And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers and fear came upon every soul: and many signs and wonders were done by the apostles ….
And they continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.
Praising God and having favor with all the people . And the Lord added the Church daily such as should be saved.”
We readily observe from this passage that the Early Church was not only Proclamation – oriented but response oriented. They not only had powerful delivery but their preaching led to phenomenal conversions. They preached for genuine growth and conversions. When they preached something happened. People were brought under conviction! Lives were changed! Revival fires broke out!
To become vibrant local churches as effective and skillful in evangelism as the Early Church, we must not only take note mentally or academically of these characteristics but we must actually pattern what we see there in the present lives of our local churches.
Undoubtedly the Early Church had
(1) Vision and Purpose: that stemmed or originated from the very life of Christ and His Great Commission uttered just prior to His ascension. We note how Jesus stated and restated and repeated the need for evangelism to His disciples over and over again. Today we must emulate Him and the Early Church in constantly repeating and restating and recasting the vision until all men see it and the whole local church becomes driven by the same passion and purpose – to win the lost.
(2) Lively Worship: The Early Church was a church alive in worship. They constantly celebrated His presence. They magnified His person. They continued “praising God.” They continued in praise and worship. Their worship apparently was so intense that Christ was made very alive in their presence. They feared and reverenced God and constantly drew near to Him in worship. They became a community of true worshippers and the fear of God fell on many as they worshipped an awesome God. We must emulate their model in worship.
(3) They were a preaching church: A church with a message to communicate. It was a church with a mission, communicating God’s Word through evangelism. The “Woe-is-me-if-I-preach-not-the-gospel characterized the Early Church. Our local churches today still need powerful committed pulpiteers who will stand up and declare God’s truth to a lost and dying generation.
(4) They baptized, fellowshipped and assimilated new converts into the community. They all continued in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship. They were careful to baptize the converts as Jesus commanded. We must quickly and earnestly baptize the converts and get them assimulated very quickly into our local churches.
(5) They were instructed into maturity. They were taught the “catechism” of beliefs. We cannot forget to do further and deeper instructions into Bible Truth just like Jesus said. We must aim at developing into maturity.
(6) They were taught how to minister. In the Early Church they were undoubtedly taught to minister according to giftedness. They used the Spiritual gifts to help grow the church. We must unleash our people to go minister according to their spiritual giftedness.
(7) They were also taught the necessity of witnessing – sharing the message of Christ very simply with their fellow men. We must teach our people again how to spontaneously witness and to talk about the good things God is doing in the Church.
(8) The Prayer – Connection: They did nothing without prayer. We keep the fires of evangelism going through prayer. We create many of these elements of ministry through prayer and sustain them through prayer. We pray believing and knowing, it is definitely God’s will to grow His church into a dynamic, vibrant powerful entity in our community. He promised to be with us as we are going, baptizing and teaching and discipling.
I pray that God will do again what he did in the first period of the Christian Church and in many periods since then. The Word of Christ continues to echo “Go and make disciples of all nations.” We are challenged to become “Vibrant Local Churches effective in evangelism.”
Apparently they applied it in practical terms to their listeners calling for repentance and decisions. They quickly baptized the converts and instructed them in “the catechesis” the system of teaching left by the Lord for them to observe. They instructed the new converts to maturity and equipped them for ministry to go back and disciple others. In this local church at Jerusalem we find not only the seed of Christianity but they remain the valid model for the Church in every age.
Welcome to the website of the Church of God of Prophecy situated here in the Mid-Atlantic Region. We trust that you would not only just visit our website but that you will feel compelled to visit one of our local churches in your area and be greatly blessed. The theme for our Ministers’ Convention was “Effective Evangelism through Vibrant Local Churches.” We desire that, that theme be carried through to every local assembly throughout our Region.In Acts 2: 41-47 we read “Then they that glady received His word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.