Every church ought to have a desire to grow.
Jesus said, “I will build my church.” This means that as God’s people live out and share their faith that more and more people will become part of the “church.” We see this played out in the book of Acts with the early church. In Acts 2:47, it says that the church was “praising God and having favor with all the people…. And the Lord was adding to the church daily those who were being saved.”
They shared the good news, people responded, and were added to the church. How did the early church handle all these people? Did they put the Great Commission on hold while they tried to figure out how to handle over 10,000 believers in Jerusalem? (Acts 4:4) Did they start taking up money to build a domed stadium to handle the crowds? No, but they did change strategies. Not only did God see to it that they kept on sharing the gospel, but they did intentionally chose the most effective way to make disciples.
We looked at what their decisions say to the church of today, and what it says to Gateway as we move toward a second campus ministry. Maybe we need to turn our view of church growth completely upside down!
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