There is No Recipe For Church Growth

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up.  And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.  Acts 9:31 

Ray Ortlund:

I’m not against strategic plans.  I’m for them.  They have their place, as a matter of wise stewardship.  But they cannot generate the astonishing outcomes described in the book of Acts. 

I remember hearing Michael Green at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974.  He asked us, Why don’t we see anywhere in the book of Acts a man-made strategic plan for evangelizing the world?  His answer: They didn’t have one. 

What then did they have?  Two things, for starters: the fear of the Lord, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. 

In the fear of the Lord, they were teachable, they were humble, they were listening to the gospel, they were open and grateful and easily bendable.  They did not have a spirit of self-assurance.  They were eager to learn and grow and change in any way the Lord wanted them to. 

In the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were gladdened, they felt forgiven, they were reconciled to God and reconciling with one another.  They saw their sins and failures, but they also saw the far greater reality of Jesus crucified for them.  To put it in a secular way, they couldn’t believe their luck. 

Openness in a know-it-all world, comfort in an angry world – that ancient world simply could not resist these heaven-sent powers.  So the church didn’t just grow, it multiplied.
Those early churches had no master plan for their future.  But they were walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and it worked. 

Church growth takes planning.  Let’s do it.  But church multiplication takes miracle.  Let’s be open to what only God can do.

Books by Ray Ortlund:

• Proverbs:  Wisdom That Works
• Isaiah:  God Saves Sinners
• A Passion for God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans
• God's Unfaithful Wife: A Biblical Theology of Spiritual Adultery
• When God Comes to Church: A Biblical Model for Revival Today

How Much Do I Need to Know?

A great, short article here from Dr. Michael Horton:

“How far is too far?” Growing up in conservative evangelicalism, that question was common in youth group. Of course, we were talking about physical intimacy. When everything’s reducible to making a rule or breaking a rule, it’s important to know when you’ve “crossed the line.” I’m not downplaying the importance of guiding young people through the mysterious era of puberty—and even in suggesting wise guidelines where there is no clear chapter and verse. But when “How far can I go?” is the main question, we’ve already lost too much. It suggests that character has not been formed by life in a particular community—especially home and the church—when people just want you to net it out for them like that. Usually we ask that question when we’re just about to dive in. We just want to know when to push the eject button.

A similar phenomenon happens when people ask, “How much do you need to know to be saved?” It’s like asking, “How ignorant can I be?” At one end, there’s the official Roman Catholic answer: assent to everything the church teaches. It’s called implicit faith because you can’t possibly know for yourself everything that the church teaches. The Geneva reformer John Calvin described this view as ignorance disguised as humility. At the other end, there is that line from evangelist D. L. Moody: “I can write the gospel on a dime.” How much do you need to know? Enough to lead someone to Christ in an elevator.

We recall the question of the rich young ruler. Assuming that he had so far done everything he knew to do, he asked Jesus, “What’s the one thing I have to do to be saved?” Jesus pressed him to face the full brunt of the law, showing him that he had not even begun to fulfill the duty of loving God with total devotion and loving his neighbor as himself. As confessional “Reformation” folks, we get that. However, we are so good at works-righteousness that we merely shift the bar of merit from things we do to things we know.

According to Scripture, the object of our faith is neither our actions or our knowledge, but the person of Jesus Christ. Of course, trusting a person involves knowledge and assent, but we’re saved by Christ, not by doctrines. The purpose of the doctrine is to direct us to the right person and to keep us looking to him until that day when faith yields to sight.

Read the rest.


Books by Michael Horton:

• The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way
• Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church
• Putting Amazing Back into Grace: Embracing the Heart of the Gospel
• For Calvinism
• The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World
• A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship
• The Law of Perfect Freedom

What Pastoring Taught Me About Spiritual Growth

Guest Post by Daniel Darling 

As a lifelong Christian, I’ve always known the importance of spiritual growth. But when I became a pastor, suddenly my ideas about this were bigger than simply what was going on in my life. As an undershepherd of God’s people, now the spiritual growth of other people is my concern. You could argue that this should have been my concern all along, since every follower of Jesus is tasked with discipleship. But as a pastor, this is a primary job description.

What surprised me is how much I learned about what growth actually looks like. Here are five ways in which pastoring shaped my views: