most mainline churches in the world today are dying fast because they cannot bridge the gap between their fortress and their own safety and their security and the needs of the world out there. Jesus said, "As the Father sent me, so I send you." So first of all, the entry is by personal faith in the Lord Jesus, and that can never, ever be compromised. Secondly, Peter tells us that the symbol of entry into this Christian community is the thing that we call Christian baptism. Again, notice verse 41, "Those who accepted his message were baptized," and about 30,000 were added to their number in that day. Now, baptism, as you know, is an outward sign of an inner reality. It is an outward sign of the covenant that God enters into with his people. And just as my or your wedding ring tells you and everybody around you, "I belong to my spouse, and my spouse belongs to me, to the exclusion of all others," so the mark of Christian baptism tells you, the world, and all the spiritual powers in the universe that you no longer belong to Satan, you belong to Jesus. It is a sign of our union with Christ, and a sign, then, of all the benefits that we share in union with him. Those benefits, as you know, are highly significant, because the Bible talks about the unsearchable riches of Christ, all of which become ours when by faith we're joined to Jesus. Let me take just a quick minute to run you through, you know, half a dozen or so of what those benefits are. First of all, there is the benefit of the forgiveness of sins. I don't have to pay any longer for all the screw-ups that I've done in my life. My debt has been forgiven. Only a person who knows the reality of the debt that we owe God can appreciate the incredible reality of forgiveness of sins, so I don't have to pay any longer. There is forgiveness of sins. There is the declaration of righteousness by faith. Our sins are not only forgiven, but we're declared righteous before God in Jesus Christ. That is to say, when God looks at you or me in Christ, he not only sees, "Well, your sins have been washed away, and so, you know, now you're at a neutral level, even ground." No, no. In Christ, we are righteous. We're as good, we're as holy, and we're as perfect as we're ever going to be when we are, by faith, justified in Christ. An incredible gift, because it changes everything in terms of our standing before God. We've been given the gift of new life. God comes to live in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, and it's the Spirit of Jesus, and the Spirit of Jesus gives us an ability to be and to do what we could never be or do before. God has granted us in Christ all things that pertain to life and godliness, says Peter. So there's a new drive in me now to have passion for God. There's a new drive in me to really care for and about other people. There's a new desire for me to take up my cross and to follow Jesus. And of course, I've been delivered from Satan's power, translated into the kingdom of God. There was a day when the devil owned me. Most people don't realize that, because part of being owned by the devil is that he blinds you to the fact that he owns you. It's what the Bible calls darkness. But when light comes and we come to Jesus, we're set free from his power, and we are now set free to serve the true and the living God who loves me so much that he gave his Son so that I could have eternal life. And then I'm co-heir with Christ. I'm an heir of God. Something that blows the mind doesn't mean diddly-squat to people until you get the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what it is that God has promised to those who love him. Eye hasn't seen it. Ear hasn't heard it. The heart of man hasn't even imagined it, said the Apostle Paul. What God has prepared for those who love him, but God has revealed it to us through his Holy Spirit. And the way that I like to describe that is to encourage people to think of the hunger and the passion in life that drives them the most. What's the kind of happiness? What's the kind of success? What's the kind of future? What's the kind of life that you long for deep on the inside? Well, multiply that by infinity. Take the happiest moment that you've ever had, the joy of a new baby, the bliss of early romance, the acquisition of title, or the praise of man, whatever it is, multiply it by infinity and you haven't yet begun to exhaust what it is that God has prepared for those who love him. That's not a bad deal in my book. I mean everything the world fights to war and to own, all of which is going to dribble through their fingers because nothing here is permanent anyway. God has said it's yours if by faith you belong to Jesus. And baptism says you are co-heir, co-heir. Do you get it? You share fully in Christ's inheritance. And so the name that is above every name that is granted to him, the glory that God the Father has granted him, he grants to you if by faith you're joined to him. You say it doesn't feel like it. Well no, because there is no glory without a cross. And even as Jesus had to lay down whatever the world had to offer him. So we by faith lay down what the world has to offer and we take by faith what Jesus has to offer. And one of the reasons that is sometimes so difficult is that it's easier to hold on to the little bit that we know and can see and can feel and we can touch. That it is to hold on to the eternal, the imperishable, the everlasting that we cannot get hold of. And so that's why we need to pray for the Holy Spirit to make real in our lives what it is that God has promised to his children. Alright, quickly one more. We become part of God's people, that holy nation, that royal priesthood, God's own people that have been called out of darkness into his marvelous light. The Bible says when we are baptized into Christ, we are also baptized into his body. And if God becomes my father, and if God becomes your father, then guess what is our relationship? We become brothers and sisters. And just like in the natural world we don't have much to say about who our brothers or sisters are, perhaps wish that we had a few other ones than what we've got. So in the body of Christ you have no say about whom God invites into his family. In fact, God will pick people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, put them all together, and then he will say to you and to me, now learn to grow up in Christ because love is perfected in the context of community. So when you're baptized into Christ, you're also baptized into the Spirit of Jesus who will teach you, yeah, he will teach you how to do life in community as opposed to life in isolation. And one of the ways in which you can tell that people are truly converted, one of the ways in which you can tell that the Holy Spirit is truly working in somebody's life is that their ability to love God not only increases, but their ability to love other people, their ability to connect, their ability to relate, because you see now they're part of one body. All of that is symbolized in much more. All of that is symbolized by the mark of Christian baptism. And it's helpful to emphasize that in the New Testament baptism was typically a public event. And sometimes in a community like this somebody will say, well, why is it so important for me to make public profession of faith? Or if I haven't been baptized as an infant, why should I be baptized as an adult? Because there is something about a public declaration that draws the line that says I'm no longer part of this world. I have now been transferred into the kingdom of God. I have been translated out of Satan's kingdom into God's kingdom and I need to let the world know and I need to let the principalities and the powers know. It's no longer business as usual. I am now a follower of Jesus. And so if you're here this morning, have never made public profession of faith. Or if you're here this morning and you've never been baptized and you've been one of these, you know, post-moderns, if you will, in the generation where you don't want to commit yourself to anything because you want to keep one foot over here and one foot over there, people that sit in the middle of the fence eventually split right down the middle and come the day of judgment, you're either in or you're out. And Peter warned them and pleaded with them and he said, "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation." And the Lord Jesus put it this way in the Gospels. He said, "Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven." Baptism is the mark, the symbol of the inner transition of having come to faith in Jesus. So there's the entry point. There's the public symbol of that entry point into Christian community. Then I want us to notice that the number of converts in this passage is huge. Those who accepted his message were baptized and about 3,000 were added to their number that day. Remember how many they started with? 120. Now on Pentecost Day, 3,000. That's a multiplication factor of 25. Not bad for one well-preached sermon in my book. Good job, Peter. Two things I want us to note about this large number. The first is this. Numbers in the Bible matter. Numbers matter. Sometimes particularly in our circle, we're a little skittish about counting heads and numbering people. There are many reasons for that. We often associate it with pride, arrogance. We are suspicious of people who emphasize numbers and we're always reminded of that Old Testament story, aren't we, where David was incited to count the number of people in Israel. Remember that story? He got himself into a big whatever and God was very angry. So we're a little skittish about numbering and yet throughout scripture there's a huge emphasis on numbers. I'll give you a couple of examples in the Old Testament. Israel comes out of Egypt. How many are there? 600,000 men alone. That's the figure that is given us. As time goes on, get to the New Testament, Jesus feeds first the 5,000 and then he feeds the 4,000. And here in Acts, Acts chapter 1 as I mentioned, they begin with 120. They add 3,000 here in Acts chapter 2. And then if you go on to Acts chapter 4, there's another 2,000 that is added to their number. Numbers matter. Why? Because each number represents a person for whom Jesus died. And God's heart and God's passion is that none should perish but that all should reach repentance. And when people talk sometimes about big churches and when people talk about growing churches, a lot of people think that's just an ego trip for maybe the preacher or maybe for that community of faith. And I'm sure sometimes that happens. But you know, most of the pastors that I've ever spoken to and most of the churches that I've ever seen that have taken up the cross to follow Jesus and expended an enormous amount of time, talent, and treasure have only one motivation for stepping out. And that is to build facilities or to be a community that can reach the lost so that none should perish and all should come to salvation. I haven't heard it, but I don't doubt that there are people around who thought when we built these facilities together that we were embarking on some grandiose scheme for building a monument to ourselves. I don't know. I think there's always that danger. But I tell you, I've been part of that process from the beginning, and I can tell you that anybody that I've ever talked to, and I think that's true in general for our congregation, knows that our passion and our motivation is not just to be big church, not just to build a monument to ourselves, but to be a community where people from every walk of life can walk through the door and find the saving and the healing power of Jesus so we can take people all the way from not knowing God to becoming fully devoted followers of Jesus because when the curtain falls in history, that is going to determine people's eternal destiny. And if we believe that even for one moment, that ought to occupy much of our time and much of our energy because that occupies the heart of God, wouldn't you agree? God has a passion for you, and He expects you to share His passion with the rest of the world so that they, too, will not be lost, but come to everlasting salvation. Members matter, not only that, but the growth here is explosive rather than incremental. And most of us, when we think of church growth, we think of growth that's incremental, that is to say, little bit by little bit. You know, you add two members, you lose one member. You add ten members, maybe you lose five members. You add twenty-five members and you lose a couple of those, and as time goes on, incrementally you grow. And that is the normal course of growth for most people and for most churches. The reality is, however, that incremental growth isn't the only kind of growth that exists in the kingdom of God. Sometimes growth is explosive because sometimes growth is exponential. That is to say, instead of adding one, two, three, four, you go multiplication, one, two, four, eight, and sixteen. That's exponential growth. It's best illustrated by the little parable that's been around for many years. This Persian prince had a servant who made him a beautiful chess board. So he asked the servant, "What kind of reward would you like?" And the servant said, "Do me a favor. Put one grain of rice on the first square of that chess board and then double it for each subsequent square on the board." And the prince was almost a little irritated and put out by what he thought was a demand that was way too humble, until his accountants began to figure out how much rice this would be. And by the time you reach square sixty-four, the amount of rice, you like to know the figure? I can give you the exact number of grains. The exact number of grains is eighteen followed by eighteen zeros. Doesn't mean much to you. Translated into metric tons, it's four hundred and sixty-one billion metric tons on square number sixty-four. That is eighty times more rice than the whole world can grow if all the arable land were used. That is exponential growth on a graph that looks like this. Here you see linear growth straight line. One plus one is two plus whatever you add. But here is exponential growth. It starts off very slowly, but it reaches a certain point where it starts multiplying and the further along you get, the more it multiplies. So exponential growth, which is growth by multiplication, always seems like it's not going anywhere at first. This seems to much outrace it until you get to this point and then after a while, exponential growth goes through the roof. Any of you watch Dave Carroll's United Breaks Guitars video on YouTube? Some of you have. If you haven't, you've got to go watch it because it's really funny. And I won't bore you with the details other than to say Dave Carroll is a musician on Halifax and was royally annoyed when they broke his guitar en route to Nebraska, spent a year trying to get money back from them, got the run around and made a song called United Breaks Guitars. It's been out for two weeks now and last I checked, it had been viewed 3.3 million times. And if you watch it, then you will add your number to that number. But it's really funny and it's the first of three that he's going to do. But I mention that not because I'm into guitars or Dave Carroll, but because that represents exponential growth. That's why the Liquid Church people talk about things going viral, just spreading like a virus spreads. And there are times of revival in the history of the Christian church where God moves powerfully, where each member is so empowered by the gospel that they cannot but speak of the things that they have seen and heard and live change by the multitudes. And so while incremental growth is typical and normal, we ought never simply to stop there. We ought always to be saying, "Lord, let the gospel go viral. Do something unusual. Do something big. Help each of us to be faithful in our setting and in our calling." Because when the message that resonates with the heart of God resonates with the hearts of God's people and connects with the places where the world finds itself, that's when revival happens. That's when the windows of heaven get opened and people by droves sometimes can come into the kingdom and be part of God's forever family. That's what you have happening here in Acts chapter two, 3,000 on the day of Pentecost, 2,000 a little while later. And the church has multiplied like that throughout the course of history in the most unexpected ways. May God grant us faith, courage, and hope to recognize that that is the heritage that has been entrusted to us and that's the privilege that we share as children of God. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:39:00.760; remove through 00:42:31.000] Thank you, Father, thank you, Father for your goodness. Glory, repent of the names of ourselves. We now choose one name, Jesus. One Lord, one faith. One God and Father of all. One truth, we proclaim. One Church, responding to God. Jesus, you made that your Church would be one as you and the Father are one. Lord, let us sing our true unity in you. Then heal us with the bonds of your love. One Lord, one faith. One God and Father of all. One truth, we proclaim. One Church, responding to the Lord. Lord, we unite in the power of your name to stand as one for the cross. Now send us forth in Holy Spirit's reign to take your salvation to the light. One Lord, one faith. One God and Father of all. One truth, we proclaim. One Church, responding to the call to go into all the world and proclaim salvation. Let not time empty your words to prevent a bribe for the Son. One Lord, and God over all. One Lord, and God over all. [CUT] you [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:42:31.000; resume after this marked segment]