What Propelled the Church in the 1st Century?

Today we live in a church culture that is always seeking to find what is the next best thing to grow a church. Is it a hip sign? Is it a racy billboard? Is it a eye-catching series? Is it a top-notch band with all the sound and lighting effects?

Sometimes I feel as though the church gets caught up in a rat race of just growing in numbers for the sake of growing in numbers. They want to be successful in the eyes of other churches and people outside the church. They want the eyes to pop when they tell people how many their church runs. Therefore, I believe we set up church today for the unchurched. When people set up the way they do church for the unchurched and the lost, I believe they lose the sense of what the New Testament Church experienced. I believe we water down the nature of the church.

Especially in our society, when we set up church for the unchurched, that means we will create a pseudo-spirit of heightened music and emotionalism and excitement, like that of an American Idol tele-cast. Also, church, if set up for the unchurched and unbelieving, will be slanted towards the consumer. We live in American, the capitol of capitalism and consumerism. Everyday people buy goods that catch their eye, that meets their needs. They are rarely today loyal to a brand. If another store or another brand has what they need on sale, they are there.

I am not saying that we do not seek to be culturally relevant. I believe we need to be culturally relevant, but at the same time, biblically faithful to what we find in Scripture. For instance, Martin Luther during the Reformation would take bar tunes and turn them into spiritual songs. I think there is a way we take things in our culture and turn them into something that focuses on Christ, not the consumer of spiritual things.

So, have churches missed the big picture and the essence of the nature, foundation, and DNA of the church. Have the environments that have been created to move the emotion and give the consumer a great experience taken the place of spirit-filled worship, transformed lives, and gospel-centered expository preaching?

I think it is always wise to go back to Scripture to find out what propelled the 1st Century to grow in such a pagan culture. They did not live in a Judeo-Christian culture. They lived in a polytheistic, pagan, and immoral culture. It was the Roman Empire for crying out loud. Whatever they did, we need to adopt.

I believe they possessed spirit-filled lives that translated into spirit-filled worship. Their lives were lived for the glory of God, not just on Sundays but on every day. Their lives were marked by prayer and holiness. These are truly two aspects and dynamics missing in todays churches. Also, instead of having great music with great vocals, we need to have spirit-filled music, with godly musicians leading us to worship God. It is not enough to have great talent when leading a church to sing about its Savior and God. We need musicians who have met with the Lord, who understand what they are singing, and who can lead others to embrace the truth of the song. We need pastors, teachers, leaders, and believers who have met with God and prayed that God would do a work in them and those around them. We need to beg the Spirit of God to move, not for it to be a great experience.

The second thing we need is more believers who possess and live out what it means to be transformed by the gospel! In the 1st Century you knew who was a Christian and who wasn't. It was displayed in their lives and what flowed out of their lives. They were no longer the same person. They had been changed by the gospel! Today, many believers have the label and title of being a Christian and nothing else. The words they use are no different than before. The way they lead their family is no different. The focuses of their life are no different. They still spend all their money on themselves! For real, how in the world can we set up church for the consumer in mind and then tell them when they get there, that it is all about. That seems like an oxymoron to me. The landscape, by and large, of Christianity in America, is fixated on easy-believism.

The third thing we need to catapult the church to where it was in the 1st Century is biblical, sound, expository preaching/teaching. Read the Scriptures and you will not find water-down, fuzz ball, fuzzy feeling content and truth. You will find hard to believe, hard to handle, hard to hear truth! Jesus' teachings were not easy to hear or sometimes even to understand. In fact, we know that unless the Spirit of God enlightens a person, they will not be able to understand truth! Why would the Spirit of God show up at places that do not honor Him, rely on Him, live for Him, represent Him, and who are faithful to Scriptures? Even Peter even said that Paul's teachings were sometimes hard to understand.

The 1st Century Church grew in a day that had no phones, no internet, no iphone or blackberries, no poster-boards, billboards, television commercials, banners, facebook, myspace, and mass mailers. Don't get me wrong, we would not be wrong in utilizing any of these. I am just saying that the 1st Century Church did not possess these and yet they grew, not just numerically, but also spiritually and in favor with those outside the church. Today those outside snub their noses at those labeled Christians because of their lives being contrary to their doctrine. believe that if we re-capture what the 1st Century Church possessed (Spirit-filled worship, transformed living, and biblically sound/expositional teaching) then we will be headed in the right direction.