CHURCH GROWTH
Acts 18:7-8
INTRO.- ILL.- Top 10 Ways You Know You’re In A Bad Church
10. The church bus has gun racks.
9 . The church staff consists of Senior Pastor, Associate Pastor and Socio-pastor.
8. The Bible they use is the "Dr. Seuss Version."
7. There’s an ATM in the lobby.
6. The choir wears leather robes.
5. Worship services are BYOS - "Bring your own snake."
4. No cover charge, but communion is a two-drink minimum.
3. Karaoke Worship Time
2. Ushers ask, "Smoking or non-smoking?"
1. The only song the organist knows is "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."
I have no idea what “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” means, but I do know it’s sure not a gospel hymn. After considering this a while I decided to find what this song is or where it came from. It’s a song by a heavy metal group called “Iron Butterfly.” The song was produced in 1968, but I’m sure it’s not anything that we would be interested in.
Brethren, there are no bad churches if the Lord is in them! But if He is not honored as the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, then it is a bad church!
Ours is not a bad church. It’s just not a growing church. And that is something I am very concerned about.
I believe that the Lord wants His church to grow. He is not willing that anyone should perish, but that all should come to repentance and be saved. And when people truly come to surrender their lives to Christ the church will grow.
When Christ gets into people, people will get into the church! They will be automatically added to the Lord’s worldwide church, but they will also want to be a part of a local church that is seeking to honor the Lord.
ILL.- Did you ever hear of a man named Donald Wyman? You may have, but it’s been some years ago when he made the national news. Donald Wyman is from Pennsylvania and he was out in the woods, cutting trees and a tree fell on his leg, pinning him under it. Wyman laid there for an hour screaming for help. Finally, when no one showed up he pulled out his pocket knife and cut off his own leg. Wyman said, “It was a terrible ordeal.”
Well, I guess so! That’s almost unimaginable! They asked Wyman how he could do such a thing and he said, “I wanted to live.” It was either cut off his leg and drag himself out of there or lay there and bleed to death. He said that his motivation was his family and God.
Donald Wyman did a very drastic thing in order to save himself.
Sometimes drastic situations call for drastic measures. I wouldn’t say that our church is in a drastic situation, but it could sure be better. I’m very much concerned about our church. I want to see the church grow.
What can we do to get the church to grow? Last week I preached about two things we can do:
1- We must have a growth mentality
We must think “growth” and think about how to “grow” in order to grow. Our minds must always be in the thinking gear in regard to church growth and winning people to Christ.
2- We must have some definite goals in mind
Anybody who gets anywhere in life has some plans. We must make some plans and work the plans. And if they don’t work, we must make some different plans and work them.
Our text in Acts 18 tells us that many of the Corinthians who heard Paul speak, believed and were baptized. THAT’S WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR! People coming to Christ.
PROP.- I want to share some more ideas as to what it will take to make the church grow.
1- We must be committed to the worship of Christ
2- We must work together under the authority of Christ
I. WE MUST BE COMMITTED TO THE WORSHIP OF CHRIST
Acts 2:42 “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
To put it simply, they devoted themselves to church, to their church fellowship, to their church worship.
Acts 20:7 “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread.” In other words, the early church gathered every first day of the week to remember Christ in the breaking of bread, the Lord’s Supper. They were committed to that time of worship.
ILL.- A little girl asked her new neighbor, “Do you go to church?” “Yes, do you?” the new neighbor responded. “We’re Methodists, and I go every Sunday with my mother.” “Doesn’t your daddy go too?” “No.” “Isn’t he a Methodist?” “I’m not sure. MOTHER SAID HE IS A SEVENTH-DAY ABSENTIST.”
I don’t know about Seventh-Day absentists, but I think there are an awful lot of First-Day absentists around, meaning a lot of people who don’t come to church on any given Sunday.
ILL.- William Gladstone once said, "Tell me what the young men of England are doing on Sunday and I will tell you what the future of England will be." And look at where England is now spiritually speaking! And this makes me wonder about the young men of America! And the future of America.
ILL.- Billy Graham said, "Jesus spoke about the ox in the ditch on the Sabbath. But if your ox gets in the ditch every Sunday, you should either get rid of the ox or fill up the ditch."
ILL.- The story is told about President James A. Garfield’s first Sunday in Washington after his inauguration. A member of the cabinet insisted that a cabinet meeting be called at 10 a.m. the following day, which was Sunday, to handle a matter of grave importance.
President Garfield said that he had something to do at that time. The cabinet member insisted that the President break his previous engagement. GARFIELD REFUSED. The cabinet member said, "I would be interested to know with whom you could have an engagement so important that it cannot be broken."
Garfield replied, "I will be as frank as you are. MY ENGAGEMENT IS WITH THE LORD TO MEET HIM AT HIS HOUSE AND AT HIS TABLE AT 10:30 A.M. TOMORROW AND I WILL BE THERE."
Garfield was there and the crisis passed and the nation survived. And that’s the kind of commitment that we all should have when it comes to public worship of the Lord!
If we want to see the church grow then we have to be committed to the Lord’s Day worship service!
But many people have this kind of mentality. “I will go to church if I don’t have something else I want to do.” With that attitude and action the church will never grow!
Jesus said in Matthew 6:33 “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness...”
I take that to mean that we are to seek first the kingdom on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. That doesn’t mean that we honor the Lord or worship whenever we feel like it or whenever we have the time to fit Him into our schedule. WE SHOULD SCHEDULE EVERYTHING AROUND HIM AND OUR WORSHIP OF HIM! And if something doesn’t fit, then it doesn’t fit. But He should always be there! He should always be first!
If the church isn’t important enough to us to be here every Sunday except for illness, or work, or vacation, THEN HOW DO WE EXPECT TO INFLUENCE A LOST AND DYING WORLD FOR CHRIST!
If people don’t see that the worship of Christ is important to us, how can it ever be important to them!
We must be committed to the worship of Christ on the Lord’s Day!
II. WE MUST WORK TOGETHER UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
ILL.- During an Army war game a Commanding Officer’s jeep got stuck in the mud. The C.O. saw some men lounging nearby and asked them to help him get the jeep out of the mud.
“Sorry, sir,” said one of the loafers, “but we’ve been classified as dead and we can’t help in any way.”
The C.O. turned to his driver and said, “Go drag a couple of those dead bodies over here and throw them under the wheels to give us some traction.”
Brethren, in nearly every area of life there will always be some kind of Commanding Officer or boss or manager.
ILL.- When I worked for the Silk Tree Factory in Cape Girardeau, MO, which was a retail store, a home decor store, the manager was the main man, so to speak. He managed the store. He assigned the employees certain jobs to do throughout the day. Most of the time, they already knew what their job was, but occasionally it might be interrupted to do something else.
For example, if a truckload of merchandise showed up at our back door, the manager might say to the employees, “Our truck is here. Let’s go unload it.” AND WE WENT TO THE BACKROOM TO UNLOAD IT. We did what he said because he was the manager.
Occasionally, the district manager would show up at our store and if he saw things that he thought needed to be done or changed, he told the manager to get it done. And sometimes the general manager of the company would show up and tell us to do certain things. AND WE DID THEM.
And on very rare occasions, the owner of the company would come into our store and we would “jump to attention,” so to speak. Whatever he wanted, he got. If he wanted something changed, it got changed. If he wanted something moved, it got moved. SIMPLE AS THAT. He had all authority and we submitted to that authority.
What about the church? Whose authority are we under? What’s the preacher’s role in the church? I think that’s a fair question. I know that many times people wonder about that. And sometimes, the preacher even wonders about that.
The church determines the preacher’s role in a given church. In some churches preachers are given a lot of authority. For example, some Baptist Pastors practically “run the show.” That can be good or that can be bad, depending on the Pastor or preacher.
However, it’s been my experience in the non-denominational Christian Church, which we are, that the preacher is nothing more than “a hired man.” We hire him to do a certain job. We tell him what to do and he either does the job or he’s out.
Many of our preachers have been given all responsibility but no authority. That may be good or that may be bad. Again, that depends on the preacher. If you get a bad preacher with bad ideas or a bad attitude, you don’t want to give him much authority. But if you get a good one, who appears to know what he is doing and he has a heart for the people, you should give him some authority.
The same principle applies to all other leaders in the church. In our church we have spiritual overseers who are called “elders.” We also have “deacons” who are basically servants in the church. And, of course, we have Sunday School teachers and youth leaders who serve the church under the leadership of the elders.
If you get a bad elder, deacon or teacher then he or she may eventually need to be “voted out” of office for the sake of the church.
ILL.- For example, I witnessed an elder preside one Sunday morning and say to the congregation, “Good morning. Someone in the church gave me a tie. No thanks, I have one.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I didn’t go to him afterward and ask him why he said that, but I assume someone must have thought he should wear a tie whenever he presided as an elder. So he proceeded to tell them from the pulpit, “I don’t need a tie and I’m not going to wear a tie.”
I believe that his actions were wrong! It is never right to seek vengeance or to try to get back at people. No matter who you are: preacher, elder, deacon, teacher, etc.
I didn’t agree with what he did, but neither did I “jump his case” for it. I figured it wasn’t right for me to criticize him for what he did even though I didn’t agree with what he did.
That same elder continued to cause trouble in the church and some time later the other elders had to take him aside and talk to him. He caused such a stir in the church over certain things that they had to dismiss him as an elder. But I will say in his defense, he took it quite well. He did not make a fuss or put up a fight. He quietly left his position as an elder.
I believe that those elders were acting spiritually and graciously in that situation. The only thing I can say is that they might have waited too long to do something about the situation. In that case, it was obvious there was a problem and it needed to be dealt with. Some other situations might not be so obvious and waiting is a better option.
Nevertheless, those elders were acting upon their God-ordained authority in the church. What they did, they did for the good of the whole church and they did it graciously.
ILL.- Here’s another situation where someone’s authority got out of hand. In one church an elder and his wife were the high school youth leaders. The youth met every Sunday night during the evening worship service.
For some reason or another, this elder decided he wanted to take the high school youth to another church one Sunday night. This church was what some would call “charismatic” in nature. In fact, it was a Pentecostal church.
After taking the high school youth one Sunday night to that church this particular elder decided that he wanted to take them every Sunday night and then bring them back to his home church an hour later for their regular youth meeting.
He called the chairman of the elders to get approval for this and the chairman of the elders said, “No, we are not going to do that. Visiting another church is one thing but taking our youth every Sunday night is not the right thing to do. That church is not going to bring their youth to our church.”
That elder/youth leader got mad and quit the church and caused a big uproar because he took several families in the church with him.
Brethren, that elder was a problem. Of course, he left the church on his own, but he also caused trouble for that church. The other elders should have been more spiritually aware of what was going on and did something about the problem before there was a “blowup” in the church.
I could give you all kinds of examples of authority in the church. Good authority and bad authority. Use and abuse. BUT THE POINT IS THIS: WHO REALLY HAS ALL AUTHORITY AND RULE IN THE CHURCH? Christ does! Or should have.
Eph. 1:22 “And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church.”
Christ is the only head of the church! And this means that the church should be run, directed, led, etc. under His authority and rule. We should go by what His Word says and do it graciously as possible.
When Christ discipled his followers He did it by teaching and example and He did it graciously. He did it kindly. Lovingly. This should tell us something about our leadership roles.
No one in the church has the right to ride “rough shod” over the church.
I Pet. 5:2-3 “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers - not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve, NOT LORDING IT OVER THOSE ENTRUSTED TO YOU, BUT BEING EXAMPLES TO THE FLOCK.”
This scripture is speaking to the elders of the church, but it can be applied to all leaders in the church. We leaders are not to be bosses, but servants of servants in a serving brotherhood of love!
And all we who serve as leaders need to think about how we serve and what we are saying to people in the church. We need to examine our lives and our service. IS WHAT I AM DOING HELPING OR HURTING THE CHURCH AS A WHOLE? IS WHAT I AM SAYING EDIFYING, UPLIFTING OR DOES IT TEAR PEOPLE DOWN?
We leaders have no right to do whatever we want, whenever we want or say whatever we want just because that’s what we want! We are not here to do what we want. We are here to serve Christ by serving one another! And we should always do it as graciously as possible and under Christ’s authority.
There is only one Head of the church and that’s Christ. And we need to submit to His headship by doing things according to His Word. AND WHEN WE DO THIS, THE CHURCH WILL GROW!
When the Head is the head of the body and we serve under Him like we are supposed to, the church will grow!
CONCLUSION-------------------------------------------
ILL.- The poet said
Sez I to myself, as I grumbled and growled,
“I’m sick of my church,” and then how I scowled!
“The members unfriendly, the sermon’s too long!
In fact, it seems that everything’s wrong.
“I don’t like the singing; the church - a disgrace!
For signs of neglect are all over the place.
I’ll quit going there; I won’t give them a dime;
For I can make better use of my time.”
Then sez my conscience to me, sez he,
“The trouble with you is you’re too blind to see
That your church reflects you, whatever it be.
Now, come, pray and pay and serve cheerfully;
“Stop all your fault-finding and boost it up strong;
You’ll find you’ll be happy and proud to belong.
Be friendly and willing, and sing as you work -
For churches aren’t built by members who shirk.”
Brethren, there will always be some things that we don’t like about our church and we must be patient during those times. If we can make it better, let’s make it better. And the major way is for us all to join together in service under the authority of Christ.
And there is one sure thing that Christ wants for His church: it’s growth! It’s reaching out to those who don’t know Christ!
This we must do. I vote for church growth!
