“Christianity in the West is in decline; at least the forms of Christianity that have been practiced for the past 200 years. Jim Wall candidly examines this decline and offers hope based on a rediscovery and reaffirmation of historic biblical faith. This is a must-read for Christians wanting to stand where the Apostle Paul stood in his letter to the Romans, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

—Doug Beacham, General Superintendent,

International Pentecostal Holiness Church

“Jim Wall knows what he is writing about in this book. In Unmuted: Restoring Your Church’s Voice, he calls on the Church to clear its voice and speak loudly to the present American culture, which is rapidly drifting away from its Christian roots. Every pastor in America should read this well-written book.”

—Vinson Synan, Dean Emeritus, Regent University,

Church historian and author

“When Jim Wall speaks about unmuting your church’s voice, we need to listen. He is both a researcher and practitioner. On one hand he teaches graduate students at Regent University, on the other hand he has personally led in the planting of more than seventy churches and leads a network of churches on three continents. Pastor Jim has unmuted the voices of churches all over the world and writes this book through his expertise, experience, and practical wisdom. In the pages of this book, you’ll learn about how to fulfill your own God-given vision, reach people through the power of the Holy Spirit, and become a caring church that graciously folds people into small groups. Every church needs to hear and apply the message of this book.”

—Joel Comiskey, PhD, Joel Comiskey Group,

author of twenty-six books

“This book is not theory. Dr. Jim Wall has lived the principles he espouses in this powerful work. Jim has been my friend since the late 70s and I have observed his life as God has clearly and miraculously ordered his steps. Unmuted: Restoring Your Church’s Voice is a tool of instruction, information and inspiration that will equip church leaders and Jesus-followers everywhere to rise up, speak, infiltrate and influence our world for the cause of Christ.”

—Ferrell Hardison, Senior Pastor, The Bridge,

a multisite church in central North Carolina

“From the first pages of Unmuted: Restoring Your Church’s Voice my soul cried out with a resounding YES! I cannot wait to take my church leadership through this insightful and needed book. Jim’s humility, transparency and practical experience will encourage, instruct and give the Church hope for a more Christ-exalting future.”

—Kyle Wall, Senior Pastor, Atlantic Shores Baptist Church,

Virginia Beach, Virginia

“Pastoral leaders love to focus on the two or three systems that are their passions, while failing to maximize God’s full-orbed passion for His Church. Dr. Jim, an esteemed colleague as professor, pastor, and visionary, has given us an urgent way forward to be the church on full throttle with all systems functioning. This is a ‘just-in-time’ read for a scriptural and cultural renewal of our minds and our ministries.

—Dr. Joseph Umidi, Professor, Pastoral Overseer,

Founder of Lifeforming Coaching

“Leonard Griffith reports a word Christ spoke to St. Francis. The word was, ‘Rise and repair my church.’ I heartily recommend this work by Dr. Jim Wall as a word from that same Lord to pastors and church leaders of this generation on behalf of His Church.”

—Bishop Jim Whitfield, North Carolina Conference,

International Pentecostal Holiness Church

“When I consider investing the time to read a book on restoring the Church’s voice, I’m not interested in reading just any author. I want to explore the subject with someone who understands broad cultural trends, grasps what is at stake, has real-life experience leading a congregation, and knows God’s Word. For me, Jim Wall is that kind of author. His wisdom, insight and experience are evident in every chapter of this book.”

—Michael Palmer, PhD, Professor and Former Dean,

School of Divinity, Regent University

“As a fellow trainer of ministry leaders in 130 locations in thirty-five nations, I consider this book a timely, must-read for leaders of all denominations and networks around the world. I have personally known Dr. Jim Wall for 25 years as a church planter, trainer of pastors and mega-church pastor with a heart for the nations. He lives and practices the concepts within this book.”

—Rev. Kevin Hinman, Founder and President,

Leadership Training International

“Once again, Jim Wall blends Kingdom values, solid theological inquiry and strong practical advice in a must read for all of us seeking to impact the world for Christ.”

—Pastor Jim Wood, First Presbyterian Church,

Norfolk, Virginia

UNMUTED

Restoring Your

Church’s Voice

Jim Wall

Unmuted

Copyright © 2013 by Jim Wall

A2N Press

Chesapeake, Virginia

ISBN: 978-1-940243-24-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013953705

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher or copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. No part of this book may be transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or other—without prior written permission from the publisher or copyright holder.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations designated (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

The KJV is public domain in the United States.

This work is dedicated to my amazing wife, Kim. Her godly wisdom, strength, accountability, and love have shaped my life. Her gifts have been a critical part of the ministry to which God called us nearly four decades ago. I love you bunches, like bananas.

This book only tells the story of a handful of faith heroes. Their stories are powerful, but they are representative of thousands of people I’ve had the privilege of serving alongside over the past forty years—far too many to mention. And yet I feel compelled to mention a few.

Grandma McKeithan went to work in the cotton mill when she was nine years old to help support her family. She left school before she learned to read. Grandma never preached a sermon or taught a Sunday school class, but she loved people. She prayed with a fervency that often gave her insights into what was going on in my life, especially during my formative years as a young minister, things no one else knew. She spoke encouragement. She spoke gentle correction. She spoke life into me.

Pastor Austin Wheeler, after more than fifty years of pastoral ministry, retired to the tiny town of Watha, North Carolina, where Kim and I pastored our first church. He calmed my fears when the time came for me to plan the first water baptism service I led as a young pastor. He guided me through planning and preaching my first funeral. He taught me how to officiate my first wedding. He walked me through my first church conflict. Pastor Wheeler laid foundations for my life that defined how I do ministry even to this day.

Dr. Herbert Carter preached my father’s funeral when I was nineteen years old. I adopted him that day as my spiritual father. He invested unselfishly in my formation as a pastor and church planter. I sometimes feel as if I have a doctorate in Church Growth from Fuller Theological Seminary simply because I traveled with him during the years he earned his doctorate. He poured into me as we traveled and did ministry together. More than that, he filled a vital fatherhood role in my life for many years. For all this, I am deeply grateful.

Joseph Benigno was my constant companion and partner in ministry during the years we served in the Philippines. He easily makes my all-time, top five, “men of integrity in the world” list. He literally saved my life more times than I even know about as we traveled through the rainforests of the Philippines. He is a huge reason the Philippine work continued to thrive long after Kim and I moved back to the United States.

Steve Hassell served faithfully at my side for more than twenty years during the formation of Community Church, often in the background where no one could see. He continues to provide operational support for the church. His continued service through the transition from the founding pastor to the next generation senior pastor has been vital to the ongoing health of the church.

Jim Kochenburger is a relative newcomer to my life. He is a vital one. His skill as a writer and editor is only exceeded by his graceful use of the gift of encouragement. This book would still be an elusive dream were it not for Jim’s affirmation, deadlines, encouragement, writing help, editing, and publishing skills. Thank you, Jim K.

I realize what I am doing here is incredibly dangerous. I feel the need to apologize to hundreds of people who have been there at the right time to encourage, befriend, challenge and support my life and ministry. I can’t imagine where I would be or what I would be doing without you all. I hope you know who you are. I am certain only eternity will reveal to some of you—and me—the vital roles you have played.

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: GLORIA’S STORY

CHAPTER 2: THE MISSING VOICE IN AMERICA

CHAPTER 3: CHANGE—THE SIX DYNAMICS

CHAPTER 4: GET IN UNITY AROUND A GOD-GIVEN VISION

CHAPTER 5: BE EMPOWERED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT

CHAPTER 6: SHARE RELEVANT, SIMPLE TRUTH

CHAPTER 7: HUNGER TO KNOW GOD

CHAPTER 8: CARE DEEPLY FOR ONE ANOTHER

CHAPTER 9: CARE UNSELFISHLY ABOUT THE COMMUNITY

CHAPTER 10: MOVE FROM VISION TO MISSION

APPENDIXES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

END NOTES

This book ought to have a large red label on the front cover that reads:

WARNING! THESE PAGES ARE DANGEROUS!

This is not a nice book written by the sort of nice, safe pastor-chaplain sort of guy like the one Garrison Keillor talks about from Lake Wobegon—the guy who shakes your hand and holds on a bit too long, who smokes a pipe because it’s cool, and who loves to sit behind his desk for forty hours a week. Far from it.

It’s the radical message of Jesus—the message that sticks like velcro. It’s dangerous because when you get near it, even when you aren’t paying much attention, it grabs you and doesn’t easily let loose.

Pretty much everyone sees that the Church needs to make progress lickety-split, because the watching world is becoming increasingly impatient with us. As they see it, we are irrelevant, and speak in a strange lingo and clichés they don’t understand. We ask for money and then have the audacity to tell them how to live without making deposits into their lives.

Most leaders I know see the problem, but we are stuck moving in slow motion because we don’t know how to move forward.

The Church needs to be challenged, but in a way that she can hear the challenge. The message has to come with great love and great strategies. Jim has nailed it on both accounts here.

As you read these dangerous words, Jesus might just velcro your heart to his, even if you aren’t looking to be caught. Perhaps you are one of the “already-recruited.” Your “re-recruitment” just might be right at the center of His plans.

Put on your crash helmet and have at it!

Steve Sjogren

Author, Conspiracy of Kindness

Kindness.com

The Church has lost its voice in America. It’s time to get it back. But the clock is ticking...

Surveys show a high percentage of people still believe in God, but they hold a negative view of the church. Frankly, they’ve given up on it. And this is only getting worse as time goes on. Though some churches are growing, church attendance overall continues to shrink, while our culture sinks deeper into darkness. This breaks my heart. It is clear that if we don’t do something right now to restore the Church’s influence—to restore the light—we will pay a huge price in coming generations.

There isn’t a moment to lose.

So what must we do to help the Church in America regain its voice and influence? Do we count on slickly produced music, Christian movies, and events to do it? Though great music and movies can be powerful, they alone cannot do it. Do we spend big dollars on clever marketing schemes and gimmicks? There is no harm in getting the word out effectively, but marketing alone won’t get us there. Do we rush to various church growth conferences that tout the latest innovations and surefire success strategies? We should definitely compare thoughts, be lifelong learners, and stay open to new ideas, but such events alone won’t do it. Do we water down the truth of the Gospel to make it more palatable to our culture? Certainly, we must not, though we should show how applicable the Bible is to everyday life.

So what do we do?

After decades of ministry in America and overseas, I’ve learned (more often from mistakes and missteps than I’d like to admit) that the key to regaining the Church’s voice and influence is found in restoring the six primary dynamics that established the original Acts 2 church:

• They were unified around a God-given vision

• They were empowered by the Holy Spirit

• They preached relevant, simple truth

• They were hungry to know God

• They genuinely cared for one another

• They unselfishly cared about the community around them

My heart has been encouraged to see churches that have incorporated these six dynamics into their unique DNA raising a generation of mature, close-knit Christians committed to defining their lives by the God-given vision of making disciples of everyone, everywhere. These churches are growing and thriving, powerfully influencing their respective communities by overflowing with love and being salt and light to them. Their good deeds have established goodwill with the unchurched, which has led to opportunities for them to share the Good News of the Gospel and love them to God. They are growing by simply being the Church, allowing Jesus to build His Church.

In Unmuted: Restoring Your Church’s Voice, you will explore principles and practices many churches have used successfully to grow spiritually and numerically. My goal in writing this book was to give you everything you need to restore your church’s voice and influence in your community, so it too can grow. The “Time to Raise Your Voice” discussions that close each chapter are a key part of this. Use them in small groups, classes, leadership meetings, and other settings to give the people of your church the opportunity to review and apply the key concepts and principles in this book, and then take action, living them out. As they do, your church will be transformed.

Do you long to be a part of helping the Church unmute and regain its voice and influence? If so, read on!

“Go into all the world and make disciples of everyone, everywhere.”

—Jesus Christ

Emotions were already running high when our short-term mission team drove up on the grounds of the elementary school. It was my first time back to Isabela Province in twenty-four years. One hundred Filipino children lined the school yard. The sound of tambourines, glockenspiels, and drums filled my ears. The words of a praise song to our God filled my heart. When the school’s principal came to me and said, “Oh sir, the last time I saw you I was six years old. You prayed with me to receive Jesus. Now all of these children know Him,” I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

From there, our team was taken to the church. It was a simple concrete structure, but it was clearly the center of town. It was the center geographically, socially, and spiritually. The first words the pastor spoke were, “Welcome back, sir. Almost everyone in this village is a follower of Jesus. Thank you for coming so many years ago.”

The emotions were overwhelming, but to be honest, there was a twinge of guilt mixed in with it. You see, it wasn’t me who introduced them to Jesus.

Cagayan Valley, Philippines

The first time I saw the Cagayan Valley, in the northeast corner of the Philippines, was in 1984. I was bringing a team of Filipino pastors and musicians to hold an evangelistic crusade in the little farming village of Malalinta, Isabela, on the western edge of the valley. After nearly fifteen hours of driving over the Cordillera mountain range in our four-wheel-drive truck, we were all exhausted. But nothing could dampen the awe of seeing the vast 5,600 square mile expanse of the valley sandwiched between the Sierra Madre and Cordillera mountain ranges that stretched out before us. It took my breath away.

Even from the mountain pass 3,000 feet above sea level, we could see the ribbon of the mighty Cagayan River flowing through the center of the valley. From our vantage point, it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. It was filled with lush, green, rolling hills covered in rice paddies. I heard myself say, “This has got to be what heaven will be like.”

Images can be deceiving from 3,000 feet. The reality at ground level was not so pristine.

Violence was part of everyone’s story. At that point, the headhunter wars of the mountain tribes hadn’t been over all that long. Stories of heads being taken were still on the lips of the residents as they told their history. The New People’s Army, a Communist rebel group intent on overthrowing the Marcos government, was very active in the jungles of the region. Anyone thought to be in opposition to their efforts was killed on the spot. To say everyone was a little nervous all the time is an understatement.

Poverty was deep. I don’t just mean they didn’t have much money or nice things. I mean they lived in houses made from bamboo and grass they cut from the surrounding hillsides. There was no electricity, no indoor plumbing nor running water. Children filled the dirt streets, wearing nothing more than ragged T-shirts—no pants or shoes. But the deepest expression of poverty was the months of food rationing they endured every year.

Rice is the staple of the Philippine diet. Though much of the Philippines has a twelve-month growing season, Isabela Province gets rain only six months of the year. Rice requires copious amounts of water to mature, so they could only plant in the rainy season; one crop per year. Every year, the previous year’s harvest ran out before the current year’s crop was ready to be gathered. At the very time they were working hard to gather the current year’s crop, they were also rationing what little was left of last year’s. That combination lent itself to a cycle of despair.

There was also a prevailing spiritual darkness in the region. It hung like a heavy blanket over the expressions of the people. The people who lived in the area were spiritual, but very confused. Most took the little bit they learned from the Catholic priests who passed through from time to time and mixed it with the animistic beliefs of their ancestors. Missiologists called them Christo-pagans. They were very confused about who God is, whether Jesus is real, and even how many gods there are. It showed in their general feeling of hopelessness. It also showed up late at night when many of the village men gathered to drink the San Miguel they bought or their homemade brew, called basi, as they gambled away their families’ meager earnings.

The Little Spiritual Giant

When Gloria Balbin came to the church planting board I chaired in 1982 and said, “God has called me to plant a church in Isabela, we didn’t know how to respond. Going to Isabela to start a work would be dangerous for anyone. A four feet eleven inches tall, eighty-five pound, nineteen year-old single girl, going was unthinkable. So, even after her demure but impassioned description of personal brokenness over the needs there, the board declined to bless her going. I suggested she invest a year interning with a pastor in one of the safer regions of the country. The board agreed. Gloria submitted to this plan, assuring us she would be back at the end of the year to renew her request.

Gloria served with enthusiasm in a nearby established church. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I reasoned privately, “Within a year she’ll meet a nice young man, get married, and this idea of being a Gospel pioneer in Isabela will die a natural death.” I was wrong. When the board met the next year, Gloria was back. She gave a thorough report of her ministry activities for the year. She concluded her presentation with a simple question: “Can I plant a church in Isabela now?”

I’m not proud of what I did next. I tried to talk her out of it—again. I allowed my judgment to be clouded by fears for her safety, insufficient concern for what needed to be done in Isabela, and a lack of faith that God was at work.

Gloria sat respectfully and heard me out. As I waxed eloquent on all the valid reasons she should let go of the idea, I saw tears begin to form in her eyes. It was then that she did something remarkable. (Understand, it is was almost unheard of in those days for a young minister to stand up to a church planting board. It was unbelievable to think a young female minister would do it.) Gloria, quietly and respectfully did exactly that. As I sit and write this account, her words are still fresh in my mind more than three decades later. “Sirs, I must go. I visited the place. My heart was broken by what I saw. I want your blessing. I need your help. But I have to go, whether you give them or not.”

Her passion moved our hearts. We agreed to provide her with the few dollars per month we could afford. We sent her with our support, our prayers, and our promise to visit when she called for us to come. Within days, she had loaded up her meager belongings, boarded a bus, and was gone.

As soon as Gloria arrived, she rented a one room bamboo hut and started working in the public market to support herself. She started teaching the children simple Christian choruses and Bible stories while their parents worked in the rice paddies. The parents didn’t understand much about what Gloria was doing, but they appreciated her help with the kids. The few dollars we sent her each month often went to buy things for the children she ministered to.

Within a year, Gloria became a beloved member of this village of around 160 men, women, and children. When she invited us to come and do an open air, evangelistic crusade, we gladly agreed. That’s when the difficulties began.

The Village Elder

Up to that point, Gloria had posed no apparent threat to the village elder’s animistic belief system, or his illegal gambling operation. Gloria was just a nice young lady who taught songs and stories to the children. More importantly to him, she kept them occupied so the adults could do more work in the fields. When he heard of the crusade Gloria was planning, he knew she could begin influencing the adults. He feared her influence could weaken his hold over the people...and affect his income. He told Gloria we were not welcome.

Gloria humbly submitted, but she did not give up. She began to pour out her heart to the Lord. She prayed that someone would advocate on her behalf with the elder. After some time her advocate arose—one she did not expect: the elder’s wife! Though she was not a follower of Christ, she had come to love Gloria. She approached her husband and said, “I don’t know who these people are, but if Gloria loves them, we’re going to love them. Let them come!” In time, he relented.

The first night of the evangelistic crusade, the entire village came. It started out tense. We knew the village elder was not happy we were there. We also knew he had the power to shut us down. (The fact is, he had the power to have us killed.) We held our collective breath when he took to the makeshift stage to greet his village. “I gave my blessing for Gloria’s friends to come and gather the children who completed her program,” he said. “I can already see these friends are miracle workers, because the children have become adults overnight.” Was he angry that adults were there? Was he about to do something to us for going beyond what he had given us permission to do? When he started laughing at his own little joke, our team breathed their first breath in what seemed an eternity!

For the next ten days we held nightly services. During the day, we visited the villagers’ homes and were well received. Even the village elder’s wife invited us in and asked many questions about what it meant to have a relationship with Jesus. By the end of the crusade nearly everyone in the village had decided to put their faith in Jesus; everyone that is, except the elder and his inner circle.

Before we left, we held an amazing water baptism service in the Magat River. We baptized people for a while, then we took a break around a picnic lunch. Then we headed back into the river and baptized some more. We ended up baptizing just about everyone in the village. I found myself wondering what the baptism service in Acts 2 must have been like when 3,000 accepted Peter’s message and were baptized on a single day! We baptized 160 and I was exhausted. We didn’t have 3,000, but the church was born in Isabela!

The Word Spreads

Within months, people from surrounding villages and towns began to travel to Malalinta for services. They came on bicycles, small motorcycles, and jitneys (small buses). They walked. In time, they started asking Gloria if she would help them start churches in their villages. Our church planting board started sending more church planters to help. Church by church, village by village, young Gloria became known as the spiritual mother of the region. One of those young church planters who answered the call to Isabela was Ely Visayan, an energetic Bible college graduate with a deep love for God and passionate zeal for planting new churches. In time, Ely and Gloria married. Quiet, determined Gloria and fireball Ely made an unbeatable team.

Fast Forward Twenty-Four Years

The reason emotions were running high as we drove up on the elementary school grounds that day was because of what we were seeing all around us. Malalinta had changed profoundly since the 1980s. (The fact that the village had its own elementary school was amazing in itself!)

On the outskirts of the village, I saw rice growing in the fields—during the dry season! I learned there was now an irrigation system that diverted water from the Magat River where we’d performed all those baptisms so many years before. Because they had a year-round supply of water, they had started planting two crops each year. The result was enough rice to feed everyone with enough left over to export truckloads to other parts of the country.

Economic development brought population growth. Malalinta now had more than 500 men, women and children, most of whom were followers of Jesus Christ. The Malalinta Church had become the mother church for churches across the valley. Even the village elder had come to Christ. Before he died, he closed the gambling hall and converted it into a town meeting area.

I had never before seen an entire region so transformed. The very atmosphere was different. Where men had once hidden in the shadows, rolling dice and drinking, I now saw young men playing basketball and children playing. It was still a simple, agrarian society, but it was thriving. What once was poor, dark, and hopeless had changed. It had become spiritually alive and economically strong. It was a different place. I could not hold back the tears. I still can’t as I reflect on that day.

It was transformed because of the Gospel. It was transformed because a little spiritual giant of a girl said, “I must go.”

One Person Can Make a Difference

Can that really happen—whether we’re talking about a little spiritual giant named Gloria in Isabela Province or we’re talking about you—can one person make that much of a difference? The answer is a resounding “Yes!” I’ve seen it with my own eyes. One person, who commits to loving a community so completely that they willingly lay their lives on the line to share the love of Jesus, can make a powerful difference.

Since 1982, Gloria and Ely have been making a profound difference in their world. They have personally been involved in planting twenty-five churches in the valley. The larger work of which they are a part has spread across the Philippines to include more than 175 churches on several of the major islands. That work is now sending Filipino missionaries to other parts of Southeast Asia and even to America.

“One person, who commits to loving a community so completely that they willingly lay their lives on the line to share the love of Jesus, can make a powerful difference.”

I haven’t just seen this in Southeast Asia. In 1989, Kim and I came home to start Western Branch Community Church in Chesapeake, Virginia. Since then, we’ve seen God miraculously transform thousands of lives. Fifty-nine percent of the more than 4,000 attendees of the church were unchurched before coming to us. During that time we’ve seen hundreds of “Gloria’s” make a difference in their world right here in Virginia. The church has also assisted in planting dozens of churches in various parts of the world.

I am not saying there is anything special about Gloria, me, or any of the people you will meet in this book. Gloria’s passion formed the headwaters of a movement in our times that changed her world. But the story didn’t start with Gloria. As you read, you will learn that the practical principles Gloria used came from a first century group of ordinary people from every walk of life. You’ll read about a people who were united around a specific vision that came from God. You’ll learn the Holy Spirit’s role in exploding that vision into reality. You’ll see how their simple devotion to God, to one another, and a genuine love for the community around them became a simple formula to change the world.

In 2007, the Acts 2 Network was formed to support what hints at a movement. As of this writing, the network has spread into South and Central America and requests for help are coming from Central Asia, as well as Eastern and Western Africa. Pastors from across America call us every week to ask, “How can we make a difference in our community?” All of them united by the vision of restoring the dynamics of the Acts 2 church in our world.

It’s Your Turn

I know you want to do something worthwhile with your one and only life. You know it too. To do that you’ve got to ask yourself, Will I take a risk and step out of my comfort zone? Will I allow myself to be broken by the things that break God’s heart? Will I go where He leads, even if He leads me to places others would say are too dangerous? Will I say, “I am yours Lord. Use me to make a difference!”

“I know you want to do something worthwhile with your one and only life.”

As you ask yourself those questions, imagine what the world could look like if we all said “Yes!” What if we all found and committed to our Cagayan Valley? Imagine what would happen if we all allowed ourselves to become so burdened about the needs we saw around us that we could not resist doing whatever we could to meet them. What If we moved beyond trying to clone the latest church growth technique taught at the big conference that came to town? What if, instead, we did the hard work of learning the principles that defined the church described in Acts 2? What if we embraced the notion that while we can’t meet every need, everywhere, we can certainly meet one need somewhere? We would be well on our way to seeing the world change.

Gloria’s passion made a difference in her world. The challenge for you is, will you invest the time to learn the principles she learned from the first century church? Will you embrace those principles and make a difference in your world?

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

What were you thinking and feeling as you read Gloria’s story? As you pictured the contrast between life in the Cagayan Valley, Philippines in the 1980s and now? Why?

2)

In what one way do you wish you could make a difference in the world? Explain. What is your life’s greatest passion? How are your answers to these two questions similar? Dissimilar? Why?

3)

What thoughts and emotions do you suppose Gloria experienced as she boarded that bus? Have you ever stepped out in faith like this? Tell us about it.

4)

How are you most like Gloria? Most unlike her? Explain. How does she encourage and inspire you?

5)

What do you believe needs to happen in order for more people to be like Gloria and step out to fulfill their passion and God-given purpose?

6)

The dynamics of the original Acts 2 church literally changed their known world. How might restoring them in our day change our world today? Why?

7)

What one thing do you need to do to step out into your passion and God-given purpose, determined to make a difference in your world?

“The Church has lost its seat at the table of American influence.”

—George Barna

Nineteen ninety-six was a crisis year for me. Seven years after coming home from the Philippines to start Western Branch Community Church, I was at a very unhealthy place. Most people would never have guessed it. I was all smiles on weekends. The church was strong. The church family had grown to well over 1,000 active attendees during our first seven years. Nearly sixty percent of that growth had come from previously unsaved and unchurched people. But something was deeply wrong. I knew it. I just didn’t know what it was.

The Call

Before my family and I went to the Philippines in 1981, I was challenged with the call to reach my generation in my own country. It was 1979. I was a young Bible college student, solo pastoring a small-town church. I went to a church planting seminar that would redirect my life. I had never heard the term “church planting” before. The concept intrigued me. From the opening Dr. Charles Kelly had my full attention. He talked about a need for more churches in America. But not just more, different churches. He talked about the need to maintain the eternal message of God’s Word, but to use contemporary methods to reach a generation of people who still believed in God, but had given up on church. He predicted that if we didn’t do something now, there would be a huge price to pay in the coming generations.

It seems silly now, but back then I remember thinking, How do you do that? Can you just start a church? I knew churches had to start somewhere, but I’d never really thought about it. The idea seemed like an impossible challenge. Even so, by the end of the day I knew that was exactly what God was calling me to do. I went home and told my wife, “We’re going to plant a new church.” Kim’s response came in the form of a question (wives are so good at that, aren’t they!), “What does that mean?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

She asked, “Where is it going to be?”

“I don’t know.”

She pressed, “What are we going to call it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. I guess we just wait and see how the Lord directs.”

I didn’t know the answer to any of her questions. All I knew was God was calling and, in His timing, He would give us the vision, the place and the provision. We were going to plant a church that would reach people who still believed in God, but who had given up on church. Neither of us had any idea what God had in store for us during the preparation period that ensued.

“We were going to plant a church that would reach people who still believed in God, but who had given up on church.”

The Preparation

In August of 1981, we landed in Manila, ready for a new adventure. It was an amazing time. Gloria’s story is only one of the many incredible ways God worked during the 1980s. According to the national census between 1980 and 1990, the percentage of Filipinos who reported themselves as born-again Christians grew from nine percent to twenty-one percent. That’s twelve percent of sixty million people. Do the math. Millions of Filipinos came to Christ in a single decade! Thousands of churches were planted across the nation. The small work I led was able to plant sixty-seven churches and start two church planting training institutes during those years. Gloria was only one of many sacrificial pastors who made a difference in their nation, in their times. As a result, the Philippine evangelical church is not only strong today, it is sending missionaries to many parts of the world. They are going to countries that have blocked Americans from coming in. They are even coming to America, determined to make a difference.

I watched a nation change dramatically in one decade. It continues to be one of the greatest honors of my life to have been a small part of what God was doing in that country during the decade of the 1980s. That reality only fueled my passion to plant a church in my “world.” Dr. Charles Kelly’s statement in that seminar so long ago, about the pressing needs in America, was constantly on my mind. So much so that I often found myself in the Philippine rain forest asking God, “Why am I here? There are no unchurched Americans in this rain forest. When do I get to go home and start the church you’ve put on my heart?”

In the spring of 1989, a team from our mission came out to survey the work. They concluded that the Filipino leadership was ready, able, and willing to reach their own nation for Christ, without an American missionary in country. My immediate question was, “Does that mean you will help us plant a new church in the United States?” They agreed to provide what limited support they could. We came home on April 19, 1989, with a burning passion to make a difference.

The Discovery

The first seven years of planting the new church were exciting, exhilarating, and exhausting all at the same time. By 1996, I was empty. I couldn’t put my finger on why for a long time. I knew something was missing. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. At first I thought it was simply because of the hard work and long hours that went into planting a new church. In time, I began to see it was much deeper than that.

My understanding didn’t come overnight, but it did begin on a particular Sunday morning. Moments before the service began that day I saw a member of our praise team preparing to go onstage. She was wearing (how do I say this nicely) a less-than-modest outfit. She was attempting to put her name tag on, but couldn’t find enough fabric on her blouse to attach it. I asked her to put on something more modest before going onstage. (OK, what I actually said was, “If your blouse doesn’t have enough fabric for your name tag, it doesn’t have enough for the stage.” Not my finest diplomatic hour.) She and her husband were furious. How dare I question her modesty? They both thought she looked fine. He was the worship leader. I thought, How can they not see basic immodesty? How can they not see that she will be drawing people’s attention to herself, instead of leading them to see Jesus?

That led me to start paying closer attention to what other members were saying. I heard things like, “It’s so exciting to be a part of a church that is growing so fast.” Very few of them said the things I longed to hear like, “It’s so exciting to grow more and more in love with Jesus every day!” I started paying more attention to their lifestyles. I realized that many of their marriages were still marked by conflict and insecurity, their personal finances were a mess, many still lived as victims of past hurts or still lived in the bondage of personal sin.

I had to accept that I was leading hundreds of people who had never grown beyond the spiritual infancy that continued to mark their lives. They were saved for heaven, but they were still living in the dysfunction of their past. The abundant life they signed up for was nowhere to be found. As their pastor, that threw me into crisis.

Carrying that crisis around was far more draining than I even realized. It finally came to a point where I found myself standing backstage on a Sunday morning, waiting for the time to go out and deliver the morning message. “God, I don’t have it!” I confessed. “I can’t go out there. You are going to have to do something, because I can’t.” When I opened my eyes, six-year-old Devon was standing there. He had slipped away from his mother to come to where I was. He said, “Pastor Jim, I think I’m supposed to pray for you.” He took my hands and prayed. I don’t know the words he prayed. I do know it was a major pivot point in my journey and that of the church I led.

“I had to accept that I was leading hundreds of people who had never grown beyond the spiritual infancy that continued to mark their lives. They were saved for heaven, but they were still living in the dysfunction of their past. The abundant life they signed up for was nowhere to be found. As their pastor, that threw me into crisis.”

The first discovery I made was that gathering decisions for Christ was the easy part of the call. All you needed was exciting, attractional church services, filled with promises of a better life. All of those unchurched people who come have lots of unchurched friends. They go home and say, “You’ve got to check this out! This is cool church!” And those friends come and bring their friends. But the abundant life Jesus promised was not on the other side of attending exciting church services. It required a life-changing, life-defining relationship with Jesus Christ.

It began to dawn on me that Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations…” He didn’t say, “Go make church members.” He didn’t call us to fill pews. He didn’t call us to pack cars into church parking lots. He called us to make disciples—students of truth, who define their lives by a relationship with the Author of Truth. I had to accept that I had been so focused on counting chairs, cars, and cash, that I had missed the point!

I also discovered that the problem was not just a matter of ministry understanding. I was personally part of the problem. I had to face the reality that I had gotten prideful about the whole thing. After all, from a numbers perspective, our church was one of the biggest in our city. Of course I was proud—I was a successful church planter, right? But when I looked at our church through the lens of the real mission, I had to accept a sense of failure. Humbling moments are painful, but it is in those moments that God’s grace steps in. The truth is God can’t really use any of us until we are willing to be humbled.

“It began to dawn on me that Jesus said, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations…’ He didn’t say, ‘Go make church members.’ He didn’t call us to fill pews. He didn’t call us to pack cars into church parking lots. He called us to make disciples—students of truth, who define their lives by a relationship with the Author of Truth. I had to accept that I had been so focused on counting chairs, cars, and cash, that I had missed the point!”

My next step was to go to the church elders and tell them everything I had been discovering. I resigned, saying, “The church needs a better leader than I am.” Their response humbled me even more. “We don’t think the church is strong enough to survive your leaving.” They didn’t say I was such a great leader they really wanted me to stay. They said I had done such a poor job of leading, the church wasn’t stable enough to survive without me! We agreed to share a three day fast to seek the Lord for direction. On the third day of the fast, I found myself sitting across from my mentor, Dr. Herbert Carter, recounting the situation and the conversation with the elders. His words stung, yet gave me resolve. “It does sound like the church needs a better leader. That does not mean it isn’t you. Learn what you need to learn. Do what you need to do. Buck up and change!”

The Scope of the Problem

Over the next few years, my research into how to solve our church’s problem led me to a third discovery. After nine years in the Philippines and seven years working to plant the church, I realized I had been paying no attention to what was going on beyond my little corner of the world. I assumed we were the only ones struggling with these issues. I was stunned by what I learned. The more I learned, the more I realized Dr. Kelly’s predictions in 1979 had been more prophetic than I ever imagined.

“His words stung, yet gave me resolve. ‘It does sound like the church needs a better leader. That does not mean it isn’t you. Learn what you need to learn. Do what you need to do. Buck up and change!’”

It was during that season of learning and discovering that the George Barna Group began to publish its findings related to conditions in the American spiritual landscape. Those findings painted a bleak picture. Barna wrote, “The Christian Church is failing to live up to its [call]; we’re not even coming close to fulfilling it. Our nation has a strong economy but a weak morality. People are more interested in faith and religion than in Jesus. Believers are largely indistinguishable from nonbelievers in how they think and live.”[1] At the time, I was angered by his words. How dare he write something so negative about the church Jesus died for! That was in 2001. If he revised that book today, he’d probably write something like, “Our moral failure has now shown up in a nearly collapsed economy, based primarily on personal greed and a lack of national integrity.”

In the years since then, a whole genre of Christian literature has arisen speaking to the spiritual problems facing America. Thom Rainer, Ed Stetzer, Allen Hirsch, and so many others have began to research and write on the subject. The information is sobering. The challenges are real.

- Rainer writes, “There has been more written about reaching the unchurched in the past twenty years than at any time in history, and yet, the smallest percentage of Americans attend church today that at any time in our history.”[2]

- Fuller Youth Institute reports, “Statistics tells us that our strategy is failing: in America, where 40% claim to attend church regularly in a culture that shows little evidence of Christ-like presence; in Canada, where 19% attend church regularly; in England, where church attendance runs well under 10%; and finally in Europe, with attendance generally under 5%.”[3]

This abysmal level of church attendance is producing scary results. Ed Stetzer reports that 58% of Americans believe that the biblical God is no different from gods or spiritual beings worshiped by other world religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. He writes, “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that people who don’t go to church don’t understand how completely different the God of the Bible is from Hinduism’s pantheon or Buddhism’s idea that ultimate reality is impersonal nonexistence.”[4] Of those who do attend church, Barna writes, “47% of Americans, who define themselves as born-again Christians, no longer believe absolute truth exists. 55% of American church attenders reported rarely, if ever, reading the Bible.”[5]

No wonder our local church was in crisis. We were in the midst of a national spiritual epidemic of apathy—the consequences of which are sobering. No wonder Barna eventually concluded, “The [American] church has lost its place at the table of cultural influence.”[6] I began to think, the church isn’t just failing in its mission to make disciples and teach them to obey. We were soon going to be on life-support if something didn’t change.

“I began to think, the church isn’t just failing in its mission to make disciples and teach them to obey. We were soon going to be on life-support if something didn’t change.”

A Band-Aid or a Rebirth?

It was obvious something had to be done in our local church and in the church as a whole. I just didn’t know what to do. I started reading every practical guide book I could find by every pastor I thought was doing something. I started attending every major conference I could get to. I even started emailing the authors and speakers, asking for their insights into what I had found in our setting. Some of them answered me. A couple of them became friends and prayer partners in the journey.

Over the next few years, our church tried it all. We became a purpose-driven, cell-based, seeker-sensitive, missional, attractional, simple church! What? Are you kidding me? What is that? We didn’t know. We were just trying to solve the problem. We established small groups, special needs ministries, and training processes. We did it all. The church grew. Between 1996 and 2006, we added another thousand people. We began to see evidence of biblical maturity in more and more of our members. But with the size of the problem in our city and our nation, we didn’t have the luxury of celebrating.

What would it take to become the Church that Jesus called us to be? What would it take to reach the millions who never darkened the door of a church, no matter how attractive the services or entertaining the sermons? More importantly, what would it take to bring hope to so many whose hopelessness showed up in their divorce rates, suicide rates, bankruptcy rates, and addictions. Not to mention the lives of their children, who were so confused they often didn’t know what to believe. I kept praying, “Lord, how are we going to make difference in the lives of so many people?”

By 2006, pastors around the region were beginning to call us for help. They asked, “How do you do music ministries in your church? How do you do small groups? How is your church structured?” With every call, I found myself thinking, I want to help, but they are asking the wrong questions. I understood why they were asking. They wanted to make a difference. I wanted to help them make a difference, especially in light of Leith Anderson’s research that concluded “86% of American churches have either plateaued or are dying.”[7] But somehow we had to go deeper than, “How do we grow our church?” We had to go all the way to, “How do we effect change in the communities where God has placed us?” We had to stop focusing on church growth and start thinking about community development through the vehicle of the church. We needed more than band-aids. We needed rebirth.

Answers

My search for answers took me to a surprising source. It was a business textbook entitled, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization. Peter Senge wrote it for business leaders who were looking for a competitive edge in the marketplace. His words resonated with me. He wrote, “A cloud masses, the sky darkens, leaves twist upward, and we know that it will rain. We also know that after the storm, the runoff will feed into groundwater miles away, and the sky will grow clear by tomorrow. All these events are distant in time and space, and yet they are all connected within the same pattern. Each has an influence on the rest, an influence that is usually hidden from view. You can only understand the system of a rainstorm by contemplating the whole, not any individual part of the pattern.”[8]

He explained his premise with a scenario. Imagine that sales are down in your company. Conventional wisdom would tell you your sales force is slacking. The problem might be that the R&D department isn’t keeping up with your competitors. Your marketing department might not be developing compelling advertising. The pricing department might be creating an obstacle for the sales force by pricing your product too high for the market. Senge went on to explain that if the company didn’t do the hard work of going back to the beginning and seeing the whole continuum, they might actually fire the best sales team in the country, when it isn’t their fault at all!

As I read those words it occurred to me that what we’re struggling with is a spiritual storm. If the American church was going to contemplate the whole and go back to the beginning, we were going to have to move beyond debating whether we should be attractional or missional, whether we were cell-based or purpose driven. We were even going to have to move beyond asking whether we were growing in cash, chairs, and cars! We were especially going to have to forget attempting to clone the church model that worked in Chicago or Hampton Roads. We were going to have to do the hard work of learning what was really going on around us.

We were going to have to pray for a fresh vision from God for what He wanted to do in the communities where He sent us.

We were going to have to break out of our comfort zones and do something radical.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t learn from the effective churches around us. Of course we can and should learn from what others are doing to reach unchurched people in circumstances similar to our own. We absolutely should study examples of churches that are assisting new believers in growing into mature followers of Christ. But if we are going to turn the tide of spiritual malaise, we have some foundational work to do. The words of Dr. Gordon Fee from my seminary days rang in my mind. “We’re so busy reading commentaries about the Bible, we don’t really know what the Bible actually says anymore. Put your commentaries away until you have lived in the Word of God for a while.” Senge sounded like Fee!

It hit me, what if we went back to the beginning and started there? What if we studied the most effective church of all time and learned everything we could about them? What if we went back to the early church described in Acts 2 and committed to restore the dynamics we found? In their lifetime, those early believers reached the known world with the Good News. Would God do it again in our world?

“It hit me, what if we went back to the beginning and started there? What if we studied the most effective church of all time and learned everything we could about them? What if we went back to the early church described in Acts 2 and committed to restore the dynamics we found?”

Are You the Next Gloria?

At the conclusion of the church planting seminar in 1979, Dr. Kelly made an announcement to the 200 pastors there. He told us that there were three groups among us.

Group 1: Pastors who disagreed with most of what he had been saying. He said, “If that’s you, my call to you is, let’s agree to disagree. Go home, pastor your people, marry your young and bury your dead. Be the best shepherd you can be for them.” I knew that wasn’t me. I agreed with most of what he’d been saying.

Group 2: Pastors who had been on a roller coaster of emotions all day. It was as if he had a camera in my mind. He said, “You have gone up and down all day, dreaming about ways you can implement these ideas in the church you lead, only to come to the realization the leaders back home will never adopt the changes.” He had me until he added, “If that’s you, go home, don’t do anything different. Settle in and take the next fifteen years to gradually, patiently transition the church you lead to a new paradigm of ministry.” Nope. That’s not me! I must be in group three, whatever it is.

Group 3: “Group three,” he said, “are those of you who agree with much of what I’ve said but you don’t sense God’s call to settle in where you are for a generation.” OK, now we’re talking about me! “Your task is to go plant a new church,” he said. The rest is history.

Frankly, whether you are a pastor or not, I doubt you’d be reading this book if you were in the first group. The fact that you are here tells me you are in group two or three. You either feel called to camp out where you are and make a difference through the congregation you are currently serving or you sense a call to help start a new church. Either way, my guess is that you are beginning to see the problems honestly. My prayer is that a passion to do something about those problems is stirring somewhere deep inside you.

This book is written to the thousands of Group 2 and Group 3 Christians in the world; to the “Gloria’s” who have heard God’s call to make a difference in their world. In the pages ahead, we’re going to do what Peter Senge challenged us to do. We’re going to learn from the most prolific team of disciple-makers in history. We’re not going to settle for learning about their programming efforts. We’re going to the heart of what made them who they were. After all, who was that ragtag group of ordinary people who reached the known world in their lifetime? What did they know? What was it about them that made them such successful difference makers in their world?

Turn to chapter three and we’ll find out, together.

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

Do you agree with the Barna quote that began this chapter: “The Church has lost its seat at the table of American influence”? Why?

2)

As you take a good, hard look at what is going on around you in your nation, what signs of a spiritual crisis do you see? Explain. What signs of spiritual crisis or problem areas do you see in your church? Explain. What’s the answer (or some answers) to the spiritual crisis you see?

3)

Do you believe the church is failing in its mission to make disciples? How so? How might more effective discipleship and spiritual training address the signs of spiritual crisis you shared in 2), above?

4)

The early church (Acts 2 church) reached the known world with the Good News. Do you believe that if we prayerfully study that church and commit to restore the dynamics we find there, that God would do in our “world” what He did in theirs? Why?

5)

How passionate are you about helping the Church to regain its voice in your nation? About overcoming the spiritual crisis in our country? What one thing will you do right away to express that passion and start overcoming our spiritual crisis?

“Some people spend their whole lives thinking they can make a difference. Others do as little as possible to get the day done. Some actually try to get in the way of change happening.”

—Amy Poehler

The nervous twitch in my stomach was rising up into my throat as I paced in the parking lot of the Churchland Country Day School in Chesapeake, Virginia. After all, it had been ten years since I said to my wife, “We’re going to plant a new church.” During those years, we had prayed, planned, fretted, gotten excited and scared, over and over again. The waiting was almost over. Launch day had arrived: September 17, 1989.

In the months leading up to launch day, we had written letters to every major city in the southeastern United States, trying to find the right location to launch the church. In time, we narrowed it down to Chesapeake, Virginia. Dr. Herbert Carter, my mentor and friend, did a demographic study of the area that helped us narrow our focus to the Western Branch section of the city.

In June 1989, my family had moved into a small rented house. We recruited a team of volunteers from churches across town to help us do a telemarketing campaign. We dialed the telephone 20,000 times, looking for area residents who were unchurched. We had sent several mailings to the nearly 2,000 families who identified themselves as unchurched and interested. After much searching and praying, we found a daycare center that would allow us to meet in their facility. The day we’d been dreaming about was finally here.

Now, what if nobody came?

Opening Day

The service was scheduled to begin at 10:45 a.m. By 10:35 a.m., the nervous twitch I had experienced all morning became heart palpitations. The only people who had shown up so far were a few of our friends and family who had come to see the church born. Would anybody from the community come? By 10:40 the parade of cars started. I could barely contain myself. By the time the dust settled, 165 people came.

The only musician we had was a piano player who admitted he wasn’t very good. The congregation didn’t know the songs. Most of them hadn’t been to church in years, and the churches they had been a part of represented the full spectrum of denominations. No one brought a Bible because most of them didn’t own one. It was pitiful, as church services go. I’ve seen the video and I’m pretty sure I would not have come back. But there was something in the air that day that just didn’t come across on the video. It was as if everyone there recognized that God was up to something.

When it came time for me to speak, I simply took a few minutes to describe the six dynamics of the first ever Christian church, as described in Acts chapter two. I told them that while that was what the first ever church was like, I had to admit, sadly, that the modern church had become much more complex. Even though 90 percent of those in attendance were unchurched before that day, they readily agreed. They averaged twelve years away from church. Many of them had very painful stories to tell about why they dropped out of church.

I tried hard to keep an appearance of calm to cover my racing heartbeat as I asked, “What if we could do what they did again? What if we could minimize the bureaucracy that so often accompanies the church? What if we dialed back on the programming and activities that churches seem to feel they must have? What if we focused on developing deep, personal relationships with Jesus and with one another? What if we directed the power of those relationships toward making a difference in this community?”

I told them stories of people I had met in fast food joints, at gas stations, and in grocery stores during my first few weeks in the area. I explained how they described themselves to a total stranger as feeling isolated, alone, and without hope of things getting better. The service ended with the simple statement, “I don’t have any money or members. We don’t have a permanent place to meet. But Kim and I are committed to pouring out our lives into restoring the dynamics of the Acts 2 church in this community. If you are interested in being a part of something like that, come back next Sunday and let’s get started.”

The Six Dynamics

So what are the six dynamics that defined the first century church? What do those dynamics have to do with the twenty-first century? The coming chapters will explore these questions in more detail, but for now, here’s a quick look at the six dynamics.

1) They were unified around a God-given vision.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) is what Jesus told them to do. Just before the church went public in Jerusalem the Bible says, “They were all in one accord” (Acts 2:1, KJV). A superficial look at that verse might lead you to believe it means there wasn’t much dissention among them. (That in itself would be a good thing in some churches I’ve been too!) But the original Greek word translated into the phrase one accord is homothumadon, which carries the meaning of a unanimous mind. That tells me they didn’t just get along with each other; they were in complete agreement. In other words, they had a deep sense of unity around their purpose for being together.

Something powerful had happened to them. They caught a vision for their world. It was a vision of seeing the world in love with Jesus. That vision began to define their lives, their life choices, their relationships with one another and with the world around them. They caught a vision of their lives being defined with Jesus at the center and helping others do the same. That vision united them. It led them to sacrifice their very lives. It catapulted them into the world until Jesus’ name spread across the known world in one lifetime. Their unity around a God-given vision changed the course of human history.

The sad reality is, if you were to ask twelve members of the average church today, “What is the vision that unites your church?” you would get at least twelve different answers. You might even get fifteen or twenty as some people would take two or three stabs at it. No wonder the church is struggling.

“Something powerful had happened to them. They caught a vision for their world. It was a vision of seeing the world in love with Jesus. That vision began to define their lives, their life choices, their relationships with one another and with the world around them. They caught a vision of their lives being defined with Jesus at the center and helping others do the same. That vision united them.”

Solomon wrote, “Without a vision the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18, KJV). The Message paraphrases this, “If people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; But when they attend to what He reveals, they are most blessed.” If that doesn’t describe what’s happening in the modern church, I don’t know what does.

Chapter four explores the power of a God-given vision. It will provide you with a step-by-step process for identifying God’s vision for your life.

For now, ask yourself, What if I caught a fresh vision of what God wants to do in my world? What if I dedicated myself to that God-idea? What if I rallied a group of people around it?

2) They were empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The moment the early church came into unity around the God-given vision, the Holy Spirit showed up and rocked their world! “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4). His coming not only empowered them as a body of unified followers of Jesus, it also polarized a city.

“The moment the early church came into unity around the God-given vision, the Holy Spirit showed up and rocked their world!”

The Holy Spirit’s coming is still empowering those who open their hearts to Him. It is also still polarizing. Let’s be honest, the words of Acts 2:4, intended to empower and unify, have been the source of scholarly debate and division in the Body of Christ since the day He came. But no honest student of the Bible can deny that something amazing happened that day. Peter went from denying that he even knew Jesus, to standing before the crowd, boldly proclaiming the truth. This small group of ordinary people became a bold army, willing to lay down their lives for the cause of Christ. In time, the power of the Holy Spirit catapulted them across the known world—within their lifetime.

What if we in the Body of Christ could get past the doctrinal debates that have divided us and pray that the Holy Spirit would do it again? What if we asked Him to empower us to bring hope to the thousands—millions even—who are coming to recognize the spiritual void in their lives and are just waiting for someone to help? What if the church went out to tell people about Jesus in confidence that the Holy Spirit had already gone before them to prepare the way?

Chapter five explores more fully the choices we have to make if we are going to live empowered lives that make a difference in our times.

3) They preached a relevant, simple, true message.

The Holy Spirit’s coming that day drew a crowd. Peter readily stood in front of the crowd and explained what was happening. His message was simple, concise, and clear. He used relevant illustrations to help his audience understand what he was saying. He called them to do something about their sin.

One of the profound weaknesses of the modern church is it’s apparent fear of taking a clear stand that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. We’ve become afraid to say there is a heaven to be gained and a hell be to avoided. We’ve bought into the lie that it’s narrow-minded to quote Jesus when he said, “No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).

I don’t see any narrow-mindedness in Peter’s message that day. He made it clear to the crowd that they could all have a relationship with God. He made it equally clear that they were complicit in Jesus’ murder and needed to be forgiven of their sin. The response was way beyond anything human eloquence could muster. Three thousand people committed to follow Jesus and were baptized that day!

Try to imagine the logistics alone of water baptizing 3,000 people in a single day in your town! It reminds me of how exhausting (though exhilarating) it was for us to baptize 160 people in a single day in the Philippines. I can’t imagine 3,000 (but I want to)! Some scholars say as many as 100,000 people came to Christ in the weeks that followed the Feast of Pentecost.

The Church was born based on unity around a God-given vision, empowered by the Holy Spirit and a simple, concise presentation of the Gospel. Peter told the truth. He did it in a way so that everyone fully understood what he was saying.

Chapter six provides practical insights into how to communicate the Eternal Truths of God’s Word to the biblically illiterate people we are called to reach in the twenty-first century.

“The Church was born based on unity around a God-given vision, empowered by the Holy Spirit and a simple, concise presentation of the Gospel.”

4) They were hungry to know God.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles” (Acts 2:42-43). They didn’t just meet for a ten day prayer and planning session and then go about their lives. They stayed intimately connected to God and each other. Those relationships became the core of who they were as a people. They were fresh off of Jesus’ words, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).

They also realized the core beliefs that had defined their lives to that point were deeply flawed. They had cobbled together their core beliefs from a range of sources: the Pharisees, Romans, Greeks, and others. They deeply desired a set of core beliefs based in the truth. They understood their lives and eternity depended on it. That hunger to learn more, know more, and love Him more opened the door for Him to move mightily in their midst.

Chapter seven takes an in-depth look at the role of core beliefs and the environments needed to reach people where they are and lead them into developing a biblical worldview.

5) They genuinely cared for one another.

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16). For many modern Christians, those are hard words. Their heart more closely mirrors a decidedly less warm and fuzzy tone: “I like my fellow Christians...well...okay, I like some of them, but die for them? Are you kidding me? I don’t see myself taking a bullet for the guy down the pew who wouldn’t even speak to me when I came into church this morning!”

The first church understood community. They didn’t just die for each other in a proverbial jump-in-front-of-the-bus-to-save-you sort of way. They gave up things they had in order to the meet the needs of others. “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need” (Acts 2:44-45).

What if a group of people actually cared about each other at that level again? Chapter eight examines what that might look like in your world. You’ll find ways to encourage and even facilitate a genuine caring community in your church. For now, ask yourself, How much do I really love my fellow believers? How do I demonstrate this in the way I do life with them?

6) They unselfishly cared about the community around them.

I cut my pastoral teeth on the church growth movement that launched in the 1970s and dominated church literature in the 1980s. My mentor did his doctorate at Fuller Theological Seminary under Donald McGavran, Peter Wagner, Carl George, and others. I worked the principles I was taught and they worked. Our congregation grew.

However, in time, I had to acknowledge two problems. First, the larger we got, the more isolated we became from the very community we were called to reach. Second, thousands of people around us who needed Jesus were never going to come to us. We had to go to them.

We don’t have a lot of information about what the early church did to touch the community around them. We do know they did so much that by Acts chapter 6, they had to form a team of leaders just to manage it. We also know that because of their positive interactions with the community they enjoyed “the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

This leads to one of the great debates in the modern church: Should we be attractional or missional? The answer is yes. We must be both.

In chapter seven, we’ll explore the role of attractional ministry. In chapter nine, we’ll explore the call to missional ministry and how to get there.

The Value of Balance

The early years at Community Church were exciting, but exhausting. I eventually began to understand why. We had seen dramatic conversion growth because we put dynamics one (unified around a God-given vision) and three (a simple, truthful message) in place right away. I was exhausted because we skipped dynamic two (Holy Spirit empowerment). We were trying to do it all in our own strength. We didn’t see any spiritual depth in our members’ lives because we failed to develop the fourth dynamic (hunger to really know God). We had a large turnover of members because we didn’t have the fifth dynamic in place (genuine care for one another). We were viewed with suspicion by many in the community because we were growing rapidly, but we completely ignored dynamic six (caring about the community around us) unless they came to us. The table below gives you a visual of where we discovered we were as a church. This table has become a sort of “scorecard” to keep us focused on balancing all six dynamics.

It has taken years to develop all six dynamics—and we still have lots to do. That work includes thick calluses on our knees from prayer—and on our hands from work.

“We had seen dramatic conversion growth because we put dynamics one (unified around a God-given vision) and three (a simple, truthful message) in place right away. I was exhausted because we skipped dynamic two (Holy Spirit empowerment).”

Don’t be surprised when Satan whispers in your ear, “Your church can’t get there from where you are.” That is a lie! You can, but you will have to be patient. It will take time. However, I promise you it will be effort well spent.

On the Sunday following the launch of the new church, 125 people came back. As of this writing, between all its campuses, more than 4,000 people call Community Church home. Sixty percent of its members made their adult commitment to Jesus in one of the church’s services, small groups, or outreach events. The more we’ve worked to incorporate all six of the Acts 2 church dynamics, the more we’ve seen conversion growth, spiritual depth, congregation cohesiveness, and community favor thrive. We’ve also seen our genuine influence in the city grow. Politicians seek our advice for citywide initiatives. The city inspector’s office calls us when they have a family whose home is under threat of being condemned, to see if we can help. The church is growing, but that’s not what it’s about: We are making a difference in our world!

“It has taken years to develop all six dynamics—and we still have lots to do. That work includes thick calluses on our knees from prayer—and on our hands from work.”

Ferrell Hardison has seen similar results in rural North Carolina. After seventy years of existence, Ferrell accepted the role of pastoring the seventy-four members that comprised this traditional church located in a cornfield. He began to introduce these principles detailed in this chapter. Twenty-six years later, The Bridge has grown into a multisite church of more than 2,000. They are making a difference in their world!

The coming chapters will unpack each of the six dynamics, one at a time. They will include stories of others, much like Gloria, who simply committed their lives to make a difference in the world to which God called them. My hope is that reading this book, a compelling passion will be kindled in you. My prayer is that you will join the movement to restore the dynamics of the original Acts 2 church in our world!

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

“If people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; But when they attend to what He reveals, they are most blessed” (Proverbs 29:18, MSG). Which of these have you observed most in the church: stumbling due to not seeing what God is doing or blessings from attending to what God reveals? Explain.

2)

Which of the six dynamics above stirs the most emotion in you? Why?

3)

Which of these six dynamics are currently in place and being developed in your church? Give examples. Which of these six dynamics do you most need to develop in your own life? Why?

4)

Close your eyes and imagine a church flowing with all six dynamics in place. (Have someone read each one listed above, pausing between each one to allow people time to process.) Speak out what you see.

5)

If you truly caught a fresh vision of what God wants to do in your world, dedicated yourself to that God-idea, and rallied a group of people around it, how would your church be different? Explain. How would you be different? Explain.

6)

What will you do to help your church become more like the original Acts 2 church?

“I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

–Jesus

What is your life going to look like in three years? How about five years? Will things be better for you or worse? What do you see happening in the lives of the people you care about, especially those who are far from God? Do you see them discovering who Jesus is and falling in love with Him? Or have you pretty much given up hope of that ever happening? These questions are critical, because vision is a powerful thing.

What you expect to happen in your life and the lives of those you care about has a huge impact on what actually happens.

The couple that has decided their marriage is dying and nothing can change that won’t bother to work on the issues that are killing them. The guy whose debt is so large he’s convinced he will never overcome it, will often stop even trying to live within his means. But let those same people catch a vision of a better future and it will change everything. Vision is a powerful thing.

I’m not saying, “Whatever you can conceive you can achieve.” That’s a clever cliché, but it simply isn’t true. However, Jesus did say, “According to your faith will it be done for you” (Matthew 9:29). He was telling us that the first step to a preferred future is believing there is one and that God has the power to bring it into reality.

I’ll ask the question this way: What do you believe God sees for your life in the next three years? Five years? What do you believe He is going to do in the lives of those you care about?

Vision is powerful. A God-given vision is amazing!

Let the same struggling married couple catch a God-given vision of supernatural healing being released over their home and everything changes. Let the guy who has a mountain of debt see God working miraculously with his finances to provide income and give him favor with debtors—suddenly the debt can be overcome.

Vision is a powerful thing. A God-given vision is amazing!

Now apply those questions to your church. What is your church going to be like in three years? How about five years? Will it be stronger? Will it’s influence in your community be greater? Will lives be transformed by the power of God through its ministries? Will your community be a better place to live because your church exists? More importantly, what is God’s vision for your church’s future? I didn’t ask, “What is your church’s vision statement?” I’m not asking about a slogan posted on the church website. I’m asking you what is imprinted on the congregation’s hearts and minds as God’s desired future for them? What do they all see collectively as they look down the road?

There is power in vision. There is amazing power in a God-given vision.

God-given vision creates anticipation. It wakes people up in the middle of the night and it gives them a purpose for getting up in the morning. It stirs passion, energy, and emotion so strong it can’t be ignored. It propels people out of their comfort zone with a driving conviction that it must be brought into reality. It rallies people to work together for the common good because God-given visions can never be fulfilled alone.

Identifying God’s Vision for Your Church

Pastor Bill Hybels tells about a time when he was teaching on the value of vision at a leadership conference. After the session, a man approached him, asking if he would come to his church. As soon as Hybels realized he wasn’t talking with the pastor of the church, he wisely declined: “I’d need an invitation from your pastor before I could come.”

Instead of letting up, the impassioned man just changed his approach. “If you won’t come, would you at least call my pastor? All I want you to do is tell him to get a vision for us—any vision will do at this point. Tell him to draw a target. Any target on any wall will do. We are dying!”

The man had the right idea—vision is powerful—but he was wrong. The kind of vision that transforms lives, communities and nations requires that God be the author of it. The good news is, God has a custom-designed vision for your church. The question is, how do you go about identifying it?

“The kind of vision that transforms lives, communities and nations requires that God be the author of it.”

God Calls a Leader

Throughout Scripture, when God wanted to do something, He called a leader aside and gave him a vision. That leader became responsible to rally people around the God-given vision he’d received. God gave Abraham a vision of being the father of a great nation. He gave Moses a vision of going back to Egypt and getting the Israelites released from slavery, even though there was a warrant over his head for murder. Esther had a vision of saving her people from annihilation. The Apostle Peter had a vision that challenged him to break out of his comfort and share the Gospel with the Gentile world.

Habakkuk was a leader in need of a vision from God. He served as God’s prophet at a time in Israel’s history when the nation had drifted far from the Lord. The nation was in a mess and God didn’t appear to be doing anything about it. Most of chapter one of Habakkuk’s book is the record of him venting to God about the situation. He wasn’t prepared for God’s reply, essentially, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better. I’m sending judgment.” The news that God was going to use Babylon to bring judgment on Israel drove Habakkuk to his knees. The short account of his time with God gives us a simple pattern for identifying God’s vision for the people He’s called us to lead. Whether you are leading a family, a church, an organization or a nation, this pattern works.

Get alone with God.

Habakkuk wrote, “I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts” (Habakkuk 2:1). His first step to hearing from God was to pull aside from his daily duties, go to the privacy of a guard tower and position himself to listen. In all honesty, the hardest thing any of us do is find time to be quiet before the Lord. No wonder we struggle to hear from God! He’s calling, but He keeps getting a busy signal. You won’t find God’s vision for your world in a book. You can only see it from your knees.

“You won’t find God’s vision for your world in a book. You can only see it from your knees.”

It is unclear from the text how often Habakkuk went there or how long he stayed. My experience tells me that identifying God’s vision for our lives takes time. Gloria Balbin visited Isabella during her first year of Bible college. It was only at the end of her senior year that she began to understand why the needs of that place kept her awake at night. God was giving her a vision.

Kim and I accepted the call to plant a church ten years before clarity came as to where it would be and when it would be time to start. I have no way of knowing how long it will take you to find the clarity you seek. I can say, you will have to set aside specific time for seeking His direction and patiently wait for His timing to reveal it. His timing is perfect.

Understand that our greatest visions often come out of our deepest discontentment.

“I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint” (Habakkuk 2:1). Habakkuk went to the guard tower deeply burdened about the judgment the nation was about to face. He wasn’t happy about it. He wanted answers from God. His discontent drove him to look intently for God’s vision.

John Hunter grew up in a rural community west of our city called Isle of Wight County. The son of a pastor and godly mother, he knew about Jesus from a very young age. In time John moved into the city and became a part of Western Branch Community Church. It wasn’t long before he met his wife, Marie, and started a family. During those days he led a small group and eventually embraced God’s call to pastoral ministry. The next few years were a season of education and preparation for John and Marie. All the while, discontent stirred in John’s spirit.

Every time he got news from home, it broke his heart. The prevailing news was that the we’ve-always-done-it-this-way, so-we’re-always-going-to-do-it-this-way churches were struggling. Very few from John’s generation in his old community identified with those churches. Most didn’t go to church anywhere as they started their careers and families. In time, the need became an unbearable burden that John had to do something about. That holy discontentment eventually formed into a God-given vision.

When John came to share his vision with me, he had no idea that God was already at work on us. “I believe God is calling me to plant a church in Isle of Wight County,” he said. I told him what we had been doing in the county. We both knew this was a moment for which God had been preparing us for years. We agreed that day to work together toward the fulfillment of God’s vision.

That agreement started a chain of events that has since led to the birth of New Branch Community Church in Windsor, Virginia—right in the heart of Isle of Wight County. The agreement only came after ten years of preparation for John and Marie, requiring great patience on their part. It grew out of a growing discontent they felt about a deep need in John’s hometown. All the while, God was gathering resources to help them when the time came to start. God’s timing is perfect.

We often don’t see what God is doing, at least not until we look back over the journey. If you are struggling to find God’s vision for your life, I suggest you start by bringing the discouragements, disappointments, and discontent stirring in your life to God in prayer. I also suggest you be patient with the process.

Share the vision.

John’s journey also illustrates Habakkuk’s third principle of identifying God’s vision. “Then the LORD replied: ‘Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it’” (Habakkuk 2:2). It often takes solitude to hear from God. Vision is often simply a solution to the problem He stirs in your heart, until you have to do something about it. Once you’ve heard from Him, you have to share it. The power of vision is only released when a group of dedicated Christ-followers unite their hearts around it. In some ways that’s the scariest part. In other ways, it is inevitable. John Maxwell says, “A leader with a vision is a little bit obnoxious!” The vision eventually becomes like “a fire shut up in our bones and we cannot keep silent” (Jeremiah 20:9).

“The power of vision is only released when a group of dedicated Christ-followers unite their hearts around it.”

The Original Acts 2 Church

Just before Jesus left to prepare heaven, He gave the early church the vision that would define their lives. “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20). We call this the Great Commission. They knew it was more than marching orders. It described God’s vision for the whole world. The commission lay in the fact that He was making them His agents in bringing that vision into reality. Did they ever! They reached the known world with the Good News of Jesus Christ—even Caesar’s household—in one lifetime!

The Power of Agreement

Why were they able to accomplish so much in so little time (especially without social media to spread the word)? I believe it was because they knew some things many in the modern church have forgotten.

For one thing, they were well-versed in the Old Testament. They knew Solomon’s proverb, “If people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; But when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed” (Proverbs 29:18, MSG). They also understood the inverse of that proverb. I’d paraphrase it as, “When people can see what God wants to do, and they take their direction from Him, it’s miraculous what can be accomplished.” That’s the power of agreement around a God-given, God-directed vision.

Jesus later added His authority to the proverb in Matthew 18:18-19: “I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” The original Acts 2 church would have known that the Koine Greek word sumphoneo is the actual word Jesus used for agree. They would have immediately pictured a symphony in their minds.

What do you see when you picture a symphony? I see lots of different instruments that produce very different sounds. Each instrument has a unique role in the concerto they have come together to play. Each musician will have to play from the same work of the same composer in order for the music to make sense. Each has been preparing for this moment for years. It is clear, part of their preparation involves learning to listen to one another to ensure the unique sounds they produce blend together seamlessly.

What I didn’t know for many years is that when that happens, something called “harmonics” is created. Harmonics are literally sounds that can be heard that are not being played by any instrument. These sounds are actually created by the perfect blending of the different instruments. That’s part of what makes symphonic orchestras so powerful. When harmonics form, you can’t keep the goose bumps at bay.

That’s exactly what happens when a church gets focused on the Composer and Conductor who has prepared a concerto just for them. The more they blend their gifts, talents, and interests together as one voice, the more powerfully Jesus’ voice rises above all others. That’s the power of agreement. That power isn’t released simply because everyone in the church seems to get along with one another. Unity is not the absence of conflict, it is the presence of agreement. (Absence of conflict might just be a temporary cease-fire.) Unity is what you have when a group of people lay down their own agendas, die to self, and unify around the vision God has given them. When that happens, the power of agreement is like the harmonics that fill the room at a symphony. It is God’s power making up the difference between what that church is capable of doing and what vision requires of them.

That’s why Jesus told the early church to go to the room He prepared for them, to pray and wait for the Holy Spirit to come. He knew the only way they would accomplish the vision was through the power of the Holy Spirit. He also knew the Holy Spirit wouldn’t come until they were in genuine unity. That’s why Acts 2:1 is so critical to the story: “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.” They were not merely all present that day, there was much more to it. The Greek word translated together is homothumadon, which carries the idea of unanimous agreement. They weren’t just physically near each other, they were emotionally, mentally, and spiritually unified. Though I explore the role of the Holy Spirit in chapter five, for now, remember that He didn’t come until the church came into one accord around the vision Jesus had given them.

“...the power of agreement is like the harmonics that fill the room at a symphony. It is God’s power making up the difference between what that church is capable of doing and what vision requires of them.”

God-Given Vision and Purpose for Being

In my early days of pastoring, I didn’t understand these biblical principles. No one ever told me that one of my most important pastoral roles was to seek God for what He wanted to do in our community through the church and rally the church around it. As I look back, I see that my lack of understanding was part of why my early pastorates were more often directed by the political maneuvering of a few influential people than by the power of a God-given vision. Refereeing relational skirmishes among the members was a regular part of my pastoral duties. All too often my week had more to do with placating special interest groups than leading the church to make a difference in our world.

“No one ever told me that one of my most important pastoral roles was to seek God for what He wanted to do in our community through the church and rally the church around it.”

One of the most memorable examples came during a congregational meeting one night. A member of the church made a motion that we buy new forks and knives for the fellowship hall. She explained that our supply had dwindled to the point that we couldn’t have any more church dinners until we restocked. Simple right?

“Is there a second to the motion,” I asked?

“I second the motion,” came a voice from the room.

“Is there any discussion?” It went downhill from there.

“Do we buy plastic or metal?”

I soon learned that half the church (aka, the ladies) wanted to buy plastic because they knew they would be the ones who ended up with the cleanup chores after every dinner. The other half (aka, the men) wanted metal because they didn’t like to eat with plastic forks that bent when they tried to stab their steak. Tensions rose. Husbands and wives were at odds with each other. After thirty minutes of back and forth vitriol that got us nowhere, the chairman of the deacons stood up slowly. You could have heard a pin drop in the room while everyone waited for Brother Bradshaw to state his preference. “I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other,” he said, and sat down. What do we do now? I did the only thing I could think to do. I formed a committee to study the issue.

We went months without being able to use the church fellowship hall for meals because we couldn’t even come to unity around something as simple as forks and knives. That’s just one funny example of what we’re talking about. I could fill a book with stories like it that range from cute to criminal.

That experience taught me a vital leadership lesson: It is hard to rock the boat when you are busy rowing it. I began to realize there is something in all of us that drives us to do something worthwhile with our lives. The Bible says, “The LORD is a warrior” (Exodus 15:1). That warrior spirit is one of the ways we are created in His image. That’s why if people don’t find a righteous cause to fight for, they’ll settle for lesser causes to fight about; like flatware in the fellowship hall. It’s tragic to think of the legions of people who have wasted their one and only lives by giving first-class allegiance to second-class causes.

On the other hand, when a visionary leader, having invested adequate time in prayer before God and earned the trust of the people he leads, stands up and says, “Here is what God is calling us to do next,” it is powerful. The congregation not only accomplishes great things for the Kingdom, they are too busy celebrating the unleashing of hope in the lives of the hopeless around them to worry about forks and knives. They let the team that keeps the fellowship hall stocked take care of that stuff. They’ve got life-changing work to do! (For the record, I too hate eating with plastic forks.)

“It’s tragic to think of the legions of people who have wasted their one and only lives by giving first-class allegiance to second-class causes.”

Guarding the Vision

Once the vision is identified and shared, it must be protected and defended. That is the job of everyone. But if the leader doesn’t consider the vision worth standing up for, the people won’t either.

One day, while pastoring Community Church, one of our small group leaders made an appointment to come in. He told me his small group had been talking a lot about the vision of our church. They had decided we were wrong. He described their vision of what the church should be like. Then, he asked me what I was going to do about it.

“Once the vision is identified and shared, it must be protected and defended. That is the job of everyone. But if the leader doesn’t consider the vision worth standing up for, the people won’t either.”

“I know that you and the people in your group are sincere and intelligent people,” I started. “I have to believe you all have heard from God. Unfortunately, the vision that unites our church is not open for negotiation and a house divided against itself can’t stand. I guess that means our church is pregnant. There is another vision preparing to be born. I’d be glad to help you plant a church based on the vision God has given you and your group.”

He sat silently in his chair for a moment. That was apparently not what he expected to hear. I finally broke the silence with, “I recommend you go back to your small group. Tell them what we’ve talked about. Ask them if they would like our help in planting a church built on the vision you’ve described.”

“You’d do that? You’d help us?”

“Sure, why not? Nothing we’re doing is about building a church. It’s about building the Kingdom of God. It’s about going into all the world and making disciples. But that does require we stay true to the vision God has given us for this church and this community.”

In a short while, it began to dawn on them that planting a church was hard work. One by one, they decided that maybe they weren’t called to plant a church after all. Within a few weeks, the small group leader came back and said, “You know, we’ve decided the vision of this church is probably more sound than we thought it was. We’ve decided we’d like to stay.”

I said, “Welcome home.”

Some tests will be not be as dramatic as that. Some will be so subtle, if you aren’t paying attention, they’ll slip right past you until you find yourself leading a divided church. (I could write a whole chapter on my leadership failures in this area.) The bottom line is, every vision from God will be tested. For the church leader, these tests will come in the form of conflicting personal preferences about music, preaching style, dress code, church design, or even flatware in the fellowship hall. Some of these tests will come directly from Satan as he tempts you to doubt the vision actually came from God when times get hard. Some will come from your own flesh, when things don’t happen as quickly as you’d like or exactly the way you’d planned.

“The bottom line is, every vision from God will be tested.”

Whatever form they take or their source, God allows tests to come to let you see how much you can trust Him. Just remember what the Apostle Paul said to the church at Ephesus, “after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm...” (Ephesians 6:13-14).

“Whatever form they take or their source, God allows tests to come to let you see how much you can trust Him. Just remember what the Apostle Paul said to the church at Ephesus, ‘after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm...’”

It All Starts with a Vision

Gloria Balbin had a vision of bringing the Cagayan Valley to Jesus. She and her husband Ely, and a continually growing army of others, have faithfully worked toward that vision for three decades. Today, Gloria and Ely are the spiritual mom and dad of twenty-five churches across the valley. Thousands have found hope in Christ as a result of their work.

God put a vision in my heart to start a church in America designed to reach people who still believed in God but had given up on the church. Through the years, thousands have come through our doors and given their lives to Christ. They are scattered all over the world now, sharing what they found in Jesus.

John Hunter was broken by the knowledge that those of his generation, from his hometown, who had grown up in the faith had drifted away in their adult years. Within a year of his launching New Branch Community Church (NBCC), it was financially self-sufficient. By the end of the second year, NBCC was the largest and fastest growing church in town. By the end of the third year, they began serious discussions about similar needs in the surrounding rural areas and small towns. A vision for planting churches around them was already taking shape.

The original Acts 2 church was made up of a small group of people from every walk of life. They had one thing in common: Jesus’ vision of bringing everyone, everywhere to Jesus. They reached the known world with the Good News in one lifetime.

There are no super saints or Christian celebrities in any of these stories. They are the stories of ordinary people who decided to unite with other ordinary people under the banner of a God-given vision.

So let me ask you again: What is your life going to look like in three years? Five years? What do you believe God is going to do in the lives of the people you care about in the days ahead? What is your church going to do to make a difference in your world in the days ahead? Finding God’s vision for your life, your family, your church, and your world will take patience and intentionality. Fulfilling God’s vision in your world will cost you much. Sharing that vision with others so they can partner with you in its fulfillment will take courage and faith in the One who gave you the vision. There is nothing more important in laying the foundation for increasing your church’s influence in your world.

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

As you read this chapter, what thoughts came to your mind?

2)

With which of the stories from this chapter do you most closely relate or identify? Why?

3)

What area of discontent is God stirring in your heart? What do think this means? Could it be holy discontentment that could eventually form a God-given vision? Why?

4)

What is your life going to look like in three years? Five years? What do you see happening in the lives of those you care about? What do you see your church doing to make a difference in your world in the days ahead?

5)

What do you believe God sees for your life, the lives you care about (including those in your church), in the next three years? Five years?

6)

Were there any differences between your answers to 4) and 5)? Explain.

7)

How clear are you on God’s vision for your life? How clear are you on God’s vision for your church? If you are clear, what actions are you taking to bring both visions to reality? To guard them? If you are unclear, what one thing will you do to gain clarity?

“Will God ever ask you to do something you are not able to do? The answer is yes—all the time! It must be that way, for God’s glory and kingdom. If we function according to our ability alone, we get the glory; if we function according to the power of the Spirit within us, God gets the glory. He wants to reveal Himself to a watching world.”

–Henry T. Blackaby

No sooner had the early church fully embraced Jesus’ vision of making disciples of everyone, everywhere in the world, He left. It was now their vision to fulfill. No wonder that when He ascended into the sky, they just stood there, staring at the spot where He disappeared behind a cloud. I can almost hear the silent protest: “Are you serious? We can’t do this without Him.”

Jesus had prepared them for this moment. But honestly, we’ve all been in situations where we had been told something was going to happen—and believed it—but it didn’t take on reality until the day came. This was one of those moments for the members of the original Acts 2 church. It took two angels to jolt them out of their mystified state. In essence, the angels told them, “OK, we get it. It’s hard to see Him go. But He’s coming back, just like He said He would, and you’ve got a job to do.”

Jesus had also told them they wouldn’t have to do the job alone. John’s account of Jesus’ life makes this clear. Jesus told them He was leaving but that when He got to the Father, He would send the Holy Spirit to live in them. Their first assignment was to go to an upstairs meeting room that had been prepared for them and pray until the Holy Spirit arrived.

Unity and the Arrival of the Holy Spirit

The next ten days had to be fascinating. I’ve been in a lot of meetings over the years: planning meetings, program development meetings and so forth. They can be exhilarating and empowering. The can also be frustrating and exhausting. But I’d love to have been a fly on the wall of that planning and prayer meeting!

I grew up being told they fasted and prayed the entire time. After a lifetime of meetings, I sincerely doubt it. After all, they were flesh and blood people, right? Obviously, I don’t know what they talked about because the biblical record doesn’t give us a lot of detail. I can take an educated guess that this widely diverse group of people—some fisherman, an activist, a tax collector, a reformed streetwalker, a carpenter’s wife, and others—had a fascinating discussion. I daresay they were excited yet scared, hesitant yet bold, focused yet distracted, tense yet at peace the whole time. No doubt there was some fasting going on. The Bible does make it clear they spent a lot of time in prayer. I guess so—given the enormity of the vision.

The process of coming to unity around a God-given vision can be hard-fought for the best of us. However, with so much at stake, it is worth whatever it costs. After all, the vision is to reach the entire world with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Simply put, whatever effort it takes to get into unity, do it! They did, and we are all glad they did!

Agreement can be hard to find for any group of people. It is worth looking for because the moment the early church came into genuine unity around the vision God had given them, the Holy Spirit showed up to empower them to accomplish it. He rocked their lives. He rocked the city. He rocked the world. He still works that way!

“The process of coming to unity around a God-given vision can be hard-fought for the best of us. However, with so much at stake, it is worth whatever it costs.”

Galvanizing and Polarizing

These three-dollar words simply mean the Holy Spirit was exciting beyond words, and His arrival got very different responses. Some thought these early Christians were drunk in the middle of the day. Others were confused until Peter explained that it was simply the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. Everyone listened as Peter called them to repentance over the simple truth, “Jesus is the Messiah. You killed Him.” Three thousand embraced the truth and repented of their complicity in Jesus’ murder that day. I wish everyone had. Thousands did not.

The sad reality is the coming of the Holy Spirit is just as polarizing today as it was then—even within the Body of Christ. Some Christian leaders have dedicated their lives to convincing people the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up powerfully anymore. Others put so much emphasis on the experience of an encounter with the Spirit, they completely neglect His primary purpose for coming. Thankfully, multiplied millions of people all over the world recognize who He is. He is God. The third, co-equal member of the Trinity. He came to empower us for the task set before us; go into all the world and make disciples of everyone, everywhere.

It’s Only by the Spirit We’ll Succeed

The truth is, we will fail at fulfilling our God-given vision without the work of the Holy Spirit. Given the state of affairs we talked about in chapter two, I’d say it’s time we lay aside our doctrinal differences about how the Holy Spirit works. It’s time we got back to the real issue; that is, we’ve been called to do a job that is not humanly possible! Without the power of the Holy Spirit operating freely in us, among us and through us, we don’t stand a chance of restoring the dynamics of the Acts 2 church in our world.

“The sad reality is the coming of the Holy Spirit is just as polarizing today as it was then—even within the Body of Christ. Some Christian leaders have dedicated their lives to convincing people the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up powerfully anymore. Others put so much emphasis on the experience of an encounter with the Spirit, they completely neglect His primary purpose for coming.”

Jesus knew the original Acts 2 church would fail without Holy Spirit power. That’s why He sent them to the upper room to pray until the Holy Spirit came. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and [as a result] you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Jesus knew the Holy Spirit’s arrival would transform this diverse group of ordinary people into a bold body of believers who would ultimately reach the known world with the Gospel, in their lifetime.

“Without the power of the Holy Spirit operating freely in us, among us and through us, we don’t stand a chance of restoring the dynamics of the Acts 2 church in our world.”

Peter alone is sufficient proof of the Holy Spirit’s transformative power! He went from denying that he even knew Jesus a few weeks before, to standing in front of his hometown, announcing they had killed the Messiah! By the time we get to Acts chapter four, Holy Spirit power is really making its mark. Amazing things have been happening, the church is exploding on the scene, and the whole city is buzzing with the news. Enough was enough for the religious leaders of the day, so they brought these early church leaders in and told them they had to stop talking about Jesus. They threatened to put them in jail if they didn’t. The response from Peter, John, and the others didn’t come from personal eloquence or from a worked up enthusiasm, but from the ever-present power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. In essence, these early Christians told them, “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do. We can’t stop telling the world about Jesus.”

“Jesus knew the Holy Spirit’s arrival would transform this diverse group of ordinary people into a bold body of believers who would ultimately reach the known world with the Gospel, in their lifetime.”

My favorite part of that story is the religious leaders’ realization that there was something very different about these people. “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). The Greek word translated ordinary in that verse is the word idiotes. You guessed it. These leaders were in effect saying, “I don’t get it. These guys are just a bunch of idiots!” I say, if fulfilling God’s vision for the world in the power of the Holy Spirit makes me an idiot, sign me up!

The Real Choice

By the time we get to the book of Ephesians, Paul makes our choice very clear. If we are going to restore the dynamics of the early church, the choice we have to make is not between being Pentecostals or non-Pentecostals, or Charismatics or anti-Charismatics. Nor is it whether or not we are going to speak in tongues. (You are welcome to sort all of that out in your own spiritual journey.) The choice is whether or not we are going to be controlled and empowered by the spirits of this world, or by the Holy Spirit of God.

Writing to the “faithful in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1:1) Paul instructs, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). He’s setting up a contrast that calls for a choice between two clear extremes. The Greek word Paul uses—translated filled in this verse—is pleroo. We naturally think of filled to mean a measure of how much; i.e. a glass of water can be half-filled or three-quarters filled or completely filled. I’m not a Greek scholar, but by simply looking up the word in your Greek dictionary, you can see that pleroo carries a much deeper meaning than how much in terms of measure. It conveys the idea of how much you are being influenced and empowered by something. I submit that Paul is actually giving us the choice of being filled with—under the influence of and empowered by—the spirits of this world or by the Holy Spirit.

“...the choice we have to make is not between being Pentecostals or non-Pentecostals, or Charismatics or anti-Charismatics. Nor is it whether or not we are going to speak in tongues. (You are welcome to sort all of that out in your own spiritual journey.) The choice is whether or not we are going to be controlled and empowered by the spirits of this world, or by the Holy Spirit of God.”

Paul simply says, being drunk with the spirits of this world leads to debauchery. (I love that word because it just sounds bad. You don’t have to know what it means to know what it means!) That’s why being drunk is often referred to as “being under the influence.” Paul is saying, “Don’t!”

As you continue reading the passage, you’ll see Paul goes into great detail to ensure we know what being filled with the Holy Spirit leads to. It leads to joy, gratitude, and unity. It leads to healthy marriages, children and work places. It leads to power for winning the spiritual battle we’re in for the souls of men (Ephesians 5:19-6:18).

When you read the Book of Acts with that understanding you see that is exactly how Luke uses the word filled (pleroo). On many occasions, he writes about the believers being “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Every time he mentions this phrase, he goes on to describe the subsequent joy, boldness, and power they experienced. Luke also uses filled (pleroo) to describe people who made the opposite choice. In Acts 5, Ananias is described as being filled (pleroo) by Satan and subsequently lying about a gift he was bringing, which led to his death. Later in the same chapter, you see the high priest described as filled (pleroo) with jealousy (Acts 5:17), which led to him vainly arresting the apostles again. (I say vainly because an angel came that night and set them free!)

“I submit that Paul is actually giving us the choice of being filled with—under the influence of and empowered by—the spirits of this world or by the Holy Spirit.”

Read Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia. You’ll see him setting up the same choice for them. “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other…” (Galatians 5:16-17). He goes on to describe the results of each choice. Choosing the sinful nature leads to all kinds of death! Choosing the Holy Spirit leads to “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). Do you know anyone who needs love or joy or peace? I sure do—me! Not to mention every one of the millions of people we are called to reach with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

“Choosing the sinful nature leads to all kinds of death! Choosing the Holy Spirit leads to ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’ (Galatians 5:22-23).”

This brings us to the question: What if we could stop fighting with one another about doctrinal approaches to the work of the Holy Spirit and focus on bringing His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control to a world that has all but given up hope that any of those things even exist? What if we moved beyond labels and decided to simply be fully devoted followers of Jesus who want the Holy Spirit to do whatever He wants to do in our lives and through our lives to benefit those around us?

I’m not suggesting this is an easy journey. Doctrinal positions and labels related to various approaches to the work of the Holy Spirit are deeply ingrained, with long histories. No doubt, there is a whole set of other labels for those of us who dare to even ask these questions. We might even be labeled “traitors” to the doctrines of our respective theological heritages. The questions we have to ask ourselves are: How committed are we to the God-given vision of making disciples of everyone, everywhere? How willing are we to recognize we cannot fulfill that vision in our own power?

The Holy Spirit at Work

I am the first to acknowledge that there have been many things done in the name of the Holy Spirit since He came to the original Acts 2 church. Many of them have had nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. They have been counterfeit expressions of the Holy Spirit. However, the fact that there is a counterfeit doesn’t mean the real isn’t genuine. In fact, the presence of a counterfeit suggests the real has value. The bad guys don’t counterfeit three dollar bills. Three dollar bills don’t exist, so they have no value, and are not worth the effort or risk. The bad guys counterfeit one hundred dollar bills because one hundred dollar bills are both real and valuable.

“I am the first to acknowledge that there have been many things done in the name of the Holy Spirit since He came to the original Acts 2 church. Many of them have had nothing to do with the Holy Spirit.”

When the real Holy Spirit shows up, what He does is real and has great value!

The Holy Spirit Draws People to Jesus

I believe this is why so many unchurched, unsaved people are drawn to churches that are committed to restoring the dynamics of the Acts 2 church in our world. In these churches, I frequently hear remarks like, “I started crying when I walked in the room. I cried all the way through the service. This has been going on for three weeks. What’s happening to me?” The answer is, “The Holy Spirit is doing a healing work in your life!” The Holy Spirit does His work regardless of our background: Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Mormon, Muslim, and so on. He isn’t bound by our theological understanding of God. It’s about the reality of the presence of God.

One of my favorite experiences with this was with Aaron, a twenty-one-year-old young man who came running up to me after a service one Sunday. He was a rough-looking dude; tats and piercings everywhere—the kind of guy you might run from on a dark street. His eyes were filled with tears as he held up his arm to show me the hairs on his forearm standing straight up. He yelled, “What is that?”

I said, “That’s God trying to hook up with you, dude.”

He said with his own style of exclamation mark, “I LIKE IT!”

He later told me he didn’t know anything about what had been going on during the service that day. Other than going to Mass once with his Mom when he was a kid, he’d never been to church.

Aaron didn’t have a clue about even the basics of Christianity, much less the debate over the validity of the work of the Holy Spirit in our times. He just knew something amazing—and ultimately life-changing—was happening that morning. It wasn’t the songs we sang that day, or the sermon I preached. A friend brought him to church that day and the Holy Spirit met him! He had an experience with God.

Aaron gave his life to Jesus that day. We water baptized him soon after. He is in a small group now, growing toward maturity in the relationship he’s found with Christ and the purpose he’s found for living.

The Holy Spirit Transforms Lives

It would be impossible to recount in this book the thousands of miraculous transformations and restorations I’ve witnessed over the past four decades. Transformations of body, soul, and spirit. Restorations of marriages, families, finances, and self-worth. Transformations that go way beyond people turning over a new leaf and finding renewed purpose for living. Transformations that demonstrate new life.

Pastor John Hunter tells a great story of the Holy Spirit at work.

Not long ago, a man who described himself as an atheist showed up at our church at the invitation of a friend. He let it be known up front, “I’ve been an atheist all my life. I don’t believe what you guys believe, but I’m curious about what’s going on. So I have agreed to come to your service today just out of curiosity, but don’t expect anything from me.” Before the morning was over, the man was weeping and had given his life to Christ. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in God. He had been mad at God for years. That anger had developed into a wall between God and himself. The Holy Spirit broke down the wall that day—just in the nick of time, as it turns out. Three days later, he had a stroke and died. The church provided the funeral service for him and learned his family had been praying for him to come to Christ for years. The family expressed how immensely appreciative they were for all the efforts of the church. The fact is, the only effort the church made was that one man asked his friend to come to church and loved him when he got there. The Holy Spirit did the rest.

Stories like these drive us and compel us to stay in unity around the God-given vision, “Go make disciples of everyone, everywhere.” They keep us praying that the transforming power of the Holy Spirit would be at the center of every song, every sermon, and every handshake we give. For we know that though the vision is far beyond our capacity, it is not beyond His!

The Holy Spirit Provides Miraculously

The work of the Holy Spirit can also be seen in the overall needs of the church being met as well. Over its first ten years, the church we planted in Chesapeake, Virginia, met in eight different leased auditoriums. The church would outgrow one and move to the next. We used to jokingly refer to ourselves as the sweepstakes church. If you find us, you win, you get to come! It was clear that in time, we would run out of facilities to lease and would need to find land and build a facility. We put together a team to search for available land. Early in that search, we found a piece of land that seemed perfect, but we couldn’t afford it, so we kept searching.

After three years of searching with no results, I told the congregation one Sunday morning, “Tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. we’re going to gather to pray. Come if you can or pray where you are. Either way, let’s agree to give this land search to the Lord. If He wants us to have land, we’ll have land; if He doesn’t, He’ll find us the next place to lease.”

A sleepy but eager dozen people showed up to pray the next morning. By 11:00 a.m., the group began to scatter. Nothing discernible happened. An hour later, Bob Thornton, a committed Christian realtor, walked into my office saying he had heard we were looking for land. He showed me an aerial photo of a twenty-five acre tract, asking if we would be interested. I recognized the piece of land immediately. I had spent hours prayer walking every foot of it. But at $2.5 million, it was far beyond our reach. Now, three years later, due to a series of circumstances, the developer who owned the land was willing to sell it for 20% of the market value! “Where do I sign?” I was quick to say. The Holy Spirit was at work on our behalf, even in mundane things like dirt! He wasn’t finished.

I Don’t Believe It!

I told that story to a group of pastors sometime after that day. I noticed one of the guys getting red in the face as I spoke. Finally, he blurted out, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it for a moment.”

“What don’t you believe?” I asked.

“I don’t believe it happened the way you described. I think you’re exaggerating what really happened.”

“Well,” I said, “I can show you the documentation. I can connect you with hundreds of witnesses who were there. Would that help you to believe it?”

“If it’s true, then why don’t miracles like that happen in my church? No. I don’t believe God does that kind of stuff anymore.”

“With all due respect,” I said, “perhaps the reason you don’t see Holy Spirit power operating, is because you have to believe He can and does before He actually will. Jesus said, ‘according to your faith will it be done.’ Don’t let my story anger you; let it grow your faith. Start believing that God wants to do this kind of thing for you, too.”

What if we stopped debating whether or not the Holy Spirit is still at work and just opened our hearts to Him? And not just open them, but be hungry! Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). My prayer is that no matter what you have believed to this point about what the Holy Spirit did on that day in Acts 2, or what you believe He still does today, you will become hungry for whatever He wants to do for you and for those around you, who are so desperate for hope!

I’ve heard Dr. Gordon Fee say many times, “I have my own theology, but I am not a theologian. I am a student of the Bible. If I read something in the Bible that challenges my theology, my theology has to change because it is not the final authority, the Bible is!” That has always had a huge impact on me. Maybe that’s why I love this ancient Hebrew prayer so much:

From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth,

From the laziness that is content with half-truths,

From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,

O God of Truth, deliver us.

“My prayer is that no matter what you have believed to this point about what the Holy Spirit did on that day in Acts 2, or what you believe He still does today, you will become hungry for whatever He wants to do for you and for those around you, who are so desperate for hope!”

The Acts 2 church gathered for prayer. The moment they came into complete unity around the vision, the Holy Spirit showed up and empowered them to accomplish it. Before the day was over, the Church was born. Three thousand strong! Five thousand soon after. Many thousands more in the weeks that followed. No wonder they were bold in their faith, “They had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:1). Have you been with Jesus? Are you open to what the Holy Spirit wants to do in you? What would happen if right now, a rushing mighty wind were to start blowing in the room where you are reading? What if He rocked your world today?

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

Imagine what it must have been like in that room, both waiting for what Jesus promised and on the day the Holy Spirit descended on those gathered there. Describe what you see. How would you have reacted to this?

2)

What goes through your mind as you reflect on the division in the Body of Christ over the work of the Holy Spirit in the church? In our lives?

3)

Why do you think the Holy Spirit showed up only after the Acts 2 church had gathered in unity behind the vision God had given them—to make disciples of everyone, everywhere?

4)

Describe a time when you encountered the presence of the Holy Spirit most powerfully. How did you know what you were experiencing was deeper than emotion? What lasting impact has this had on you?

5)

How is the Holy Spirit at work in your life today?

6)

Would you describe yourself as someone with a deep hunger for the work of the Spirit in your life? Why?

7)

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Name one thing you are going to do today to develop a deeper hunger and thirst for the work of the Spirit in your life.

“Some churches, for certain, abandon many of the cardinal truths of the faith in the quest to be relevant to the community they serve. But even more churches are woefully unaware of the realities, hope and pains of those around us. Failure to be true to doctrines of the Christian faith leads to apostasy. Failure to understand the world in which we live and serve leads to irrelevancy.”

—Thom S. Rainer

Brittany was only sixteen but the world had ended as far as she was concerned. She couldn’t see past the moment her boyfriend broke up with her. Thankfully, her parents were committed Christians. They saw her pain and wanted to help. After much encouragement, Brittany agreed to sit down with Pastor Dale. Dale gently helped her to see past that single event to the bright future that was ahead of her. Then he turned the conversation to the most important issue. “Tell me about your relationship with God,” he said.

“Me and God are tight!” she said.

“Great. Does that mean you have a personal relationship with Jesus?”

“I can’t say that. I don’t actually know much about Jesus.”

“Jesus is God’s Son who made it possible for us to have a personal relationship with Him.”

“Get out! I knew God got married. I didn’t know he had kids!” she exclaimed.

By then, Pastor Dale was thinking fast and praying hard. The girl clearly didn’t even know the basics of the Christian faith. He explained, “God didn’t get married. Jesus was born to the virgin, Mary, by a miracle God did.”

“I’ve heard of Mary. Where does she fit into the story?”

By the time they finished the conversation, this suburban, Bible-belt, American teenager wanted to start a relationship with Christ, but didn’t have a clue how to start.

Tom White, of Voice of the Martyr’s magazine, wrote some time ago about a fifteen-year-old boy he encountered on the streets of Dallas, Texas. The young teen was swearing and using Jesus’ name as a curse. Tom asked him, “Did you know Jesus died for you?”

“Oh yeah? What happened? Did he get shot?”

Though we might be tempted to write these stories off as isolated events, the grim statistics in chapter two tell us otherwise. The modern church has a crisis on its hands. We have to do something. The spiritual crisis we face must be viewed much like a community that has been hit by a devastating earthquake. When something like that happens, the residents of that community drop whatever they are doing, set aside any differences they might have, and focus on rescue efforts. After all, lives are at stake! People are trapped in collapsed buildings and under overpasses. What could possibly be more important than getting them out while there is any chance they are still alive?

We live in a world where the majority of the population is facing eternity without a relationship with the One who can save them! What could possibly be more important than the rescue effort? Just like rescuers in an earthquake zone who have to risk everything to go into collapsed buildings, we have to go where lost souls are and reach them with truth in a way they can understand. What’s changed in our times is the “trapped people” are not just in a rain forest on the other side of the world. They are our neighbors. They are our coworkers. They are our own family members.

That’s why Leith Anderson writes, “Many of the sincere and committed Christians who still faithfully fill the family pews hold on to the nostalgic hope that tomorrow will be yesterday.”[9] The reality is the culture around us has changed. The good news is, the original Acts 2 church faced a world very similar to ours, and they were effective. If we learn from them, we can be too.

“That’s why Leith Anderson writes, ‘Many of the sincere and committed Christians who still faithfully fill the family pews hold on to the nostalgic hope that tomorrow will be yesterday.’ The reality is the culture around us has changed.”

Anderson adds,

First century Christians had to deal with a totally pagan culture. The world they lived in and sought to evangelize had never heard of Jesus Christ and knew nothing about the Judeo-Christian God and religion. For most of the 20th Century, American churches and Christians have lived in the midst of a pre-evangelized culture. The majority of the people we have tried to evangelize have had some kind of religious background and were at least familiar with basic Christian ideas and vocabulary. Now the situation [has changed]. Millions of Americans have never been to church, never owned a Bible, and have no interest in, nor sense of need for religion. If Christians and the church are to become effective in reaching these modern pagans, we will need to go to them. In other words, we have to change the starting point of evangelism. We need to start where they are instead of where we are.[10]

We simply don’t have the luxury of huddling in our safe churches, singing songs we love, but no one else understands, or preaching sermons that impress the scholarly, but leave the “everyman” wondering what it was about. We cannot be satisfied with offering fellowship gatherings designed merely to entertain the members and keep them connected. There is too much at stake!

Multiple researchers have established that 86 percent of the churches in America (approximately 350,000) have plateaued or are dying. Most “Christian” nations of the world have to acknowledge that only two to twenty percent of their respective populations are in Bible-believing, God-honoring churches. Think about your immediate and extended family. Most of us have to acknowledge that many of our own relatives have placed their faith on the back burner, or forsaken it all together.

“We simply don’t have the luxury of huddling in our safe churches, singing songs we love, but no one else understands, or preaching sermons that impress the scholarly, but leave the ‘everyman’ wondering what it was about.”

Tragically, many Christians would rather go about business as usual in their churches, pretending the need either doesn’t exist or silently thinking, It’s someone else’s problem to solve. Others are afraid that if they bring those “dirty sinners” into the church, it will mess it up. (I say, “Look in the mirror. Those ‘dirty sinners’ are us!”) Still others, though they see the high level of biblical illiteracy among people who are lost and without Christ, are so afraid of watering the message down—and ending up on the slippery slope toward apostasy—they resist any change in the way they present the Gospel to them.

It is time to wake up! Keith Green wrote many years ago, “The world is sleeping in the dark, That the church just can’t fight, Cause it’s asleep in the light!”[11]

I realize much of what I’m talking about has been taught by the key leaders of the “seeker movement” for years. I also understand that this fact may tempt you to stop reading this book. So let’s recognize right here and now: Every movement has flaws. After all, they are run by human beings. No doubt, the movement to restore the dynamics of the Acts 2 church in our world will show flaws over time too. But whatever your view of the seeker movement, there are principles that should not—cannot—be ignored. Among them is learning to reach people where they are and help them get to where they need to be in Christ.

Simple Truth Is Understandable

When the Apostle Peter stepped out in front of his hometown crowd the day the Church was born, he spoke in a way that could connect hearers to truth. He knew he had a predominantly Jewish audience because it was the time of the Jewish Feast of Pentecost. So when he started to speak, he made his message absolutely understandable to them. He spoke of the prophet Joel and of King David, knowing they had all been to Hebrew school on Saturdays all their lives! He told them about Jesus’ death, knowing His crucifixion had been the topic of discussion around every “water cooler” in town for weeks.

The biblical record says, “With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation’” (Acts 2:40). In other words, Peter said everything he could think of that might help them connect the dots, in order to help them embrace their need of the Savior.

Bill Hybels says, “When you’ve been asked the central question of the universe—What’s going to happen to me after I die?—enough times, you are compelled to answer it in a way they understand.” Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “You don’t really understand something until you can explain it simply.” He could have used Peter as a shining example of someone who understood.

Today’s preachers have to find a way to get away from the notion that their job is to impress their audiences with their knowledge. Our job is to connect with the lost and hopeless world all around us with simple truth.

“Our job is to connect with the lost and hopeless world all around us with simple truth.”

Simple Truth Is Practical

If the church is going to regain its voice in the world, we have to make sure we are actually answering the questions life has them asking. I accept that lost people often don’t even know the questions, but when we suggest a question that needs to be answered, the subject has to make practical sense to them.

I recently started a sermon with a show-of-hands survey: “How many of you have at least one divorce in your immediate family; i.e., parents, siblings and children?”

Everyone in the room raised their hands.

“How many have two?”

Nearly everyone kept their hands raised.

“Three? Four?”

Still, many hands were raised.

“Look around, everyone,” I said. “This is an issue that has touched all of our lives. So today, let’s see how the Bible answers the question, ‘Is there life after divorce?’” Everyone was leaning forward to hear the answer. Hundreds of them ordered the message on video to give it to their friends and family.

Jesus’ teaching ministry was filled with practical truth. The central sermon of His life, the Sermon on the Mount, was timelessly practical. He spoke about grief, bullying, showing mercy, hypocrisy, conflict resolution, and faithfulness. That’s just the first eleven verses of Matthew’s account of the sermon.

Over the next three chapters, Jesus covers many practical subjects: the trustworthiness of the Bible, legalism, slander, grudges, lust, lying, hypocrisy, intimacy with God, forgiveness, money, generosity, guarding one’s mind, worry, the gift of the Holy Spirit—just to name a few! I don’t see a single message in His library entitled, “The Value of Babylonian Pottery Shards in Modern Times.” Biblical archaeology is a fascinating subject for a classroom filled with Christians who want more background, but you aren’t going to reach many lost people preaching about it!

“Jesus’ teaching ministry was filled with practical truth. The central sermon of His life, the Sermon on the Mount, was timelessly practical.”

As logical as all this may sound, many Christians struggle to understand it. Some time ago, I mailed a flyer to my community. It asked, “Are you getting everything out of your marriage you hoped for when you stood at the altar?” It went on to invite people to come hear a series of talks that would help them “affair-proof” their marriage, build intimacy, and lay a foundation of healthy marriage for future generations. No sooner than the mailer went out, my phone rang. An emotionally shaken lady on the other end of the receiver started with, “What kind of church are you people? You didn’t mention Jesus or the Bible one time in this entire mailer!” I listened patiently for several minutes as she told me off, in no uncertain terms. When she ran out of steam, I replied in the gentlest voice I could muster: “I can tell you love Jesus very much.”

“Yes, I do!”

“Ma’am, we do too. The problem is, our community is filled with couples whose marriages are in crisis, mostly because they don’t know Jesus. Some of them will see our flyer and think, ‘Maybe these people have some answers for us.’ When they get here, we’re going to tell them Jesus is the answer.”

Her voice softened. “Oh,” she whispered, “I didn’t think of that. I’ll be praying they come and respond to Jesus.”

Simple Truth Lays a Path

I’d love to have a dollar for every person who has ever asked me, “Why should I go to church to listen to some guy tell me how bad I am. I already know that!” Peter didn’t pull any punches in his message to the crowds on the day the church was born. He made it clear, they were part of Jesus’ murder. They needed to repent. But he didn’t present repentance as something they should do because they were so bad. He presented it as the means to break free from the destruction their culture had drawn them into. “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation,” he pleaded. Peter didn’t put up a wall for the lost to overcome. He laid a path for them to follow.

“Peter didn’t put up a wall for the lost to overcome. He laid a path for them to follow.”

Peter learned from the best. At a high point in Jesus’ ministry He asked His disciples what the people were saying about who He was. They gave Him a variety of answers. He turned to Peter and asked, “Who do you say I am?” Peter’s answer is famous: “You are the Christ. The Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:16). Jesus changed his name that day from Simon son of Jonah to Petros, i.e., the Rock.

Peter was anything but a rock at the time. In fact, within minutes of renaming him, Jesus had to rebuke Peter for his actions. Was Jesus lying? Of course not. Jesus never sinned. He was speaking prophetically into Peter’s life. He was saying, “If you will let your life be defined by who I am, you will be a stable foundation for others.” That prophetic name became like a beacon in Peter’s life that led him all the way to being the leader of the church in Jerusalem and the first Jewish Christian to breach the Judeo-Gentile divide.

Our job is not to make the people around us feel guilty. They are doing a fine job of that all by themselves. And besides, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job! Even the bravado and apparent arrogance you sometimes see in others is nothing more than a well-constructed cover-up for the deep guilt and emptiness they feel. Our job is to lay a path. To show them a better way. To help them become everything God made them to be.

Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). The path to real freedom is knowing truth and holding onto it for dear life. The way we present truth can either help people get there or become an insurmountable mountain for them to climb.

“The way we present truth can either help people get there or become an insurmountable mountain for them to climb.”

It’s time we stop putting so much time and effort in providing “spiritual beatings” and provide people with a way to be free in Christ. I once heard a pastor describe the work of a pastor-shepherd this way: “Feed the sheep and once a year, shear them.” He went on to say, “Far too many are shearing their flock once a week, but only feeding them once a year, and then wonder why they aren’t healthy.”

Simple Truth Is True

I am not suggesting for a moment that we are to water the truth down. I’m just saying the Gospel is good news! It’s time we start presenting it that way. Sin leads to death. Part of our job is to help people recognize areas of their lives where death is trying to take hold and speak life to them!

David Kinnaman and Chris Lyons have done extensive research into how the church lost its voice in the world. They address this balance directly,

In studying thousands of outsiders’ impressions, it is clear that Christians are primarily perceived for what they stand against. We have become famous for what we oppose rather than who we are for. As we work to change the negative perceptions of outsiders we need to avoid an opposite and equally dangerous extreme. Some Christians respond to outsiders’ negativity by promoting a less offensive faith. The unpopular parts of Christian teaching are omitted or deemphasized. They hijack the image of Jesus by portraying him as an open-minded, big-hearted, and never-offended-anyone moral teacher. That is an extremely wrong idea of Jesus. Softening or re-shaping the gospel is an utterly wrong response to the objections people raise.[12]

“I am not suggesting for a moment that we are to water the truth down. I’m just saying the Gospel is good news! It’s time we start presenting it that way.”

Our assignment to make disciples of everyone, everywhere cannot be accomplished in our own power. The Holy Spirit is the energizing agent of life change. By the same token, our diplomatic talk or personal eloquence are not capable of softening a hardened heart that keeps a person captive to their sin. Only truth sets us free. That’s why Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Romans 1:16). It was the same Paul who wrote, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29).

Simple Truth Is Lived

The bottom line is this: Hurting people, lost without Jesus in their lives, are looking for hope and help. They don’t care which doctrinal position our churches take on most of the issues we consider so sacred we would die defending them. Most of the time they don’t know enough about the Bible to know what those issues are. Frankly, they don’t care. They just want to know if we can help. They want to know if God is there. If He is there, they want to know if He cares about what’s going on in their lives. And if He cares, they want to know if He has the power to do anything about the circumstances they are in.

“Hurting people, lost without Jesus in their lives, are looking for hope and help. They don’t care which doctrinal position our churches take on most of the issues we consider so sacred we would die defending them.”

I’m not saying doctrine doesn’t matter. It does. I’m just saying, when it comes to reaching people where they are—far from God—they don’t care about our doctrine. They want to know if we really care about them. That’s why Jesus warned us the unbelieving world is trying to decide whether we are genuine followers of Him by watching how we love one another. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).

“Jesus warned us the unbelieving world is trying to decide whether we are genuine followers of Him by watching how we love one another.”

This is why hypocrisy is so poisonous to the church. The Greek word for hypocrisy is hupocritos, which carries the idea of an actor. In ancient Greek theater actors wore masks to hide the megaphone built into it. That made it possible for audiences to hear what actors were saying in the days before microphones. These masks also made it possible for one actor to play multiple parts in a play. He might be the husband in one act and return as the son in another act. All he had to do was change his costume and mask. In other words, the audience knew the character by the mask he wore. It is that context that gives us our understanding of a hypocrite The classic street definition is “someone who says one thing and does another.” Let’s be honest, if that’s the definition, we are all in trouble. We all say we’re going to do things and never get around to actually doing them. The biblical definition of a hypocrite is, “you know who they are by the mask they are currently wearing.”

The opposite of hypocrite in the Bible is to add the prefix ano to the word hupocrios; i.e., anohupocritos. Every time the Greek word anohupocritos is found in the Bible, it is translated into English as the word, sincere. That’s what hurting, hopeless people are looking for: someone—anyone—who is who they appear to be. Someone who is real, genuine, and sincere.

Truth is truth. The Bible promises that if it goes out, it will return fruit. But the moment an unchurched person believes that you are a fake or that your motive for being nice to them is any other than your genuine love for them, they are gone. Unchurched people are looking for, and are drawn to, people who are down-to-earth, real, accepting, and loving.

“Unchurched people are looking for, and are drawn to, people who are down-to-earth, real, accepting, and loving.”

That is not to say we have to be perfect in order to make disciples. Remember, Peter had a major, very public failure only days before standing before that Jerusalem crowd. He betrayed Jesus by denying that he even knew Him. Being real is not about being perfect (aren’t you glad?). The fact is, people of integrity mess up, but they fess up! They learn from their mistakes. They look for the support and accountability they need to avoid falling into the same trap again. They strive to be transparent about their journey. Judas also betrayed Jesus. The difference between Judas and Peter is, one became so full of remorse he hanged himself, while the other repented of his sin and faced the Lord with his failure. He got another chance and ultimately became the leader of the Jerusalem church.

Simple Truth Works

John and Angie were drug addicts. John’s addictions landed him in and out of jail many times. He was running from God. In 1998, he had a major car accident in which his car flipped, throwing him through the back windshield. After sliding down the highway 175 feet, the car finally came to a stop. When he regained consciousness, he was staring at the asphalt only inches from his face. He wasn’t even scratched. In that moment, John heard Jesus knocking at the door of his heart saying, “Let me in.” He didn’t open the door.

For twelve more years, John ran from God...and from life. Everything changed the day a friend brought him to a church that understood the principles covered in this book. He felt loved for the first time in many years. His fear of being judged for the way he was dressed or where he had been began to melt away with the first handshake, and disappeared with the first hug. He knew he had come to a place where he could meet God. Within a short time, John gave his life to Jesus.

Angie’s past was not quite as rough as John’s, but she had her share of running. Drug abuse was her escape of choice. Her journey with God came to a turning point in a residential rehab. By the time she came home she was in love with Jesus. She was overjoyed to find John clean and committed to following Christ, too. They married and started a new journey together, but this time with Christ at the center of their relationship. They spent their honeymoon weekend volunteering with the kids ministry at their church.

John and Angie’s journey since then has not been all smooth sailing. Getting free from the hurts, habits, and hang-ups of our past is a difficult journey. But God is at work. Today, John is training for pastoral ministry. Angie ministers at his side. They share a vision of starting a residential recovery ministry to help others who have traveled the road they’ve been down. They are reaching out now to their family members who are without Christ and to others who struggle to find freedom in Christ. They will both tell you their road to a love relationship with Jesus was paved with the love and care of people who have never walked their road—real people who genuinely loved them.

It is the hallmark of churches in the Acts 2 Network. People from every walk of life and background—socioeconomic, ethnic, financial, educational, generational—finding hope in Jesus Christ and sharing it with those who need hope. There’s no concern with where we have come from—only where we are headed! As Pastor John Sauls of Crossroads Ministries often says, “We have everything from bikers to bankers worshiping God, side by side.”

Not long ago, I walked up on a conversation in our church guest reception area. A newcomer to the church was talking with one of our pastors. It was clear these two men knew each other well. Pastor Joey served as a police officer for twenty years before joining the church staff, so I thought the newcomer might also be a police officer. I said, “I see you guys know each other. Are you a police officer?”

He replied with a smile, “No, actually, Joey arrested me several years ago. After I was convicted, he visited me in prison. The first thing I did when I got out was come straight to this wonderful place. Now you guys are helping me get established in life—with Jesus at the center this time.”

In the coming chapter, we’ll explore the importance of helping people learn more about the Bible. We’ll discuss the heart of the matter and methods for helping people grow in their faith. However, before any of that can happen, we have to reach them where they are. Today, this often means reaching out to people who are biblically illiterate, far from God, and desperate to believe that someone really cares about them. This desperation is not limited to convicted felons or drug addicts. It can be found anywhere, even in the McMansions that line the streets of American suburbia, filled with married couples lying beside one another at night, staring at the darkened ceiling, wondering what the other one is thinking, but afraid to ask.

Hurting people are all around us, desperate for hope, wondering if anyone cares. Watering down the truth won’t help them. Preaching over their heads on subjects that have no meaning for their lives won’t either. Laying a path for life in Christ, telling the simple truth in a way that touches their lives, will!

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

In this chapter, the spiritual crisis in America is likened to a catastrophe on the level of an earthquake. How are these similar? Dissimilar? Do you feel the same sense of urgency in reaching people with the Gospel as you would in reaching people trapped in a collapsed building? Why?

2)

If you were to offer a grade on the current level of biblical knowledge of those who live in your community, but do not attend your church, what would it be (A–F)? Why? What grade would you give those who attend your services? Why?

3)

Why is hypocrisy so poisonous to the Church? Do you believe people find you to be down-to-earth, real, accepting, and loving? Why?

4)

If you are a preacher, leader, or teacher, how might your preaching, teaching, or leading change if you were more focused on the true level of understanding of those listening? Why? As a Christian, leader or not, how might you change the way you share the Gospel if you were more focused on the true level of understanding of those listening? Why?

5)

If you are a leader, what should your next step be in evaluating and improving your connection with your audience when you preach or teach? Explain. As a Christian, how might you improve your ability to connect with those outside the church who need a path to Christ they understand? Explain.

“Recently a pilot was practicing high-speed maneuvers in a jet fighter. She turned the controls for what she thought was a steep ascent—and flew straight into the ground. She was unaware that she had been flying upside down. This is a parable of human existence in our times—not exactly that everyone is crashing, though there is enough of that—but most of us as individuals, and world society as a whole, live at high speed, and often with no clue to whether we are flying upside down or right-side up.”[13]

—Dallas Willard

Bobby was a brand new believer. He knew almost nothing about God. His family of origin was as dysfunctional as they come. The good news is he accepted a friend’s invitation to church. He found Jesus, who gave him a fresh start in life. He was immediately hungry to know all he could about the Jesus who just changed his life. He stood in front of me, tears streaming as he twisted the old Bible his grandmother once gave him. “I want to do life God’s way from now on,” he cried. “What do I do now?” I’ve heard some form of that story hundreds of times over the past four decades from people who knew they had a fresh start in life because of Jesus. They didn’t want to mess it up, but they had no idea what to do differently this time.

Life’s Core Beliefs

Chapter four explored the idea that all of us have a vision for our lives that holds a mental image of our future. You might have a vision of turning the corner toward intimacy in your marriage. You might be picturing a mountain of debt so high you could never overcome it. It is critical that you identify your vision for your future, whatever it is. It is even more critical that you make sure the vision originated with God, because your vision defines your destiny.

The same can be said of core beliefs. We all have a core set of beliefs that accompany the visions we carry. Together, consciously or unconsciously, they inform every decision we make. Let’s say your vision of yourself is that you are the life-of-the-party, live-for-the-weekend sort of guy and one of your core beliefs is having fun, at all costs. When you get an invitation to an event, you will likely respond based on whether you think it is going to be fun. If you have a vision of living a long life and a core value of safety, when an invitation to go skydiving comes, you will likely turn it down.

Each of us has a set of visions and beliefs that determine our choices in life. Bobby had a God-given vision of becoming a thriving man of God. He intuitively knew he needed a set of God-defined beliefs to support that vision. He completely understood when I told him it was crucial to develop biblically-defined core beliefs, but he was a little disappointed when I told him this would be a lifelong process.

The Value of Personal Core Beliefs

Your beliefs in life determine your choices, and choices always have consequences.

Ask anyone impacted by Philippine Air Flight 201. It was a typical early rainy season day until the news spread through the city that the morning commuter flight from Manila to Baguio City, Philippines had flown into the side of a mountain, killing everyone on board. There was no evidence the pilot even tried to pull up. Why would he do that? Was he suicidal? It was weeks before answers came.

The black box eventually revealed that they left Manila Domestic Airport and quickly leveled off at 4,000 feet for the short hop to the mountain city of Baguio. They flew in dense clouds the entire trip. As soon as they reached altitude, the co-pilot mentioned a problem in his marriage to the pilot. They settled into a long conversation. Tragically, the high level of value they put on talking about their marriages superseded the value of staying aware of their position. Ten seconds before the crash, one of the two was recorded saying, “We must be getting close to Baguio. We’d better check our position.” Baguio City is situated 5,000 feet above sea level. They never even saw the mountain.

“Your beliefs in life determine your choices, and choices always have consequences.”

Did it matter what they believed? It certainly mattered to the sixty-four people who lost their lives on June 13, 1987. It also mattered to the hundreds of friends and family who lost loved ones that day.

The world is filled with counterfeit beliefs.

We grew up with many false beliefs being reinforced in catchy slogans on television and radio: If it feels good, do it. Don’t worry, be happy. It doesn’t get any better than this. You only go around once, so go for the gusto. (It amazes me how many of these beliefs were ingrained in our culture through beer commercials!) However, these are relatively lightweight beliefs. We could have talked about what popular culture has to say about sexual promiscuity, about easy credit (I’m sorry, there is no such thing as an easy payment!), about pornography as innocent artistic expression, or the TV talk show favorite: all beliefs are equally valid. The truth is, all of these false beliefs lead to dire circumstances. That’s why John warned us, ”Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

The only source of absolute truth is God.

When Bobby came to me several years ago, he didn’t understand much, but he knew somehow he had been living by a set of beliefs that had not served him well at all. It was time for a new set of core beliefs to live by. He knew in that moment, God was the only One he could trust to define those beliefs. He was a bit disappointed to learn I couldn’t just list them off for him. He readily accepted my direction to get into the teaching environments our church offered.

Spiritual and emotional health requires replacing the lies we have believed with the truth.

Dr. Chris Thurman writes: “Uncovering the lies you believe—and defeating them with the truth—is the only real hope you have for a healthy life here and eternal life in the hereafter.”[14] Counselors often call this Replacement Therapy, replacing the lies that play like a recording in the back of our heads with truth that leads to the abundant life. That’s not modern psychobabble. Jesus was the author of it. Seventy-eight times during his earthly ministry, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth…” Twenty times, he said, “You’ve heard it said, but I say…” He said, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:26).

“Uncovering the lies you believe—and defeating them with the truth—is the only real hope you have for a healthy life here and eternal life in the hereafter.”

Core Beliefs of First Century Christians

The Apostle Peter stood before that chaotic crowd on the Day of Pentecost and declared the simple truth about Jesus. Three thousand responded to the offer of forgiveness and a fresh start in life. That’s exciting stuff, but those new believers were in the same boat as our Bobby, standing at the altar. The cry, then as now, is: “We have found new life in Jesus. How do we live so as to avoid the missteps we’ve made in the past?”

There was a hunger among those early believers to know God. They didn’t have the beer commercials and talk show hosts influencing them, but they did have rabbis, Romans, Greeks, and lots of other voices vying for their attention. They recognized that reality and wanted to know everything they could about God. They willingly sat at the apostles’ feet to learn everything they could as fast as they could. They were hungry to know.

I see that same hunger in the modern Acts 2 churches I visit. They are filled with people who have found a fresh start. They don’t want to mess it up. The very expressions on their faces seem to say, “Help me recognize the lies I’ve been told by Hollywood, the streets, former teachers, and even members of my own family. Help me to replace those lies with the truth of God’s Word.” They don’t want it watered down. They also don’t want it loaded down with a bunch of traditions. They are hungry to know what the Bible says. “Just show me what the Book says. I want to know.”

Understanding the Word “Know”

Know is an interesting word. If you say you know your neighbor, that might mean you are best friends. But it might mean you met once and you can’t remember his name. If you say you know how to cook, that might mean you can scramble eggs without burning them. But it also might mean you graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, with honors. My amazing wife, Kim, and I have been married for thirty-eight years. I would say I know her, but I would have told you I knew her when she walked down the aisle so long ago. (In truth, I was actually clueless at the time!)

After many years of service to God, Paul said, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10). Anyone could understand Paul’s desire to grasp the power of Christ available to him, but Paul also wanted to know how Jesus felt when He suffered. He wanted to grieve over what made Jesus grieve. That’s what I call wanting to know!

Regardless of how good the preacher is at your church (even if it’s you!), knowing Christ at the level of intimacy described by Paul requires more than good preaching services.

Helping Them Know

I grew up in church. My first Sunday service came when I was ten days old. I doubt I have missed ten weekend services since, and I am sixty none-of-your-business years old.

Given my attendance record, one might think I would be well-versed in Scripture by the time I reached adulthood. I wasn’t. As soon as I acknowledged the Lord’s call to vocational ministry, I knew I needed to know more. Bible college put me in crisis. I remember sitting in class thinking, “This can’t be true. My church would have taught me this if it were.” Those were stretching years and growing years for me. I dug into the Scriptures. It profoundly affected my personal core beliefs. I came to realize that much of what I believed was based on things I had heard along the way. Some of those beliefs were not consistent with what the Bible actually said. Mostly, I learned that I didn’t know much at all about what the Bible actually said! I thought I knew the Lord. I certainly loved Him and wanted to serve Him. I had a lot more to learn before I would know Him at the level the Apostle Paul wrote about!

I learned that my early pastors were good, godly leaders who wanted the best for their congregations. But they didn’t understand the different domains of learning, nor how to organize a church in order to help us.

Mind Renovation

The Apostle Paul was clear: Transformation into a person who knows and does the will of God is on the other side of a renewed way of thinking; i.e., Replacement Therapy. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). The Greek word translated renewing is anakainosis. It carries with it the idea of complete renovation. If you’ve ever renovated an old house, you know the process includes removing the old outdated stuff and bringing in new stuff. With that understanding, Romans 12:2 could be paraphrased, “Don’t continue to make your life choices based on the core beliefs the world taught you. Develop biblical core beliefs to live by. Only then will you be able to discern God’s purpose for your life.”

“Romans 12:2 could be paraphrased, ‘Don’t continue to make your life choices based on the core beliefs the world taught you. Develop biblical core beliefs to live by. Only then will you be able to discern God’s purpose for your life.’”

Replacing old ideas (lies) with new ideas (truth) is an invasive process. Any remolding contractor will tell you, you can make an old house look better by putting a fresh coat of paint on it, but if you don’t remove the rotted lumber, the house is going to fall. The complete renovation of a house is a big job, and it takes time. You often have to be ruthless in removing rotted wood, outdated wiring, and water or termite damage. Anything less is a superficial remodeling that will cost you more later. Renovating a mind is an even bigger job. Genuine transformation of the mind takes the power of God operating in partnership with all three domains of learning affective, cognitive and psychomotor.

The Three Domains of Learning

The affective domain has to do with the spiritual and emotional areas of life. No amount of information—no matter how well presented—will produce life change without first tapping into our emotions. (Let’s be honest, we all know things we should be doing right now, that we aren’t doing because we don’t feel like doing them.) Change is hard for people. It is even harder for groups of people. Something has to motivate us to change our way of thinking. Rick Warren often says, “Some people change when they see the light. Most of us don’t change until we feel the heat!” When our emotions and spirit are moved to change, we are motivated to change.

As vital as inspiration is, it doesn’t tell us what to change. That is where the realm of the cognitive domain of learning comes in. Jesus said when you know the truth, the truth will set you free. The cognitive sphere has to do with acquiring information we didn’t previously have. My formative church experience was excellent at teaching Bible stories and doctrine derived from Scripture. Very little of it helped me to know how to live God’s way. The church that is committed to helping its people live the abundant life understands they need to know right doctrine. They also need to know practical truths about life and relationships.

The psychomotor domain has to do with skills. Being inspired to develop a new set of core beliefs is important. The learning process of discovering the lies we’ve believed along the way and replacing them with truth is essential. It is only when we start doing something with the inspiration and information that real change takes place.

Creating Environments for Change

We don’t have a great deal of information about how the original Acts 2 church helped thousands of people develop biblically-defined core beliefs. We just know they did. Their level of faith and intimacy with Christ is clear from their effectiveness at spreading the Good News across the world. It is demonstrated dramatically in the way they stood up to Caesar’s virtually unbearable rampage against Christianity. Acts 2:42 and 46 gives us a glimpse into the environments where their learning took place: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer....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.”

Three Domains, Three Environments

The apostles understood they had to reach people where they were with simple truth. Then they had to help them get to where they needed to be in order to realize the abundant life Jesus promised. The vision Jesus gave us included making disciples and teaching them to obey His teachings.

One of my leadership failures that led to my Crisis of ’96 (see chapter two) was to ignore the “teach them to obey” part. I was so focused on reaching people who were far from God with simple truth, I neglected teaching them what they needed to know to live out the Christian life. I even had church members gently challenge my thinking: “Pastor, what are we going to do to help these baby Christians grow up?” My response was a myopic, “There are too many people facing eternity without Jesus for me to worry about that.” It took the pain of realizing I was leading hundreds of people who were still stuck in the dysfunction of their past to wake me up. I finally had to face the fact that they would never experience the abundant life while operating under the same set of core beliefs they brought into their faith. Their minds needed a renovation...with truth.

“I was so focused on reaching people who were far from God with simple truth, I neglected teaching them what they needed to know to live out the Christian life.”

Remembering Peter Senge’s work he calls Systems Thinking, I began to ask questions, one being, “How can we design church systems that address all three domains of learning?” Every church I had been a part of in my early years—including the ones I pastored—had been structured the same way. We had Sunday morning worship, Sunday evening evangelistic service, and Wednesday night Bible study. The services had different names. They had the same format all three times. We sang two songs. We passed the offering plate while someone sang a solo. We sang two more songs. The preacher preached a message. We opened the altars for anyone who wanted to come. That system had not been adequate for me. I knew the one-size-fits-all style of church I grew up in was not going to get the job done.

What if, instead of three identical services each week, we created three unique environments, each focused on one of the domains of learning? Would that make it possible for us to continue to reach people far from God and help those who responded to be transformed? What if we engaged people in all three domains of learning (affective, psychomotor, and cognitive), through three environments (attractional services, small groups, and growth/deeper life educational courses)? (See the graphic below.)

Out of that season of questioning and learning came the system described below. As you read this next section, please look past mechanics to see the principles. Cloning this system in your setting will not necessarily produce the same results we’ve seen. Each context is unique. That’s why a huge part of what the Acts 2 Network does is to come alongside churches to help them develop unique systems for their unique setting.

Gather and Inspire Them:

The Affective Domain

Jesus attracted huge crowds! His teaching was relevant to their lives. He used humor to convey the truths people needed to understand. Imagine a stand-up comedian describing the difference between having some sawdust in your eye versus having a telephone pole sticking out of your eye. That’s hilarious stuff that creates a word picture not easily forgotten. Jesus even used whatever technology he had available to him at the time. He got in a boat and rowed out a short way to use the natural amplification of the water. He taught from hillsides for the same reason. He gathered them and inspired them with relevant, simple truth, using the technology of the day.

Most of the churches the Acts 2 Network has planted have decided that their weekend services are the most effective environment for attracting people who are far from God. I realize the idea of attractional weekend services has come under attack in recent years. Critics say we are just entertaining crowds for the sake of numbers. My response to them is, “Guilty as charged! That’s exactly what we are doing.”

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that approach as long as you provide other environments for taking those who respond to the next level. At the height of Jesus’ popularity, thousands came to see Him. As many as 5,000 men gathered (plus women and children) to hear what He had to say. (That’s a good-sized mega-church!) What did He do? He taught them. Then He fed them.

Jesus understood He was talking to at least three groups in those mass settings. The largest percentage of them were just curious. They saw the hoopla and came to see what was going on. The next group was the consumers. They wanted something. They thought Jesus could provide it. The smallest group there were the committed followers who gave up everything to follow Him. After all that, there were only 120 faithful followers when the time came for Jesus to return to the Father. Jesus was not surprised by that, nor discouraged. He knew who the 120 would become and what they would accomplish.

Spiritual curiosity and consumerism are alive and well in the twenty-first century Church. You can chafe at that reality and send those people away or you can leverage it for Kingdom purposes. Just keep in mind, the more curious people and consumers you gather, the greater the chances you will increase the size of your church’s committed core. Jesus made it a point to teach those massive crowds truth they could relate to and to challenge them to think differently. He created smaller forums at which He invested time with those who responded, taking them to the next level of knowledge, understanding, and relationship with Him.

“Spiritual curiosity and consumerism are alive and well in the twenty-first century Church. You can chafe at that reality and send those people away or you can leverage it for Kingdom purposes.”

If you believe you can attract more people who are far from God to environments other than your weekend services, go for it! Many churches have used small groups or special needs gatherings such as divorce care, recovery ministry, and others for that purpose. But every church must have at least one attractional environment. Otherwise, you are left preaching to the choir while the community around you is left to face eternity without Christ.

If you decide your weekend services are going to be your attractional environment, don’t apologize for it. Go for it! Put the pedal to the metal. Pull out all the stops. Use every resource you have to ensure those weekend services attract as many people as possible.

In the twenty-first century, that means utilizing a style of music that unchurched people like to listen to. It means using video, lighting, comedy, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It means leveraging every technology available. It’s been said the Church is the only time machine in existence: People walk through the doors and are transported back fifty to 100 years. That isn’t going to get it done, given the spiritual crisis around us.

The number one criticism of the attractional weekend service is that they are only about an inch deep in their worship and teachings. Guilty as charged.

Once you decide your weekend services are going to be designed to attract and inspire unsaved people and lead them to begin a relationship with Jesus, you have to put the “cookies” on the “bottom shelf” so they can reach them. You have to make sure the lyrics of the songs you sing are understandable. If you use a theological term in your sermon, you have to explain it. You never say things like, “You know the story about Joseph and his coat of many colors?” because they don’t know the story. You must provide relevant, practical Bible truth that applies to their everyday lives in ways they can easily receive.

“It means leveraging every technology available. It’s been said the Church is the only time machine in existence: People walk through the doors and are transported back fifty to 100 years. That isn’t going to get it done, given the spiritual crisis around us.”

You must not stop at offering attractional services, addressing only the affective domain. Nor should you make every environment attractional (the biggest mistake I made in the early years of leading Community Church). You must move people into the other two domains of learning, cognitive and psychomotor, engaging them in the other two environments as well: small groups and growth/deeper life educational courses.

Train Them: The Psychomotor Domain

Sadly, the modern church is well populated with excited Christians who never actually do anything for the Kingdom. That’s why the psychomotor domain cannot be neglected. Once a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ, they have to be trained to live. Faith is not just a believe word. Faith is an action word. James said, “Faith without works is dead.” We are not saved by our works; that’s a matter of God’s grace. But once we have received grace, we work for Him as a way of loving Him back. Jesus said, “If you love me, you’ll keep my commands.” That’s why most Acts 2 Network churches have some form of small groups ministry.

“Sadly, the modern church is well populated with excited Christians who never actually do anything for the Kingdom.”

In small groups, inspiration moves to application and implementation. Though the small group environment is the focus of chapters eight and nine, for now, understand that small groups are not just a Sunday School class transferred to homes, during the week. They are not weekday opportunities for church members to worship in one another’s homes. They are powerful, intimate environments for psychomotor skills to develop. A place where people convert inspiration into action. Perhaps the chart below will help you better understand the relationship between attractional services and small groups.

Teach Them: The Cognitive Domain

Even inspiring those who come to your attractional events to follow Jesus and connecting them to a small group where they can live out their new life in Christ is not enough. Development of a comprehensive set of biblically-defined core beliefs requires them to learn things they simply don’t yet know. This is why it is also critical that churches create an environment specially designed for teaching biblical truth at a deeper level than weekend services or small groups are designed to teach.

“Once a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ, they have to be trained to live. Faith is not just a believe word. Faith is an action word.”

The prophet Hosea lamented, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge…” (Hosea 4:6). That cry must be made again. It was one of the realities I had to face in the early days of Community Church. We knew that many of the people who were coming and finding new life in Jesus were still living in the dysfunction of their old belief systems. We didn’t realize how little they knew about the Bible. I still remember the first class I taught, “An Introduction to the Bible.” I started the class talking about the two parts, New Testamentand Old Testament. I told them about the sixty-six books written by 40-44 authors over a 1,500-year period. I thought I was beginning with the basics. The questions I got were things like, “Why are some numbers big and others small?” and “Why are some letters red and others black?” I realized what we needed was a systematic set of courses that would provide a path these hungry students could follow all the way from a virtual total lack of biblical knowledge to a mature biblical understanding.

That led to the development of a package of twenty-one courses we call The Growth Track. These courses are organized in seven categories: Living the Christian Life, the Bible, The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit, Spiritual Warfare, and Sharing Your Faith. Each category has one course at each level: Beginner, Intermediate, and Mature. The Beginner level Bible course starts like this, “This is a Bible. It is divided into two parts: the New Testament and the Old Testament. The big numbers are chapters and the little numbers are verses.” The Intermediate level courses look at the same seven categories, but at a higher level. The Mature level courses cover the same seven categories, but at an even higher level. (You can learn more about these courses at www.acts2network.org.)

“Even inspiring those who come to your attractional events to follow Jesus and connecting them to a small group where they can live out their new life in Christ is not enough. Development of a comprehensive set of biblically-defined core beliefs requires them to learn things they simply don’t yet know.”

I’m not trying to sell you a training process. There are many teaching programs available these days. Whatever you adopt or develop, be sure it starts where students are and helps them grow to maturity. Otherwise, their minds have little chance of being renovated.

We live in a world far from God and desperate for hope. We have to attract them to Jesus. We have to connect them in environments where they can live out their new life. We have to teach them what they need to know to develop a biblical set of core beliefs. It is time we go back to the basics and make sure we are reaching them where they are and helping them grow to full maturity in Christ!

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

Do you agree that most people are biblically illiterate? Why?

2)

Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.“ Which of these best describes your mind renovation/transformation: a. proceeding well; b. start....stop, start...stop; c. nothing is happening? Why?

3)

How hungry are you to know all you can about Jesus, the One who saved you for heaven, transformed your life, and loves you with His unconditional, never-ending love? Why?

4)

How have your God-given vision, core beliefs and beliefs changed how you live your life? Guided your choices and decisions? Explain.

5)

Was this your first exposure to the three domains of learning (affective, psychomotor, cognitive)? How did this challenge you? What impact has the inspiration environment had on your personal growth in Christ? The training environment? The education environment? Explain.

6)

Which domains of learning have been most prevalent in your ministry (or ministry you’ve received): affective, psychomotor, or cognitive? Which of these does your church need more of? Explain. What would it take to redesign your church to effectively address all three domains?

7)

Evaluating and developing your personal core beliefs is a lifelong process. What is your next step in continuing to grow toward a biblically-defined, life-directing set of core beliefs?

“People don’t come to buildings. People come to people.”

–Dr. Herbert Carter

My Crisis of ‘96 was not just about the realization that I was leading a carnal church. The crisis was about my ego, too. That painful reality came home to me on a Friday. A lady in our church had asked me to meet her at the hospital to pray before her gall bladder surgery. I promised her I would and made plans to go on Friday morning. You might think that in a church of a thousand attenders, I would have a team of pastoral care people trained and ready to take care of such things. But I came from a world where the pastor was the shepherd who personally cared for the sheep; all of the sheep. It didn’t matter how many people told me I was crazy for personally providing all the pastoral care in our church. In my mind it was my job. (I also secretly believed no one could care for them like I could.) Obviously, some of the breaking I was going through had to do with ego issues I needed to resolve.

On Thursday night, I received a call saying, “My father went to the cardiologist today. He is scheduled for emergency open heart surgery in the morning. He doesn’t know the Lord. He might give his heart to the Lord if you come. Please come.” I said, “Absolutely. I’ll be there.” As soon as I hung up, I realized the problem. I’d committed to pray with the lady before her surgery in one hospital. Now I’d committed to pray with someone else at the same time, in a different hospital. I reasoned I could satisfy both needs by ministering to the life-threatening situation first. The first lady wouldn’t mind if I went to see her after her surgery (or so I thought).

The phone rang again early Friday morning. Another church member’s twenty-year-old daughter had committed suicide during the night. What do I do now? I did the only thing my paradigm of ministry and my ego would allow me to do. I tried to minister to all three families.

First, I went to the home of the grieving parents. I sat with them for a while and listened lovingly to their pain. (I really did care, but I also had one eye on my watch.) Before either of us was ready, I heard myself saying, “I am so sorry, but I’ve got to run to the hospital to pray with someone going into open heart surgery. I’ll be back in a while.” They thanked me for coming. I could still sense the pain in their eyes as they watched me walk away.

To make up time, I pushed the speed limit a little too much. The blue lights in my rearview mirror took my heart rate a little past the safe limit too. By the time the officer got to my car window, I was already holding my driver’s license and registration up high for him to see. Before he could say anything, I said, “Sir, if you have to write me a ticket, could you write it really fast? I’m a pastor. I’m on my way to pray with a guy at Norfolk General Hospital who may not survive heart surgery. I really need to go.”

“Are you really a pastor?” the officer asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have ID?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and showed him my pastor’s ID card.

“OK, go, but you have to obey the speed limit the rest of the way there. You won’t be doing that man any good if…” I drove away without waiting for the rest of his lecture. Risky business I know, but they needed me, right? I got to the hospital just in time to pray with the man to receive Jesus before they took him to the operating room. I sat with the family for a very few minutes, excused myself, and went by the other hospital on my way back to the grieving parents. I arrived at Maryview Hospital just as the lady who had gallbladder surgery was coming out of recovery, so I spent some time with her. (I found out later that she was so groggy that she didn’t remember me coming. She told her friends I had lied to her about coming. She was so hurt by it, she stopped coming to church for a long time.)

From there, I returned to the grieving parents and sat with them for a while. I got back to Norfolk General in time to hear the cardiologist say he came through surgery just fine. Success! Right? I fell into my bed that night so exhausted that sleep would not come. I lay there knowing I had failed all three families.

Unrealistic Expectations

I daresay every pastor reading this right now has a similar story. The expectations we put on ourselves coupled with the expectations of the congregations we serve are often impossible to live up to. I tell you that story for context. Early the next week, I read Exodus 18:17-23 with a fresh understanding.

“The expectations we put on ourselves coupled with the expectations of the congregations we serve are often impossible to live up to.”

It’s the passage that describes Moses trying to lead the entire nation of Israel in the wilderness on his own. Each time they set up camp, his tent was placed in the center of the million-plus people that made up the nation at the time. All day, every day he would sit in his hot tent, adjudicating all of the issues his people faced. Long lines of people stretched out into the sand every day. Huge numbers of them went home disappointed they were unable to get in to see him. Moses no doubt fell into his bed physically and emotionally spent every night, knowing he had failed to meet every need yet again.

One day, Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, came for a visit. “What you are doing is not good. You and these people will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you. You cannot handle it alone” (Exodus 18:17). He went on to challenge Moses to appoint leaders who would help him meet the vast number of needs. Jethro concluded, “If you do this, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied” (Exodus 18:23). I read those words and thought aloud, “That’s a deal I could live with, but how do you get there?” Moses did as Jethro suggested by establishing groups of ten families organized into groupings of 50s, 100s and 1,000s. Each level of the organization would have capable, God-fearing leaders taking on the majority of the needs. When they needed Moses to get involved in the more difficult cases, they could always call him in. That system worked so well, it eventually evolved into a system of synagogues. A synagogue could be formed with as few as ten heads of household.

By the time we get to the birth of the church in Acts 2, it’s clear they valued the role of the apostles as teachers and leaders, but they cared for one another in spiritual family units. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he 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” (Acts 2:42-26).

They studied the apostles’ teaching together. They met together in public places and in their homes. They prayed together. They worshiped. They shared their meals. When they discovered someone didn’t have food, they pooled their resources and helped them. If one of their members was sick, they prayed together for healing. They sat with one another when they grieved. They did life together. God regularly honored their efforts by showing up in miraculous ways.

Overcoming the Orphanage Mentality

As I lay there that Friday night, exhausted and guilty, it hit me. Somewhere along the way, the modern church has developed the same dependent spirit the Children of Israel had after 400 years of Egyptian slavery. They had an orphanage mentality. So do we.

Please understand, I consider orphanages to be wonderful places. There are millions of children around the world who would not survive without them. I consider the people who staff them to be heroes. But nobody believes an orphanage is an adequate substitute for a healthy family. Every child, in every orphanage in the world, is glad they have a place to eat, sleep, be taught and generally cared for. They are glad for the staff that takes care of them. But without a doubt, they dream of the day when some loving family will come and adopt them. The saddest children in the orphanage are the ones who have lost that dream and have settled into orphanage life as that’s just the way it is.

“Somewhere along the way, the modern church has developed the same dependent spirit the Children of Israel had after 400 years of Egyptian slavery. They had an orphanage mentality. So do we.”

That’s the spirit that pervaded the nation of Israel after their years as slaves. An entire nation functioned like orphaned children, depending on Moses for everything. That spirit far too often pervades the twenty-first century church, too. Church members act as if they were orphans, waiting to be cared for by a small, overworked staff we call the clergy. Hear me pastors, we have a critically important role in the church. But as long as we submit to the expectations of those who have an orphan mentality, we will never do the job we are called to do.

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. (Ephesians 4:11-14)

Pastors, we are a gift from God to the church as servants—servant leaders. We are called to serve. But we are called to serve in a way that empowers and equips the people we serve to do the work of the ministry. Paul unpacks this very well in Ephesians 4:11-14: Empowering the people to serve is part of the solution to the problem of having a church filled with spiritual babies. Christian maturity isn’t just about identifying your God-given vision in life. It isn’t just about replacing the lies we’ve been taught on the streets with the truth of God’s Word. The road to Christian maturity includes finding our place in the Body of Christ and serving one another.

That realization was both liberating and overwhelming. It was liberating to finally understand that my God-ordained job was to inspire and train the people to do their jobs! I am responsible to them, but I am not responsible for them. It was overwhelming because—while I would not give an account to God for how well I provided pastoral care for every individual—I would be held accountable for how well I empowered and equipped them! One day, they would stand before God and account for how they had used the gifts He gave them.

This began a huge paradigm shift for me as a pastor. God’s model for the Church was not based on the orphanage model. It was to be a collection of families and family units, serving one another as they were being served by one another. My first job as leader was to organize the church in such a way to make that possible.

Launching Spiritual Families

The question became, “How do we get there?” The members were completely unaware of my level of burn out. They were perfectly content for me to provide all the care they needed. In fact, many of them insisted on it. How could we move from an event-based, pastoral-care-provided-by-one-man system to a relationship-based, pastoral-care-provided-by-the-body system?

To find the answer, I handpicked a small group of seven mature couples. I led the group every week for eighteen months. During that time, we committed to learn all we could about small group dynamics and body life. We read books. We attended seminars. We visited small groups based churches. We learned all we could. We prayed a lot. We fasted. Sometimes we argued. We finally came into agreement about how we would organize our church around small groups. The Holy Spirit showed up to empower the effort.

We decided that each small group should function somewhat like a family. Our group leaders (often a married couple) would serve as spiritual parents. Group members would function like brothers and sisters. Together, they would care for one another. We agreed that these groups would meet weekly in one another’s homes. But they would be so much more than a weekly meeting. They would be a spiritual, Christ-centered family. For many of them, it was the first Christ-centered family they’d ever experienced.

As with any healthy family, when one of the kids was sick, they would care for each other. If the need was greater than the group was qualified to handle, the “parents” always had a link to the pastoral staff who were ready and willing to come alongside them at any time. When the “children” needed education beyond what the “parents” could provide, they were encouraged to go to school, that is, the Growth Track courses offered by the church.

After reaching unity on how we would structure our network of groups, I started preaching the value of Christian community in our weekend services. The seven couples who had been meeting with me agreed to serve as the initial group leaders. I began to challenge our members to join a small group. (Since we were Community Church, we decided to call them Community Groups.) The response was amazing.

The seven groups in the initial launch filled up immediately. In a short time, we had a waiting list of more than one hundred people waiting for groups, but we needed to train more leaders. In addition to the training process we developed, each group leader committed to provide on-the-job training for at least one intern leader within the group. As soon as the intern leader completed his or her training and the group grew to ten to twelve, the family “had a baby,” and a new group was born. In time, our original seven groups birthed seven more groups. Those fourteen groups soon became twenty-two. Twenty-two became thirty-seven and so forth until nearly 60 percent of our congregation had a spiritual family to call their own.

Body Life at Work

Our Community Groups started ministering to each other. The level of care within our church went up exponentially from the days when I was scrambling around trying to handle it all myself. People began to discover leadership gifts they never knew they had.

“Our Community Groups started ministering to each other. The level of care within our church went up exponentially from the days when I was scrambling around trying to handle it all myself. People began to discover leadership gifts they never knew they had.”

One day, while planning a water baptism service, one of our staff pastors said, “You know, we pastors have been doing all of the baptisms. Shouldn’t whoever has been most instrumental in helping a person come to Christ have the opportunity to stand with him or her in baptism?” We agreed that we had been hoarding that blessing long enough. Within a short period of time, the number of water baptisms began to skyrocket as “spiritual parents” called on their “spiritual children” to make that public confession of their new life in Christ. Groups began to attend the baptism services together to celebrate with their brothers and sisters who were participating. The spiritual passion and excitement at those services is always over the top. We discovered that when someone who has only been a Christian for a few months leads one of their friends to Jesus and then personally water baptizes that friend, it rocks their world! It’s hard to say which one is more excited, the one being baptized or the one doing the baptism.

It was also a part of my ego retraining. The first time we held a baptism service and nobody asked me to baptize them, I found myself thinking: Yes! Great! Nobody asked for me! Oh, wait. Nobody asked for me! As pastors, we can become very accustomed to being the key person for everything. As exhausting as that is, there is a certain amount of ego stroking that comes with it too. For the good of the body (and myself), I had to let it go. Today, our pastors do less than ten percent of the baptisms. Most people being baptized ask for their small group leader or the person who led them to Jesus. Many times we see the husband baptize his wife. They in turn baptize their children together. Picture it: entire families declaring their life in Jesus together!

There were other early signs that body life was working too. I got a call one day that a member had been in a car accident. Before our small groups were established, I would enter a hospital room and the family would be so relieved to have my support that they would thank me over and over for coming. “Hallelujah, pastor is here!” I realized that day I had allowed myself to become a little too accustomed to that too.

When I walked into the room this time, I found the patient’s small group standing around his bed. They barely noticed I was there. One member of the group finally turned and said, “Hi pastor,” and then turned back to the man in the bed. “Uh, do you guys mind if I join you?” I asked. We prayed. I left him in good hands. The injured member didn’t get mad at me for not coming sooner. He didn’t feel deprived until I got there, or isolated after I left. The Body of Christ was ministering to him. It was working!

Celebrating and caring were not the only signs that it was working. Sins began to come to light in the trust environment of a small group of caring people. In a nonjudgmental, we-love-each-other-enough-to-tell-the-truth kind of way, strongholds of all types were acknowledged and broken. Men started pulling other men aside outside of group meetings, confessing to internet pornography addictions. When men start praying for each other and holding each other accountable, God shows up powerfully!

“When men start praying for each other and holding each other accountable, God shows up powerfully!”

Laying Down Our Lives

I don’t mean to suggest that the journey was easy for Community Church. Many members of our church were so entrenched in their orphanage mentality, they resisted the idea of joining a group for a long time. Some eventually left the church, not able or willing to embrace the biblical model of body life. To this day, with well over a hundred small groups operating and dozens more forming every year, there is still a percentage of our weekend attenders who hold the body at arm’s length. We’ve also had some groups that became dysfunctional (i.e. closed cliques). We had no choice but to close them. No one is suggesting that authentic Christian community comes easily.

I’m also not suggesting that having a strong small group ministry is a solution to every problem. Small group ministry is simply a system that provides forums to connect people with one another. For authentic Christian community to form, group members have to embrace John’s vision for the church: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16).

Don’t freak out. I’m not sure John is suggesting we have to walk around ready to “take a bullet” for each other. The truth is, I think any of us is capable of that level of heroism on a given day, in a given set of circumstances. Actually, the kind of “lay down your life” stuff John is talking about is even harder. He’s talking about giving up time, talent and treasures, day after day, for one another. He’s talking about living unselfishly. He’s talking about dying to self. He’s talking about missing the movie you really wanted to see to visit a sick friend. He’s talking about working together to build a ramp for a member who is wheelchair bound, when we’d rather put our feet up on the deck on a cool spring evening. He’s talking about saying, “I don’t really need to trade this car in for the new one I’m buying. I’m going to give it to the single mom in our group who is struggling to manage alone.”

The Bible describes the original Acts 2 church like this: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need” (Acts 2:44-45). This wasn’t just a metaphor for unselfishness; it actually happened. I believe it because I see it happening in Acts 2 churches today, all the time—followers of Jesus caring enough about each other to serve as they are being served, rejoicing with one another when they rejoice and grieving with one another when they grieve. They are doing life together as a healthy family should.

“The Bible describes the original Acts 2 church like this: ‘All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need’ (Acts 2:44-45). This wasn’t just a metaphor for unselfishness; it actually happened.”

A Multisite Strategy

A few years ago, we began to notice that the distance people drove in for celebration services was growing larger. We also noticed that most of the families who drove thirty minutes or more for one of the weekend services found it difficult to drive in during the week for small group gatherings. They also found it difficult to invite their neighbors to church. So we decided to take group life and weekend services to them. We began to establish small groups in various parts of the city. When we got a cluster of five or six groups in a given area, we cast vision for a new weekend service. Western Branch Community Church has since become Community Church|West, Community Church|East, and coming soon, Community Church|Portsmouth. One evening each month, the church holds a joint service designed to keep the campuses connected (i.e. one church in many locations).

A Church Planting Strategy

As detailed in chapter four, we used the same approach to plant what became New Branch Community Church. Using this approach, the fledgling congregation was virtually fully staffed and fully funded from day one. They are now praying about and planning additional church plants in the small towns surrounding them. The week I wrote this chapter, I received calls and emails from Georgia, Arizona and El Salvador about the possibility of starting an Acts 2 Network church in their area using this approach. Who knows where God is going to lead next? There is no shortage of harvest. It is only the laborers that are few.

Small Groups Don’t Work

Experience tells me that some of you reading right now are thinking, “Small groups just don’t work in my setting.” If that’s you, I hope you can receive this: Small groups don’t work unless you work them! Authentic Christian community does not come naturally. We are all selfish by nature and individualists by nurture. I suggest to you that one of the reasons the early church made such a profound difference in the world is because they got it. When I say it I’m not talking about a particular system for doing small groups. There are lots of systems and approaches available for your consideration. What I’m talking about is they understood that the church is not a building. The church is not a meeting. The church is not an event. The church is relationships. It starts with a relationship with Christ. It moves to genuine relationships with one another.

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is relationships. The only thing you will take into eternity is your relationships. Paul said, “Jesus loved the church and died for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Jesus didn’t die for church buildings or church programs. He died for people. Whether you see a form of small groups ministry working in your area of not, how are you facilitating authentic relationships? I’m talking about Acts 2 style relationships where people don’t just shake hands and say, “Good to see you. That’s a nice outfit you’re wearing.” I mean relationships in which people actually care about each other and lay down their lives for one another.

“At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is relationships. The only thing you will take into eternity is your relationships.”

People Come to People, Not Buildings

On a day leading up to the birth of Community Church, I was riding around with a couple of friends, scouting possible locations for our first public service. We were looking at old skating rinks and day care centers. Anything that might be large enough to accommodate the people I believed were coming. Out of the blue, one of the guys asked, “Jim, I am seeing a church on every corner. What makes you think people are going to drive right past these beautiful buildings to come to your church in a day care center?” I was already feeling pretty overwhelmed, having just moved to the area. I remember thinking, I don’t know. You’re right. I’m crazy! Before I could muster a response, Dr. Herbert Carter, my mentor and lifelong friend, responded in his deep baritone voice, “People don’t come to buildings. People come to people.” How right he was (and is ).

A Prisoner’s Story

A lady in our church sent me an email, telling me her husband was in jail, though about to be released, and that though they were currently estranged, she was holding out hope they would be reunited, eventually. She had been writing to him and encouraging him to come to church, once he got out. She had been witnessing to him, telling him what the Lord had done in her life. A week before she emailed me, her husband got a new cellmate named Billy.[15] They got to talking and Billy told him he was in for nineteen years for his third offense of drug possession with intent to distribute. He said, “If only I had listened to what that preacher and those people told me at that church I went to for a while. If only I had actually let them love me and help me to change, I would not be here for the next nineteen years.”

“What church was that?” our member’s husband asked.

“Community Church,” Billy replied.

“That’s the church my wife has been trying to get me to go to after I get out!” he exclaimed.

Billy leaned forward and looked him in the eye, saying: “When you get out, you’ve got to go to that church...and listen. Because if you listen, you might not come back here like I have, to spend the rest of your life in this place.”

He ended up writing his wife, “OK, I’ll come.”

Even prisoners in the prisons are witnessing to each other because they’ve seen genuine, loving community and been touched by it. It’s not because of the music we play, a nice big building, or because the preacher’s so good—it’s because of a loving, redemptive community, people being the church, touching other people where they live, heart to heart. Not everybody’s listening and not every story is a success story. But in the midst of all of it, God is working. Sadly, in Billy’s case, he never moved beyond the attractional services into the small groups and educational environments that would have helped him replace his old beliefs with new ones that work.

At the end of the day, we need each other. We all know it. That’s why as messy as relationships can be, we try hard to relate, to connect, to care. When Jesus was asked to sum up the entire law, He did it without blinking an eye: “Love the Lord your God....and your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). That’s what the Body of Christ can be. That is what the world is crying out for!

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

Would you describe yourself as spiritually mature, or a spiritual baby? Why? How has the orphanage mentality in the Church affected you? Explain.

2)

Christian maturity involves at least three things: identifying your God-given vision in life, replacing the lies you’ve been taught with the truth of God’s Word, and finding your place in the Body of Christ to serve others. Why are each of these so important to spiritual growth and maturity?

3)

How is your church ensuring that relationships are the primary focus for church life? Would you describe your church as a caring place where needs are met and new folks are readily welcomed in? Why?

4)

Have you ever felt like part of a family at your church? Explain. How well does your church foster a sense of family through small groups? Explain. How are you facilitating authentic relationships in your personal life? In your church?

5)

Does your church offer small groups and body life ministry? If not, what difference do you believe they would make if your church did offer them? Why? If you do offer them, how have they made a difference in your life? Explain.

6)

What is the next step you will take to facilitate an Acts 2, early church style of body life in your church? What one thing will you do, starting today, to make progress in your spiritual maturity? (See question 3 for inspiration and ideas.)

“We believe the best church of the future will be extraordinarily attractive because it is sent into the world to serve the world and love the world back to God.”

–Dave Ferguson

Gloria Balbin is never far from my mind. Having experienced the impact that one four feet eleven inches tall, eighty-five pound spiritual giant can have on a community drives me to this day. I recently heard Jack Hayford say, “The most dangerous thing about ministry is learning how to do it.” He is right. The moment I think I’ve got the pattern down and all I have to do is repeat it, is the day I start the slide toward irrelevancy. That’s why any time I catch myself settling into a routine, I start pondering whether we should be doing something differently to restore the dynamics of the Acts 2 church in our world.

That’s why, after twenty years of Community Church establishing its brand as an inviting church, I knew it was time to change. I also knew this change would not be an incremental adjustment in the way we organized the church. It would be a fundamental change in the way we viewed ourselves and our role in the community. I gathered the elders of our church yet again and told them I believed change was coming. We had long been an inviting church. We were going to become an invading church.

That didn’t mean we were going to stop inviting people to our attractional weekend services. We decided long ago, as long there was one unsaved person around us, we had to do what we could to attract him to the message and person of Jesus Christ. It didn’t mean we were going to phase out the small group ministries that had become the backbone of our congregation. If anything, our small groups network would be a critical part of the invasion I saw coming. What it did mean was, we were adding a missional dynamic to everything we did. If they wouldn’t come to us, we would go to them. For me, it was the final step in building a ministry focused on balancing the six primary dynamics of the original Acts 2 church:

• They were unified around a God-given vision

• They were empowered by the Holy Spirit

• They preached a relevant, simple truth

• They were hungry to know God

• They genuinely cared for one another

• They unselfishly cared about the community around them

“We had long been an inviting church. We were going to become an invading church.”

It’s Not about Growing the Church, It’s about Being the Church

The Church Growth Movement (CGM) that grew out of Fuller Theological Seminary and other settings in the 1970s has had a huge impact on the evangelical church. Millions of people have come to faith in Jesus as a result of the efforts learned from the writings of Donald McGavran, C. Peter Wagner, Carl George, and others. However, as with every human movement, an inherent weakness eventually emerged.

CGM proponents (myself included) sincerely believe that the best way to impact a community for Christ is to grow a big church. The result is, the world now has single churches with hundreds of thousands of members that meet in soccer stadiums and arenas. God has done some marvelous things through the church growth movement. So where is the weak link in that? The flaw is that, overall, a smaller percentage of the population now attend church than at any time in history. The CGM principles have been effective for those who have come. But what about those who haven’t responded to our invitations to come?

While a few churches have been getting bigger and bigger, the church as a whole has not grown and has become increasingly isolated from the day-to-day happenings of the communities around them. As Tim Keller put it at a recent conference, “We’ve become more about growing our tribe than about being salt and light in our community.”

“While a few churches have been getter bigger and bigger, the church as a whole has not grown and has become increasingly isolated from the day-to-day happenings of the communities around them.”

Jesus didn’t give us the job of growing the church. He said that was His job: “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18). Our job is to be the church.

You can’t make a human body grow. No amount of straining will make you taller than you are. It’s not your job to make your body grow. It is your job to do all you can to be healthy. Healthy bodies grow. If you see a young child who isn’t growing, you immediately wonder what’s wrong. Why? Because healthy bodies grow. Even as an adult, healthy bodies are reproducing blood cells, skin cells, hair follicles (admittedly some more than others) every minute of every day. My experience is when you do your part to keep your church healthy—focused on balancing the six dynamics of the original Acts 2 church—it will grow. It just does.

Jesus didn’t give us the job of growing the church. He gave us the job of being salt and light in the world.

“You are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13). Salt enhances flavor, preserves from decay, and produces thirst. Apply those descriptions to your church and to your life as a Christian. Are there ways you can see your church enhancing the flavor of the community around you; i.e., improving the quality of life? Can you see the effects of your saltiness in holding back the tide of moral decay in your world? How much thirst is your church creating for the things of God in your town? Far too often, the local church has no discernible impact on the culture, economy, or conscience of the people around us.

“Jesus didn’t give us the job of growing the church. He gave us the job of being salt and light in the world.”

Jesus also said, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). Light dispels darkness and illuminates the path to follow. There’s plenty of darkness to go around. There is plenty of confusion and hopelessness. I believe that’s why Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life has sold more than thirty million copies, and its reach has extended far beyond the Christian community.

Multiplied millions of people are wandering through life, aimlessly wondering if there is any purpose or meaning in living. Our job is to help dispel that darkness, to show people how much Jesus loves them and that He has a plan and purpose for their lives. How is your church making a difference in your world by shining the light to dispel darkness and illuminating the path to follow? How are you shining the light and making a difference in your world?

Those are the questions that led me to go to our elders a few years ago and say, “Change is coming. We’ve been an inviting church. We’re becoming an invading church.” Gloria wasn’t focused on growing a church. She was focused on changing a community for Christ. The church was the vehicle Jesus gave her to facilitate that change. When we set aside these ideas about growing a church and start thinking of ourselves more as part of a community that needs salt, it will drive us out of our comfortable surroundings into the streets. It will drive you to make a difference in your world.

Go back and review chapter one. I can tell you what you will find (or more accurately, not find). You will notice I never mentioned how many people attended the churches Gloria and Ely started or their average offerings. What I said was, “I had never seen an entire region transformed before. The very atmosphere was different. What once was poor, dark and hopeless had changed. It had become spiritually alive and economically strong. It was a different place. I could not hold back the tears. I still can’t as I reflect on that day.” Can you say this about your church? About your life?

“When we set aside these ideas about growing a church and start thinking of ourselves more as part of a community that needs salt, it will drive us out of our comfortable surroundings into the streets. It will drive you to make a difference in your world.”

I’m not saying you shouldn’t care about the growth of your church. Of course you should. Every number in your attendance report is a life. That life has a story and an eternity. Those lives have families. Of course you should care about the growth of your church. All I am saying is church growth is not an end in itself.

When the Israelites found themselves in a pagan world, far from God, His instructions to them were: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7). Even exiled from their homeland, they were called to pray for and work for the good of the region God put them in. True to God’s character, not only would the region be a better place to live, but they would also be blessed. When you get your priorities right and focus on being salt and light in your community, God honors your efforts!

Bridging the Gap

Go to the streets and ask the average person whether the churches in your area are enhancing the culture, preserving life, and showing people how to find purpose and meaning in life. I don’t think you will like the answers you get. I suspect you already know what they will be. My experience says people will talk with you all day about their view of God. They will even discuss the Bible with you. The minute you bring up the church, their defenses will go up. “Oh no, those are mean people. Please don’t make me go there!” How do we bridge the divide between the church and the communities we are called by God to impact?

“Go to the streets and ask the average person whether the churches in your area are enhancing the culture, preserving life, and showing people how to find purpose and meaning in life. I don’t think you will like the answers you get. I suspect you already know what they will be.”

I simply stopped by the bank to sign some papers. When I arrived I was told it would be few minutes before the papers were ready to be signed. I passed the time waiting in the reception area by watching the news program they had running on TV. I didn’t see the middle-aged lady who came in behind me, so I was a bit surprised when I heard her ask, “What’s on the news today?”

I just answered her question honestly: “They’re talking about a moral scandal among the clergy in the Episcopal Church.”

In a flash, she blurted out, “That just proves my theory. You can’t trust any preachers, anymore.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond at first. Finally, I simply said, “Some of us are trying to be trustworthy.”

If she was embarrassed by my revelation, she didn’t show it. Her voice had a sharp edge of pain as she said, “I was taken in when I was sixteen by a pastor and his family. He raped me over and over again until I finally managed to get away. I haven’t been in a church since.”

Before I could respond, my banker called me back to her office to sign the papers. On my way out of the bank, I stopped by the reception area, giving the lady my card, “If I could ever have a chance to earn your trust. I’d be honored to try.” She took my card and thanked me. I asked for her name so I could pray for her. She refused. I haven’t seen her since.

That exchange impacted me profoundly. No wonder a huge percentage of the people we invite to church never come. They don’t trust us! Not only are we dealing with a population far from God and virtually biblically illiterate, we’re trying to make friends with people who don’t like us. Somewhere along the way what it means to be the church—salt and light—has gotten lost. Instead of being the force for good in our communities. We are thought of as a group of people that—at best—are judgmental, mean-spirited and out of touch with reality—or at worst—rapists ready to prey on the young and vulnerable for our own selfish pleasure.

Trust Is Earned

We don’t have much detail about how the original Acts 2 church earned the trust of the residents of Jerusalem, but clearly they did. Luke included a simple phrase in his description of them, “enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). They must have done something to enjoy the favor of the city. We also know the numbers of people who responded was unprecedented: 3,000 people on the first day, 5,000 soon after. Some writers say the population in and around Jerusalem at the time was around 250,000 and as many as 100,000 of them put their faith in Jesus. There was something attractive about that community. They went from being considered an obscure bunch of fanatics to a movement so strong that Caesar himself began to feel threatened by their numbers.

I think it is fair to speculate that the caring group of people in the Acts 2 church cared as much for the community around them as they did for one another. Whatever they did to earn trust, by the time we get to chapter six of Acts, they have to establish a group of Spirit-filled leaders to manage it all.

Earning Trust

The original Acts 2 church members defined their lives by the God-given vision of making disciples of everyone, everywhere. It is fair to say everything they did was intended to move them closer to that goal. The problem is, a lot of Christians since then have started out committed to doing good things as a means of sharing the good news, only to eventually fall prey to the quicksand of believing good deeds are an end in themselves. To avoid that trap, we use a tagline that keeps our focus on making disciples: Good Deeds, Good Will, Good News.[16] Here’s what that means when you break it down:

Good Deeds

I think it is fair to say the original Acts 2 church was filled with generous people. However, this does not mean they did good deeds simply for the sake of doing good deeds. They weren’t social workers, they were Kingdom builders. Thank God for social workers. I love the things they do. But as followers of Christ, that’s not who we are. There is purpose behind the good deeds we do. They are not selfish purposes. We just know that in order to be salt and light, we have to be in personal contact.

“I think it is fair to say the original Acts 2 church was filled with generous people. However, this does not mean they did good deeds simply for the sake of doing good deeds. They weren’t social workers, they were Kingdom builders.”

Good Will

Jesus modeled for us that sometimes, meeting a person’s physical need is the best stepping stone to meeting their spiritual need. That’s what He did with the woman described in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John. Jesus was walking through the city one day when a group of legalistic religionists brought a woman and threw her on the ground in front of him. They told him she had been caught in the act of adultery. They wanted to know what Jesus thought they should do with her. It was a trap. They knew the law said she should be pummeled to death with rocks. They wanted to test Jesus to see if he would uphold the law. Without saying a word, Jesus began to write in the sand. It’s unclear from the passage exactly what he wrote.

“Jesus modeled for us that sometimes, meeting a person’s physical need is the best stepping stone to meeting their spiritual need.”

Whatever it was, one by one, the Pharisees began to drop their stones and drift away. By the time Jesus said, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first one to throw a stone” (John 8:7), all of the would-be executioners were gone. Jesus then turned to the woman and dealt with her spiritual need. He let her know he didn’t come to condemn and sent her on her way with instructions to leave her life of sin. Drew Wall likes to say, “Jesus saved her physical life before he addressed her spiritual need.” There is no doubt his highest priority was her eternity. She needed to be rescued from certain death, before he could address her deeper issue.

The whole idea of being an invading church is not about going out with sandwich signs that read, “Repent for the end is near!” It is about moving into the places of need around us, offering grace and hope. In so doing, we earn the trust needed to invade peoples’ hearts with grace.

Good News

We need to understand that those who are far from God are not impressed with our music, buildings, or preaching prowess. Frankly, their music is often better, their buildings bigger, and our preaching is often more confusing than helpful to them. But when we do an unselfish act of kindness, with no discernible motive other than genuine compassion, it turns their heads. It doesn’t compute in their system of core beliefs. Those are moments we are ready to seize.

“The whole idea of being an invading church is not about going out with sandwich signs that read, ‘Repent for the end is near!’ It is about moving into the places of need around us, offering grace and hope. In so doing, we earn the trust needed to invade peoples’ hearts with grace.”

Titus wrote, “show that they (you) can be fully trusted, so that in every way they (you) will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive” (Titus 2:10). Peter adds, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). That’s the goal. We do good deeds with a goal of establishing good will, so the door will open for us to share the Good News. When that moment comes, we don’t say, “Turn or burn. Die and fry while we go to the sky!” We gently say, “This is who I was. I met Jesus. This is who I am becoming. I’d like to introduce you to my friend.”

“That’s the goal. We do good deeds with a goal of establishing good will, so the door will open for us to share the Good News.”

From the Minor to the Major

The process of earning trust can be as simple as giving a cup of water to a thirsty soul or as complex as remodeling someone’s home. Only the need before you and the resources available to you dictate the form your good deeds take.

The Laundromat

One of the coolest methods we’ve used is to simply go to local Laundromats with a roll of quarters. It’s simple really. Just offer your quarters and your help to someone doing their laundry. You might run across a suspicious type now and then, but most people are glad for the help. As you serve them, you pray for the Holy Spirit to open a door for meaningful conversation.

Tim and Arnita’s story is one of my all-time favorites. One Sunday morning, one of our small groups decided they would express their worship through doing acts of kindness instead of through singing songs at church. What they didn’t know was God was already at work in the lives of a couple they would encounter at the Laundromat, Tim and Arnita. Arnita’s sister is a dedicated follower of Jesus. She had been praying for her sister and brother-in-law for years. No one involved knew God was going to orchestrate a divine appointment that morning.

Arnita had been carrying some deep hurts from a previous church experience. Anytime anyone invited her to church, her guard went up. But when a group of people showed up at the Laundromat on a Sunday morning, offering to help with her laundry, she was caught off guard. When they offered to pray, she agreed. The Holy Spirit showed up in the Laundromat that day and changed Arnita’s life. Tim followed soon after. Today, having joined that small group, Tim and Arnita often make their way to the Laundromat, praying for a divine appointment for someone they meet.

Holly Cove

In 2010, we began to wonder if we could do something like Gloria did in a community that needed hope. We had been helping out at a local elementary school for some time. Out of that experience, we began to pray about doing something significant in a subdivision called Holly Cove. In its day, Holly Cove was a great place for working families to raise their children. But over the years, it had suffered significant decline. Police patrolled it regularly.

We began to wonder if we could we make a difference in Holly Cove. A small group of us started going door-to-door, offering to help in any way we could. We offered to make home repairs, tutor students, clean yards, or visit with aging residents. We were willing to do virtually anything we could think of that might be a good deed, to establish good will so we would have the chance to share the Good News.

They slammed their doors in our faces. They didn’t know who we were. As far as they knew, we were just a bunch of do-gooders after a photo op or an article in the newspaper. They’d seen plenty of people like that come and go. We went back to prayer. The Lord reminded me of what Gloria did. She just started helping the kids, earning the trust of the villagers little by little. We decided to go back there, armed with brooms and trash bags. We started by the cleaning up the local park. We moved into the streets, picking up trash, broken glass, and discarded bottles. Children started coming out and asking us what we were doing. As the day went on, residents started asking us why we were cleaning up the park and streets. “We’re just followers of Jesus, trying to help out,” we said. By the end of the day, residents started saying things like, “You’ve inspired me to go home and clean up my yard.” Even a glimmer of hope is a beginning.

The next time we went in, offering to help, we weren’t outsiders—we were the people who cleaned the streets. Since then, we’ve remodeled homes of elderly residents. We’ve provided school supplies for kids. We’ve tutored students. The most poignant opportunity came in the summer of 2012. An eight-year-old resident of Holly Cove accidently drowned while swimming with friends. The family asked us to lead his funeral service. Virtually the entire community came. We prayed together. We worshiped together. We grieved together. We shared the Good News of eternal life in Jesus. Many responded. We knew God was at work, even in tragedy.

The most exciting evidence came recently. We sponsored a back to school gathering in the park. Most of the community came out for an afternoon that included games, food and school supplies for the kids. As I drove up on the grounds of the park, I saw Community Church members in bright yellow T-shirts, ministering among the crowd. Most of them were residents of Holly Cove who had come to Christ and were now reaching out to their own neighbors for Him.

Restored Influence

As a result of what’s happening in Holly Cove we have begun to earn trust in the city. As the city officials’ trust factor has gone up, so has our church’s influence. We recently got a call from one of the local public high schools, saying, “We have a family whose father has passed away. We’ve provided grief counselors, but they are still struggling. Is there any chance your church could come alongside this family and help them?” Why did they ask us? Simple. We had earned their trust.

A nearby public primary school called us recently to see if we had any men who might be willing to come in on Fridays and read to the children. We asked, “What do you want them to read?”

“They can bring their own books. We just need men we trust to read to the children.”

“Can they read Bible story books,” we asked?

“We’re not limiting what you can read. Please just come.”

Good deeds that lead to good will open doors for sharing the Good News. Gloria would be proud.

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

How would you describe the relationship between your church and your community, connected or disconnected? Why? What are some things your church is doing to bridge the gap between it and the surrounding community? What are you doing? Why?

2)

Would you describe your church as an inviting church? Why? Would you describe your church as an invading church? Why?

3)

How has your church been like salt, enhancing the flavor of the community around it, improving its residents’ quality of life, or holding back the moral decay in your world? How have you personally done this? How much thirst is your church creating for the things of God in your town? How have you inspired a thirst for God in others?

4)

How is your church making a difference in your world by shining the light to dispel darkness and illuminating the path to purpose and meaning in life? How are you shining the light and making a difference in your world?

5)

What good deeds has your church done in order to establish good will in the local community? What good deeds have you done to establish good will with others? What opportunities has this provided for you and your church to share the Good News of the Gospel?

6)

What is the next step you will take to earn the trust of the community around you that is so desperate for hope? What are some other good deeds you and your church can do to establish good will and effectively share the Good News of the Gospel?

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

Metro Manila is a city of 12 million people. I don’t know if you can even imagine the mountain of garbage that many people can produce every day—it is absolutely massive. The largest of the dump sites in the metro area is the Payatas dump in Quezon City. It is nine square miles of trash. The sight and smell of it overwhelms the senses of even the most seasoned traveler. Sewage runs in the streets. Children bathe in it. Thousands work the mountain of trash, eking out a living scavenging what they can find of any value. That’s what Joe McGourn saw in 2004. His heart broke. His passions rose. A God-given vision was embraced. Bahay Bata—My Children’s House of Hope—was born.

Just like Gloria in the Cagayan Valley and Community Church in Holly Cove, Joe quickly learned that trust had to be earned. To them, he was just another American tourist seeking a photo op. He would come and go as so many others had before him. Trust came slowly. Progress even more slowly. Even with the dedication of a career military man and the support of every friend he could find, the needs overwhelmed him at times. How could one man make any difference in this sea of need? Joe began to realize that if he was going to make any difference at all, he would have to focus the efforts of the House of Hope on one area of need.

Fluorescent Tube or Laser Beam?

Joe began to understand that he could continue to function like a fluorescent tube on a sunny day or he could focus his efforts like a laser beam. He began to ask himself, Of all the needs I see—poverty, orphaned children, lack of education, disease—what keeps me up at night the most? It was during that time that he found a survey done among the dump site residents. He learned that 27,000 people in that community of 160,000 (15 percent!) were either hearing-impaired or completely deaf. Most of the impairments came as a result of simple childhood ear infections; the kind that kids all over the world get every day. But here—with little or no medical care—those infections left scar tissue that diminished their hearing or, in some cases, ate the eardrum completely. A God-given vision was now narrowing into a mission worth giving his one and only life to!

Narrowing the Scope

Even 15 percent of a given population can be a huge number of people. I am from a small town in North Carolina called Bladenboro. It’s the classic small southern town. Barely a thousand people live there. Main Street is lined with ancient oak trees, their branches converging high above the street. There’s a traffic light at the main intersection in town, but they don’t bother to turn it on. There isn’t enough traffic to justify it. Imagine how overwhelmed I felt the first time I drove into Hampton Roads, Virginia, a collection of seven major cities totaling more than two million people. A friend of mine from North Carolina came for a visit soon after we arrived. He summed up how I was feeling with his brand of country charm, “Jim, you have grabbed a bulldozer by the trailer hitch, my friend.”

Imagine how Gloria felt the day she got off the bus in the Cagayan Valley. Nineteen, single, and alone for the first time in her life. The truth is, many a visionary has never managed to get past the dreaming stage because the task was so overwhelming, they didn’t know where to begin. But how do you narrow it down? I’ve found two methods that have been very helpful to me and the churches I’ve led over the years: 1) Apply the “Two Percent Principle,” and 2) Find your “Impact Zone.”

The Two Percent Principle

I learned the Two Percent Principle in a course on marketing during my undergrad studies. It says: If two percent of a given population use your product, you have the potential to influence the entire population. This means that if two percent of Americans use Colgate toothpaste, most Americans would likely consider Colgate to be a viable option to consider should they ever desire to switch brands.

The most striking example of this principle in twenty-first century America is the gay marriage issue. Even the homosexual community acknowledges that only about two percent of the American population is gay. Yet think of the profound impact the gay agenda has had and is having on American culture and law.

One of the first things I did after coming to Chesapeake was draw a circle that represented a twenty-minute drive from my house, in all directions. I only altered the circle by not crossing any major natural boundaries, such as the James River. I learned there were approximately 200,000 people living in that circle. Would you like to guess what my target number became for the new church I was starting? (I won’t make you do the math. 200,000 x .02 = 4,000 people.)

Never in my twenty-four years as senior pastor of Community Church did we set attendance goals or have attendance drives. In fact, we said many times over the years, “Nothing we ever do around here is about growing a church. We are simply committed to being salt and light in our community and making room for the people Jesus brings.” That is absolutely true. It is also true that every major decision I made while leading the church was impacted by my belief that if there were 4,000 people who considered Community Church their home, we could be a major influence in the entire city!

Of course, no sooner did we reach that point when the Lord gave us a vision for going multisite. Now, with campuses in several parts of the city, we’re working on a whole new set of circles! That’s just like the Lord.

“Nothing we ever do around here is about growing a church. We are simply committed to being salt and light in our community and making room for the people Jesus brings.”

Your Impact Zone

Even when you narrow your vision to reaching a manageable number of people, the question still remains: How do you get started? What do you actually do first? In his book, Breakout Churches, Thom Rainer provides us with a tool that Acts 2 Network churches have found very helpful. It is a great tool for defining your mission—at least a place where you can start. I have taken the liberty of modifying it slightly for our purposes. Here is how it works.

1) Define your God-given vision.

You might need to go back to chapter four to review the process of identifying a God-given vision. Don’t shortcut that process. God-given vision produces energy. Without it the hard times will overwhelm whatever personal energy you can muster. A shared God-given vision leads to agreement. Without vision, you might gather a group of people who want to be together, but it takes the power of agreement to raise the divine harmonics you need to succeed. Unity around a God-given vision comes with the Holy Spirit empowerment that makes up the difference between what you are capable of and what the vision requires.

The vision the Lord gave me before Community Church was born was a simple mental image of a camera looking over my shoulder at a large number of people. These people appeared to be listening to what I had to say. They were leaning forward, taking notes as if to be sure they didn’t miss anything. They were from every ethnicity and socioeconomic background you can imagine. I don’t know how, but somehow I knew they were previously unchurched. I also somehow knew what church background they did have was from a wide variety of denominations. I shared that image with everyone who would listen during all the years I led the church. It was that image that united us and led to the move of God that became Community Church.

“God-given vision produces energy. Without it the hard times will overwhelm whatever personal energy you can muster.”

One of the culminating moments of my time as senior pastor there came one day, following the biggest event in our history. Everyone from all of our services had come together under a huge circus tent. The AV team—without me knowing it—had mounted a camera at the back of the stage, capturing the actual image that I’d been talking about for decades. Some might call it a Kodak moment. I call it the fulfillment of a dream. To God be the glory!

Identifying God’s vision for your life, family or ministry can be time-consuming and even frustrating at times. Be patient. You can’t get it from a book. You can’t copy it from the exciting church you visited last year at conference time. God-given vision only comes from intimate time with the Author of visions.

“Identifying God’s vision for your life, family or ministry can be time-consuming and even frustrating at times. Be patient. You can’t get it from a book. You can’t copy it from the exciting church you visited last year at conference time. God-given vision only comes from intimate time with the Author of visions.”

2) Assess your resources.

Once you have identified the vision, you have to do an honest assessment of the available resources. If you are pastoring a church, those resources would include your congregation’s interests, time, talents, and willingness to give them to the mission. No God-given vision can be accomplished alone. You will need to cast the vision clearly enough for the people God has gathered around you to be able to grasp it and want to give themselves to it. Otherwise, it’s just an interesting dream.

“You will need to cast the vision clearly enough for the people God has gathered around you to be able to grasp it and want to give themselves to it. Otherwise, it’s just an interesting dream.”

Don’t discount the miraculous in accessing resources. Sometimes the resources come from places you never dreamed. Remember too that the resources the vision will require might still be in the harvest of souls that is coming. I heard Jerry Falwell say to a group of young pastors many years ago, “If your current congregation can’t afford to fund the vision God has given you, go win a couple hundred more people to Jesus. Problem solved!”

At the same time, if you don’t do an honest assessment of resources you can overwhelm the people you are leading and turn a vision into a nightmare. There is a six-million-dollar church facility sitting empty, eighty percent finished in our city. The congregation is scattered. The doors are locked. There was no malfeasance, no moral failure. The leaders simply didn’t use wisdom in assessing the available resources. The bank owns the property now. They are trying to figure out what to do with it.

3) Determine your community’s needs.

The second thing I did after drawing my twenty-minute circle was conduct an informal survey in the area. Everyone I met, everywhere I went, I asked this question, “What do you consider to be the most critical need around here, whether you think a church could do anything about it or not?” They answered me in different ways. Over a six-week period, 97 percent of the people I polled said virtually the same thing: “We are lonely. We feel like single faces in a sea of faces. We need a sense of community.”

What did I do with that information? For starters, I changed the planned name of the new church from The Good News Center to Western Branch Community Church. (I realize every other church has “community” in its name these days. In the 1980s, it was not nearly so well-worn a phrase.) I told people everywhere I went: “We didn’t choose our name to be generic. We chose it because everything we do is about helping this community find community with God and His family.”

“Over a six-week period, 97 percent of the people I polled said virtually the same thing: ‘We are lonely. We feel like single faces in a sea of faces. We need a sense of community.’”

Since those days, online resources abound to help you learn everything you want to know about your community. These companies can provide you with demographic, psychographic, socioeconomic, and cultural information about any given population group you want to know about. The data is available. Do your homework and use the information as a part of narrowing the scope of your vision to a manageable mission.

4) Combine Your Results

The final step in this process is to fill in the blanks in the three overlapping circles you see below. What is the pastor’s God-given vision? What are the available resources? What is the community’s greatest need? Wherever those three circles converge is what I call your Impact Zone.

Don’t skip a step. It won’t work. You pastors can have a fabulous vision that paints an amazing picture of a preferred future, but if the congregation you lead doesn’t co-own it with you, it won’t happen. You and your congregation can share a vision for doing something amazing, but if it doesn’t meet a genuine need in your community, so what? But when you take the time to identify your Impact Zone, you’ve begun to take specific steps to solve a real problem, and you are on your way to fulfilling the vision and making a difference in your world for Jesus.

“Parents Don’t Know How to Parent”

The three circles process is not a one-time deal. In the twenty-four years I pastored Community Church, I led the church through the process many times.

The last time was just a couple of years before I completed my tenure as senior pastor. I made an appointment with our city manager. He was busy that day, but the assistant city manager, Wanda Bailey, received me. Her first words were, “What can I do for you pastor?” I replied, “I’ve come to see what I can do for you and for our city.” I asked her the same question I had asked people on the street many years before. “What do you consider to be the greatest need in our city, whether you think a church can do anything about it or not?” Her answer surprised me.

She suggested that we invite every leader we could think of to come to a town hall meeting and ask them. She offered to ensure me that all the major city officials (mayor, chief of police, district attorney, fire chief, and chairman of the school board) would be there. She also offered to invite every civic leader she knew (local public school principals, civic league presidents, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troop leaders, and so on). All I had to do was provide the venue and emcee the conversation.

One hundred and fifty area leaders came to the meeting! After city officials made brief speeches about their desire to make our city a better place to live, I opened the microphone for answers to my favorite question: “What do you consider to be the greatest need in our city, whether…(Oh, you know the rest!)?” As more and more leaders shared their views, a consensus began to emerge. Everyone agreed that our cities’ children were running the streets without supervision. In many cases, with parents nowhere to be found. In some cases, they surmised, these parents were both working long hours. In many cases, they simply didn’t know how to parent their own children. These were not mean-spirited people. They took no pleasure in identifying the problem we all acknowledged existed. These were the educators and scout troop leaders of our area. They were deeply concerned about a very real problem.

Following the meeting, Mrs. Bailey came to me, “Pastor, if you will put together a first-class seminar on parenting, we will cover the expenses.”

I thanked her for the offer, but declined, saying, “I wouldn’t be able to do that without including the importance of having a relationship with Christ in the curriculum. I realize you can’t fund something like that.”

“I don’t want to know what the curriculum includes. If you can put together a world-class seminar on parenting, I’ll fund it,” she said.

In a meeting with our city manager and mayor, it was decided that February of the next year would be declared “Family Month” in our city. A city-wide festival would kick off the month. The month would conclude with a parenting seminar offered by our church. We were given full liberty to design the curriculum, select the speakers, and present hope through Jesus Christ!

It is amazing what happens when the pastor’s vision, coupled with available resources, matches the need of the community where you live. Vision becomes mission. Mission brings the vision into reality. Ordinary people make a difference.

“It is amazing what happens when the pastor’s vision, coupled with available resources, matches the need of the community where you live. Vision becomes mission. Mission brings the vision into reality. Ordinary people make a difference.”

My Children’s House of Hope

Joe McGourn developed a deep passion to do something for the deaf community living at the Payatas dump. His passion led him to visit the existing churches surrounding the area. In no time, he had assembled a coalition of sixty-three churches that shared his vision of doing something to help the deaf community living at the dump. House of Hope began to organize events such as basketball tournaments and concerts, anything that would draw a crowd of residents. The churches provided volunteers to manage the event, give spiritual support, and follow-up with those who committed their lives to Christ. That was just the beginning.

In time, Joe started a school for the deaf. They teach the children and their families how to sign. They provide an education for a bright, highly capable group of people that had been virtually ignored. One of my most touching moments during a recent visit came when a sixteen-year-old girl told me excitedly that she had just graduated from the third grade. She was so proud and excited, her hands were flying so fast, the interpreter could barely keep up with what she was signing!

Good deeds to establish good will for the sake of sharing the Good News.

The next step in Joe’s God-given vision was to start a church for the deaf community. Regular worship services are now filled with deaf and hearing impaired residents from the Payatas site, along with their families. They are coming to know Christ. Most recently, Deaf Got Talent kicked off with a worship dance concert for hundreds in the city center. Deaf kids doing synchronized dance to contemporary Christian music is an amazing thing to watch. “How do they stay in sync?” I asked Joe. “They can’t hear the music can they?”

“No, they can’t hear it, but they can feel it.”

“I can feel it too my friend. I can feel it too!”

It’s phenomenal, what’s going on. It started with a God-given vision to do something meaningful for the residents of one of the worst places to live on the planet. That vision became a mission to bring education, self-esteem, and ultimately, Jesus, to the deaf community at the Payatas dump. They are making an amazing difference.

Where does My Children’s House of Hope go from here? Today, Joe is widening his vision to include all the handicapped kids in and around the Payatas dump. Who knows what’s beyond that horizon?

God-Given Vision Outlives the Visionary

We could be talking about the birth of the Christian church starting with 120 people, from every walk of life, in first century Jerusalem. We could be describing what happened in the Cagayan Valley, Philippines because one nineteen year-old, four feet eleven inches tall, eighty-five pound spiritual giant named Gloria cared. We could be celebrating John and Marie’s vision to go back to his home town and reach his generation or John and Angie’s God-given burden to create a place where people on the road of addiction they’ve traveled can find sobriety. We might be talking about the residents of Holly Cove giving school supplies and hope to their own neighbors. We might even be chatting about a rough-around-the-edges salty dog sailor named Joe whose broken heart is making a difference at a dump site in Manila. We could be talking about…you.

It is not about any of us, really. God-given visions are so much bigger than any one of us. They are ultimately all about Jesus and His vision for the world: to make disciples of everyone, everywhere. The vision isn’t done until all are saved. The Apostle Peter even told us, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

“God-given visions are so much bigger than any one of us. They are ultimately all about Jesus and His vision for the world: to make disciples of everyone, everywhere.”

Simply put, God-given visions are a multigenerational thing. The psalmist wrote, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1). The Hebrew word from which we get house carries with it the meaning of family; mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. A worthy paraphrase of the verse might be, “Unless we work toward the fulfillment of God-given visions with the understanding that we will carry the baton for a season and then pass it on to the next generation, we are wasting our time.” God takes the long view of vision.

That’s why, in the fall of 2013, I called the Community Church Leaders’ Forum—the monthly gathering of all of the small group leaders and church staff—together for a special announcement. I told them the elders and I were in agreement that Pastor Michael Brueseke—then senior associate pastor—would soon take on the senior pastor mantle. I knew it was time for me to move on to the next God-vision for my life: leading the Acts 2 Network. God had given me a deep burden to help you—pastors, church leaders, and serious Christians—to restore the dynamics of the Acts 2 church in your world.

“I knew it was time for me to move on to the next God-vision for my life: leading the Acts 2 Network. God had given me a deep burden to help you—pastors, church leaders, and serious Christians—to restore the dynamics of the Acts 2 church in your world.”

Everyone at the forum nodded in acknowledgment—no tears, shock, or protests. We had been preparing for that day since the day the church was born. Michael had been preparing for his new role for years. More importantly, the church was never based on a man; it’s always been based on the fulfillment of a God-given vision. The vision lives on, whoever the senior pastor happens to be. I later told the congregation. Michael received a warm handclap of affirmation.

Aside from Michael’s character, love for Jesus, and leadership ability, I was confident to make those announcements because I knew Michael owned the vision that defined the house. I felt like the father of a daughter of marrying age, placing her hand in the hands of a worthy suitor. The daughter was the God-given vision that had defined the church all through the years. The suitor is Michael and thousands of people who consistently give their time, talents and treasures to bring the vision into reality.[17]

This is not as common as it needs to be. There are three churches within a few miles of Community Church’s Western Branch campus that were the largest churches in the area in the 1970s. They still have very large facilities, but the congregations have scattered. The pastors held on too long. They failed to pass the mantle to the next generation. The vision languished.

Kim and I served in the Philippines as missionaries for nine years. We had the privilege of leading in the planting of sixty-seven churches and missions during that time. The first year after we left, they planted thirteen churches. They now have 175 churches. We left there in 1989, confident the vision was established and that Joseph Benigno would lead the work toward its fulfillment. It was the same confidence with which we passed the mantle to Michael at Community Church. Though I had many wonderful experiences during both the Philippines years and the Community Church years, my greatest joy was in carrying the baton of leadership for my season and then passing it successfully on to the next leader. It will one day be my joy to pass the mantle to the next leader of the Acts 2 Network.

During a recent visit to the Philippines, I had the opportunity to pray over the young Bible college graduates. As I stepped up to pray over one young lady, the current leader of the ministry and long-time ministry partner, Joseph Benigno, whispered to me, “That’s Ely and Gloria’s daughter. She’s going to be a church planter like her folks.” The vision lives on! It must outlive us.

The only question that remains is, are you willing to invest the time and effort it takes to identify God’s vision for your world? Will you invest a portion of your energy in the next generation of leaders as you go?

We live in a world desperate for hope. We serve a Church that needs to remember what the original Acts 2 church clearly knew. Will you pray until God breaks your heart with something that is breaking His? Will you seek Him until your own Cagayan Valley fills your vision so completely you can’t not do something about the need? I pray you will. Let’s restore the dynamics of the original Acts 2 church in our world. Let’s invest our one and only lives in something that is eternally worth the effort. Let’s make a difference for Jesus!

Time to Raise Your Voice

(Discussion)

1)

Think back over all you’ve read in this book. What are the top three things you are taking away from this book? What has most challenged you? What has most inspired you? How has it most encouraged you? How has it changed your perspective?

2)

What are you going to do to make a difference in the world with your one and only life that is eternally worth the effort? How vital are Acts 2 dynamics to making this difference in the world? Why?

3)

“Nothing we ever do around here is about growing a church. We are simply committed to being salt and light in our community and making room for the people Jesus brings.” Why is it so important not to focus on growing a church, to instead focus on being salt and light in the community and make room for the people Jesus brings? How does this reflect the focus of your church? Your personal life? Explain.

4)

How well has your church done at discovering and meeting the needs of the community around you? Explain. What more can you do? How have you seen the Two Percent Principle in effect in your church’s surrounding community? Describe the Impact Zone for your church.

5)

How would your church benefit from following the process detailed in this chapter: defining your vision, assessing your resources, determining your community’s needs, and combining your results? What role are you willing to play in initiating and participating in this process?

6)

What must your church do to ensure the “vision of the house” outlives the current leaders? Leader, what must you do to develop the next generation of leaders?

Appendix A: Become an Acts 2 Church

The Unmuted Campaign

Do you want your church to restore the Acts 2 dynamics in your world? If so, The Unmuted Campaign resource toolkit will help you accomplish this.

The Unmuted Campaign includes:

• Six vision message videos

These powerful, challenging sermons will inspire your congregation by showcasing the six primary dynamics of an Acts 2 church. Help them to embrace the key principles they can follow and ignite a passion in your people to restore the dynamics of the original Acts 2 church to your church, in your world.

• Six small group lesson plans

These ready-to-use small group lesson plans are perfect for provoking thoughtful, spiritually enriching discussions about restoring original Acts 2 church dynamics in your church, based on the book, Unmuted: Restoring Your Church’s Voice.

• Multimedia resources

These professionally-produced PowerPoint presentations, point-maker video clips, and handout templates will engage your people and make key vision message points unforgettable.

• Specialist Guidance

Acts 2 Network (A^2N) trained consultants, expert in the implementation and operation of The Unmuted Campaign, will be available throughout your campaign to provide guidance and assistance designed to maximize your effectiveness!

• Promotional materials

Includes full-color, eye-catching posters, engaging video clips, social media content slices, and other materials you can use to promote your church’s campaign to become an Acts 2 church!

Contact the A^2N office today. Ask for The Unmuted Campaign!

connect@acts2network.org

757.606.1400

PO Box 9082

1935 Jolliff Road, Chesapeake, VA 23321

www.acts2network.org

Appendix B: Become a Part of the Acts 2 Network

A^2N is a rapidly growing, organic network of church leaders working to restore the dynamics of the original Acts 2 church in twenty-first century churches. Acts 2 churches connected with the network cut across socioeconomic lines, doctrinal positions, denominational affiliations, and geographic boundaries. They are united by the desire to restore the Church’s voice in our world, by restoring your church’s voice in your world.

Here are a few members-only benefits of being a part of the network:

Internet-based small groups:

Senior pastors, worship pastors, children’s pastors, church planters and others gather online monthly to share best practices, find answers to significant questions, and support one another. There’s a group for everyone!

Consulting:

Seasoned church leaders, dedicated to the six dynamics of the original Acts 2 church, come alongside your ministry to help your church assess its health and set goals toward the fulfillment of your God-given vision.

Coaching:

Trained coaches stand ready to help you accomplish your goals in life and ministry. From time to time, every leader needs someone to listen to them and ask them the right questions. Our coaches are there for you.

Capital Campaigns:

Vision must be funded. A^2N consultants can custom design a campaign that will fit your church’s DNA and vision for a fraction of what many specialized consultants charge.

Training:

Ignite is A^2N’s video training library. It is packed with an ever-increasing number of next level leadership training on a wide range of practical subjects: how to hire staff, how to develop servant leaders, how to resolve conflict, and many more.

The Growth Track is a twenty-one course, proven effective discipleship program, offering customizable content, organized in seven categories: Living the Christian Life, the Bible, The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit, Spiritual Warfare, and Sharing Your Faith. Each category has one course at each level: Beginner, Intermediate, and Mature. All content is adaptable to fit your church’s unique doctrinal positions.

Online Assessment Tools:

Tools for assessing your level of Christian maturity, leadership development, or your church’s effectiveness in restoring its voice are available online.

Contact us for more information on these and other areas today!

connect@acts2network.org

757.606.1400

PO Box 9082

1935 Jolliff Road, Chesapeake, VA 23321

www.acts2network.org

Jim and Kim Wall

From pastoring small town churches, to planting nearly seventy churches in the Philippines, to starting and leading Community Church (communitychurch.info) to more than 4,000 souls; Jim and Kim Wall have dedicated their lives to serving the local church. Today, Jim serves as the founder and Executive Director of the Acts 2 Network (acts2network.org). He coaches church leaders around the world.

Jim holds an undergraduate degree in Religious Education, a Masters in Biblical Studies and a DMin in Christian Leadership from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Jim and Kim have three married sons and six grandchildren (of whom they will gladly show you pictures).

Jim stands ready to help you, and your church go to the next level of effectiveness for Jesus. Reach him at jwall@acts2network.org.

Blog: www.jimwall.net

Twitter: @pastorjimstweet

If you want to receive an automatic email when Jim’s next book is released, text A2NBOOKS to 22828. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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[1] George Barna, Growing True Disciples: New Strategies for Producing Genuine Followers of Christ (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 2001), 11.

[2] Thom Rainer, Surprising Insights from the Unchurched (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 2001), 51.

[3] McLaren, Brian, “A Radical Rethinking of our Evangelism Strategy,” Fuller Youth Institute, (http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/articles/a-radical-rethinking-of-ourevangelistic-strategy, (August 2005): 1

[4] Ed Stetzer, Richie Stanley, and Jason Hayes. Lost and Found. B&H Publishing, 2010. Kindle edition.

[5] George Barna, What Americans Believe: An Annual Survey of Values and Religious Views in the United States (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1991), 85.

[6] Ibid. 91

[7] Leith Anderson, Dying for Change (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1990), 9-10.

[8] Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (New York: Currency Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1960), 12-13.

[9] Ibid. Anderson,

[10] Ibid. 134.

[11] Green, Keith Gordon, “Asleep in the Light,” (Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.), 1978.

[12] Kinnaman, David and Gabe Lyons, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity…and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007), 26.

[13] Willard, Dallas, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: Harper, 1997), 1.

[14] Thurman, Chris, The Lies We Believe (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), Loc 197.

[15] The real name has been changed to preserve privacy.

[16] Rusaw, Rick and Eric Swanson, The Externally Focused Church (Loveland, CO: Group Publishing, 2004), 101.

[17] The full story of the succession journey is told in Vision Is a Multigenerational Thing (to be published by A^2N Press in late 2014).