In the conservative Evangelical and Reformed circles I’ve run in over the years, I’ve come across a lot of skepticism and criticism of church growth movements. I’ve always questioned what seemed to me a knee jerk reaction, even if the criticisms could be justified at some level. Do these critics not want their churches to grow? Do they think churches growing and the number of Christians increasing is a bad thing? Certainly they can’t, but the criticisms remain.
In a recent church service our pastor shared some verses in Acts that talk about the church growing as if it were a good thing, as if it’s actually part of God’s plan. And now that I’m postmillennial in my eschatological perspective, I believe a growing, victorious church is what God planned from the beginning. God reveals to the Patriarchs that his plans are a church growing, numbers that can’t be counted, like dust of the earth, sand on the seashore, and stars in the sky. That sure makes it seem like church growth should be the norm, not an exception to the rule of small churches.
Prior to my eschatological conversion, I believed more people would be damned to hell than would be saved. It was probably this verse from Matthew 7 more than any other that “proved” it to me:
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
This seemed so obvious to me it was beyond debate, and nobody I knew or read questioned it. Only a few find it, what’s to debate?
Then there is Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22. He prefaces it by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like . . . .” So clearly, I thought, the parable is about “going to heaven” when we die. My mind always seemed to go there rather than the resurrection. I knew and believed the ultimate end of God’s plan is not a spiritual disembodied reality in a place called heaven, but a material reality in a new heavens and earth where His people will have new, resurrected bodies. But since I believed, and still do, that our souls maintain consciousness when we die, then we do go to heaven. But is that what Jesus is really talking about? He ends with these words that seem to leave no doubt:
14 “For many are called, but few are chosen.”
The gospel proclamation is the invitation to the wedding feast, and it goes out to all people, but only a few will respond and thus be the chosen. Again, this seemed beyond debate. Then, as I say, postmillennialism dropped out of the sky on my head, and I wasn’t so sure.
Jesus’ Ministry to the Jews
Most Christians miss the fundamental fact about Jesus’ life and ministry: it was primarily directed to Jews. He was Israel’s Messiah, sent to the lost sheep of Israel. Twice in Matthew Jesus uses that phrase. In the first he is sending out the twelve apostles to proclaim the good news and these are his instructions (Matt. 10):
5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’
The second time he uses the phrase is in Matthew 15. A desperate Canaanite woman cries out to Jesus’ disciples to help her demon-possessed daughter, and he basically blows her off. Why?
24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
He makes an exception in her case because of the depth of her faith, but this statement is deeply profound and should affect not only how we interpret his parables, but his entire ministry. He was the Jews’ Messiah, a Savior they had been anticipating for 400 years. Unfortunately, the Jewish religious professionals rejected their Messiah, and Israel faced the ultimate judgment of God in AD 70. I will get to the theological significance of that in a moment.
Because Jesus was speaking and ministering primarily to Jews, we can’t interpret the meaning of the wide and narrow gate to apply to anyone beyond its Jewish context. It is the same with the parables. Their meaning can have universal application, but we can’t assume that is always the case as is the default in modern Evangelicalism. The number one principle in biblical hermeneutics, or biblical interpretation, is that context determines the meaning of the passage. When viewed as written to Jews in the first century in light of their 2,000 year history, statements like wide and narrow gates and many are called and few are chosen take on a whole new meaning, and in a similar manner the parables.
The Theological Significance of the Destruction of the Temple
For all of my Christian life until recently I didn’t understand the theological significance of AD70 when the Roman General Titus and the Roman army decimated Jerusalem and completely destroyed the Jewish temple. By AD66 the Jews had had enough of Roman rule, and for the next three years revolted against the Romans. By 69 when Titus took over the army from his father, Vespasian, who was called back to Rome to become emperor by the Senate, the army had pushed the entire Jewish rebel army back into Jerusalem. During the Passover of 70, the Romans allowed Jews to go into Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, which would be the last of the Jewish Old Covenant era, but they would not let them leave. The siege was brutal with starvation and death rampant.
We have great detail of the war from Josephus, a former Jewish rebel who defected to the Roman side to save his life. He became an historian who wrote priceless accounts of the end of the Jewish nation. Wanting to save the temple and the Jewish way of life, Josephus tried to negotiate a truce between the Romans and Jewish rebels, but neither side trusted him, so it didn’t work. In August of 70, the Romans breached the final defenses of the city, and massacred most of the remaining population, completely destroying the temple in the process. Some scholars believe Titus didn’t intend for that to happen, but the Roman soldiers were so furious with the Jews that they were out of control and destroyed everyone and everything. I heard someone refer to what happened in Jerusalem as “grotesque butcheries,” horrors that are unimaginable even to those familiar with brutality of modern warfare.
The question is, what did it mean, something most Christians don’t ask, nor did I until recently. Those familiar with the Synoptic gospels will be familiar with the Olivet Discourse, recorded in Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13, and Luke 21. Jesus is speaking to his disciples approximately 40 years prior to AD70 and we’re told the following:
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
This must have stunned his disciples because the temple was a massive complex. To think not one stone would be left on another was unfathomable. Nonetheless they ask Jesus,
3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
Most Christians being premillennial dispensationalists interpret “end of the age” as referring to the end of time, but Jesus says (v. 34) that “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Forty years later, they happened. The age Jesus is speaking of is the Old Covenant age which Jesus came to fulfill, and since “the Jews” (i.e., their leaders) rejected Jesus, God brought judgment on the nation. This had been the message of the prophets, and now it had been fulfilled. The destruction of the temple and the sacrificial system that went with it communicated in no uncertain terms the message of the book of Hebrews, that one greater than Moses had come.
There is no space to get into a detailed understanding of these challenging passages, but it is clear some applied to that generation only, and some to another time in the future. But when Jesus is speaking about wide and narrow gates, or few being chosen, he is specifically speaking to Jews of that generation, not gentiles in the age of gospel proclamation. In fact, the Old Covenant’s failure to produce a growing generational church is the reason there needed to be a New Covenant. Bulls and goats were only types and shadows of a coming reality, signs pointing forward that most Jews couldn’t read. Think of God’s Old Covenant people as a small speck of light at one place on earth four thousand years ago, obscure and invisible. God slowly grew His people, but the growth plan never took. Then Jesus. Today there are over two billion specks of light all over the earth, and dust, sand, and stars are looking more realistic every day. What Christ accomplished on the cross, his resurrection confirmed, and ascended to the right hand of the Father to fulfill, sending his Holy Spirit to guarantee it. We’re on the winning team, brothers and sisters; we just need to get to work!
Church Growth is the Plan
I’ve noticed in some of the churches I’ve attended over the years people praying for their churches to grow, but not doing anything to make them grow. As if God will magically just bring people to Christ and their church without Christians doing anything. All throughout redemptive history God uses sinful, imperfect human beings to do His work and advance His kingdom. In this case it’s evangelism. Few churches have pastors dedicated to evangelism, yet Paul charges Timothy that he is to “do the work of an evangelist” as he discharges all the duties of his ministry (2 Tim. 4:5). Elsewhere he asks how people can believe in one who they have not heard, and how they can hear without someone preaching or proclaiming it to them? (Rom. 10:14). Yet I rarely hear evangelism encouraged or training made available. I recently wrote a post called, “Be More Annoying for Jesus,” because I believe all Christians at some level should be eager that everyone they encounter know they are followers of the way, the truth, and the life. I recently listened to this podcast about this problem in Reformed churches, and it is an excellent discussion of the problem that applies to all Christian traditions.
It should not be a problem given the message of Acts about a growing church and how it happens. We’ve established, albeit in a cursory manner, that growth has always been the plan. I’ve heard people of a pessimistic bent bemoaning the rotten state of things say, well at least like in Elijah’s day God has reserved a remnant of the faithful, as if the church is only a remnant instead of the dominating cultural force God made it to be. In fact, Christian Western civilization was a result of what we see happen in Acts. Here are the verses I spoke of above.
Acts 2:
41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.Acts 6:
7 So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.Acts 9:
31 Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.Acts 12:
24 But the word of God continued to spread and flourish.Acts 16:
5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.Acts 19:
20 In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.
We now live on the other side of Christian dominance in the West, what some call trash world or negative world, and the tendency is to think because of that growing the church and numbers of Christians is a pipe dream, or at best an uphill struggle. I beg to differ. Think about the lay of the land Christians faced who Luke was writing about in Acts. The odds against them succeeding were apparently insurmountable. The entire Roman Empire and Jewish establishment was against them, and persecution common, yet just over 300 years later Christianity was pronounced as the official religion of the Roman Empire. I guarantee you nobody saw that coming, yet the church remained faithful in prayer, proclamation, and community. I believe we learn by this that growth is something that should be planned and sought and worked for, and celebrated when it happens. As I often say, work like it depends on us, and pray because it depends on God.
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