How to Grow a Church
Read Time: 11 mins, 43 secs
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Acts 2:42-47 NIV
I love the energy and movement we see in the book of Acts. It’s exciting. The church is anything but stagnant. There are consistent miracles in the movement. Lives are being transformed from city to city and country to country. Crowds are being brought to Christ in droves.
The church starts with about 120, then it explodes to over 3,000 as crowds get baptized in one day because of one sermon. Can you imagine that? That’s insane growth, and it doesn’t even end there. Acts 2:46 says that the Lord added to their number daily. Acts 4:4 documents the movement growing to 5,000, Acts 5:14 says multitudes of men and women joined, and Acts 6:1-7 says that they kept on multiplying as priests began to join too. Then, in Acts chapter 8, we see the movement growing past Jerusalem into Samaria.
The churches continue to multiply and be edified (Acts 9:31) because at this point, we don’t even get exact numbers. Acts 11:21, a great number believe and turn to the Lord, Acts 11:24, a significant increase again, Acts 12:24, the word keeps spreading, and the disciples keep multiplying. Do you get the picture?
This teaches us a few things. God designed churches to grow. Wow, such a new concept, right? Real ministry is supposed to multiply. Real church is supposed to be contagious. But the question is, why aren’t ours growing? I don’t think God changed or that His plan and promise stopped with time or culture. I don’t think He called us away from the great commission. So what happened?
There are so many books, seminars, podcasts, and people who can complain from every angle about what we’re doing wrong. But I believe at the core, the issue is that we keep abandoning a winning formula. Maybe we’re trying to reinvent a wheel that God already said would succeed?
Jesus said the gates of hell won’t prevail against His church. Jesus said that we are called to go into all nations baptizing and teaching, and that He would be with us always. And He said that we have all we need for the life and godliness He called us to through our union with Christ Jesus. I don’t think it’s God's fault we aren’t getting results. Maybe it’s us? Maybe we aren’t following the instructions He outlined? Let’s look at what we can learn from the foundation, focus, pillars, and priorities of the early church.
What is the Church?
The growth of the church explodes with Pentecost, but it doesn’t stop there. Right after their prayerful push to proclamation, the people start to build what we see as the early church, and I believe that if we emulate this model, the testimony of people being added to our community daily will be our story, too.
So let’s start with defining what the church is before we discover what it does.
When you think of the church, you likely think of a building you may go to once a week to maybe hear some songs and listen to a pastor speak, but that isn’t the model the church was originally based on. The church is not a place as much as it is a people that may happen to meet at various places. It’s not a place to simply hear a good sermon; it’s a group of people committed to living one out. The church isn’t even an institutional body; it’s a movement composed of the body of Christ.
The church is the flock of Christ, following Jesus as our shepherd, regardless of what things look like around us. The church is the body of Christ, moving and breathing around the world and doing a work of drawing others to Him. It’s the bride of Christ, proving the gospel by the way it tells of His love. Ephesians 2 says that we are members of Christ's family and joined together in Him as the temple where His Spirit dwells. We are the church. The church is people, not a place.
The issue is that we’ve shifted from the New Testament model of church to a model that is destined to fail. We’ve made the church pastor focused instead of people-focused. We’ve built it around protecting an institution instead of proclaiming a message. We’ve hoarded love instead of proclaiming it. But the early church was more mission-focused, message-focused, and movement-focused than many of us can honestly say we are. So if the church is called to be the Body of Christ, the Flock of Christ, the Bride of Christ, and the evangelizing tool of Christ, how do we go about returning to that? If the church is a people, what are those people called to do?
What It Does: The Missional Model
There are a few core actions we see in Acts 2:42-47 that I believe are pillars on which thriving church communities must be built, and if we dedicate ourselves to those pillars, I believe we will see the same fruit as the early church. After Pentecost, we see 7 core values emerge: teaching, fellowship, prayer, outreach, praise, evangelism, and a faith for the miraculous.
I believe that these seven values that the early church held dear are the indispensable ingredients necessary for a thriving church. It’s like baking a cake. We need each core ingredient to make this work. Miss them, and you don’t have a church. Add too much else, and you may slow down or ruin what God is desiring to do through that community. Got it? So what are the ingredients?
Teaching of the Word is a central tenet of the early church. The Bible says that they were devoted to the apostle's teaching. This means that you cannot be a true church without a dedication to the Word of God. The first thing we need to bake a good church is the clear and committed teaching of Christ and what He means for my life and my world.
The early church also devoted itself to fellowship. This may sound unnecessary to some, but we see that another indispensable ingredient of a good church is that the church should hang out together. You cannot be a good community without genuine friendship and fellowship. Notice that this fellowship isn’t just Bible study. They were social and not just spiritual. I can imagine them calling each other just to tell a joke. I can imagine them inviting each other over to play Monopoly or watch a game. They went to lunch with each other and made time and space for each other to kick up their feet and let their hair down. Could it be that many of our communities aren’t flourishing because we don’t put adequate attention, effort, resources, and priority into hanging out?
Another thing I love is that it says that the early church dedicated itself to eating together. My mom jokes that it’s not a party without food, and I agree. Isn't it funny that God doesn’t just prescribe us hanging out and enjoying a good laugh together, but He wants us to have a good meal too! That sounds like a great time that we need to stop neglecting and start dedicating ourselves to!
3. The text also tells us that they devoted themselves to prayer. Prayer is the secret sauce that makes this all work. Remember that prayer was the prerequisite to Pentecost, but the priority of prayer continues on after Pentecost. How would our churches look if we devoted ourselves to prayer?
4. The Bible says that they sold their possessions and gave to those in need. They prioritized and valued outreach, service, and generosity. It wasn’t an afterthought; it was an overflow from what God had done in their lives. They saw themselves as God’s bank account. He deposited into them so that He could withdraw from them to do His work of helping others. A church isn't a church without radical, sometimes illogical, faith-stretching, contagious, courageous, and compassionate generosity.
5. Verse 47 goes on to say that they prioritized praise. This is another aspect of the church that we sometimes see as an afterthought. How much effort do we put into praising God ourselves and giving others an opportunity to do the same? Do our churches create a climate and a culture where praise is practiced, prompted, promoted, and prioritized? Is it common practice to respond to the goodness of God through a story, song, shout, stomp, or commitment to serve? You can’t have a church without an environment where praise is welcomed.
So we have the word, worship, prayer, people, service, and stewardship. What’s missing? The last two are funny enough, some of the values that we find missing in most churches—evangelism and a faith and reverence for the miraculous.
6. Let’s start with evangelism. The Bible says that they grew daily. That means that their primary method of making disciples wasn’t just inviting them to church on the weekend. Each day, they made friends and real relationships and boldly told of who Jesus was to them. They presented the gospel in a clear and connected manner that made people desire what they have. Can we say the same? How many of our friends know that Jesus changed our lives? How many of us actually have friends outside of the local church? We can’t forget that the purpose of the church is to invite others to partake in the message of Christ that changed our lives for the better. Without the great commission being your primary focus, you cannot be a church.
7. Last but not least, the Bible says that a deep awe and reverence fell over the community as the apostles performed many miracles, signs, and wonders. Do we expect miracles? If we are to turn some of our congregations around, it’s going to take a miracle. If our children are going to come to Christ, it’s going to take a miracle. If our finances are going to multiply, it’s going to take a miracle. If our parents are going to have their hearts healed, it’s going to take a miracle. The question is, do you believe in miracles? I believe that if God did it before, He can do it again. But if any of this is going to work and we are going to see God do it again, we have to believe in the miraculous.
The church's dedication to these pillars reveals the values of the thriving early church, and they should be our values too. Are these what we prioritize, promote, and provide?
Function vs. Form
You’ll notice that all of these core pillars fit together perfectly. The church doesn’t work without an emphasis on all of these pillars. Evangelism doesn’t work without some miracles. Miracles don’t happen without prayer, and prayer doesn’t have much power without standing on the promises from God's Word. It’s hard to praise God with each other if you don’t like each other. And it’s hard to build genuine relationships if you don’t die to yourself enough to start giving of your time, talents, and treasure.
We need these pillars, but how do we live them out? How do we do this in our context?
Let’s think about it like mailing a package. If you were to mail a package across the world, it may require various modes of transportation to make its journey, depending on the terrain and context. A car, plane, bike, boat, helicopter, and submarine are all designed for the purpose of transportation, but they work best in different circumstances. None of these modes is bad or wrong; they just work for different terrain. Mailing a package through the ocean may look slightly different than mailing one over a mountain. The function is transportation, but the form taken to accomplish that function may vary. The same is true in your church! Our goal is to transport the gospel and live out the pillars we described, but the modes of transportation may look different from case to case. Just like it isn’t more spiritual to transport a package in a plane than it is to use a bike, a group that reads Acts at a basketball court in the evening isn’t worse off than a group that reads the Sabbath School Lesson at a church in the morning.
There are many ways to be dedicated to the word, fellowship, prayer, praise, outreach, and evangelism, and they may look different depending on the cultural context, regional context, gift mix, goals, and the Spirit’s leading of a church. I have a friend who pastors an older congregation of retirees who get up early with nothing to do, so they have a Bible study each week at the church at 6 am. That’s a great way to study and prioritize the teaching of the word, but it may not work for a mom with a newborn baby and two toddlers to get dressed. She may need a different mode of transportation for the same message. Same dedication to the word, but it’s transported differently.
The word can be studied at 4 am while friends are hitting the gym or 6 pm at a local coffee shop. There's nothing sacred about sabbath school at 9 am and a sermon at 11 am. There are different ways to transport prayer, fellowship, generosity, evangelism, and the word. If we want to reach more people, we have to learn to traverse more terrain.
Know Your Water, Know Your Fish
We’re called to be fishermen, but there are various types of fishermen and fish. Freshwater is different from saltwater. Ponds are different from the ocean. Gifts, style, experiences, environment, and goal determine the bait you use, the time you fish, and the type of fish you’re looking for. What type of fishermen are we, and what fish are we here to catch?
This brings up the idea of recognizing your strengths and goals as a specific congregation with a specific context and cutting the fat. Some churches are trying so much that they’re burning out, wasting resources, and not doing anything particularly well. We have to stop copying other churches or what we’ve seen done historically without taking our context into consideration. Remember the bounds of our pillars. That’s the function, but the form it takes may look different. Don’t use a bike just because you are used to it when God is calling you to a boat. Wouldn’t it be stupid for a shipping company in Kansas to invest in a submarine or for the post office in Antarctica to put their money on surfboards?
There’s a church in Nashville that has over a dozen members who were top finalists on The Voice and American Idol. That just comes with the territory in Music City. It may be crazy for them not to try a worship album as one of their modes of transportation. But the church in the school of the tone deaf and vocally challenged may need a different mode of transportation. Can we be realistic in determining what works for our community, context, goals, and gifts? Who are we, where are we, what do we have, and who are we trying to reach?
What modes of transportation or ministry do you need to reach young professionals? What do you need to reach retirees or families? What does the future of your church look like, and how do you get there? How may we be blinded by what we want to the point that we don’t see what is necessary to reach the people we’re called to? What gifts and unique opportunities do we have? And how can we leverage our context to carry out this Gospel commission? These questions filtered through this model are what allowed the early church to thrive and stretch. Do you want the same thing in our day?
God has called us to grow. Growth only happens when we follow His method. And his method is meant to fit the context we are planted in. Let’s start multiplying.
Questions to consider:
Do you believe the church is called to grow? Or have you bought into the lie that stagnation is spiritual?
Which of the ingredients do you think your community prioritizes well, and which ones do you think you could work on?
Think through your personal and communal S.W.O.T. analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). What unique gifts, context, and call should you consider when adjusting these principles to your context?
We have been able to reach close to 2,000 people each week with this ministry and have had dozens choose Jesus through baptism thanks to your giving. If you want to partner with what I am doing through this ministry, please donate through the donation link on this website or CashApp, $ThoughtsByPace. Your donations truly mean the world.
