I Will Build My Church

Notes for the Ekklesia Meeting
Sundays @ 10:00 a.m. Info: (651) 283-0568 www.dtminc.org Today’s Date: June 5, 2005

I Will Build My Church

by Dan Trygg

“…on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Matt. 16:18-23

“For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

Eph. 2:18-22

“But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the Body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

Eph. 4:15,16

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

Acts 2:42-47

Last time we saw how Peter had made the outward confession of the inward revelation which God had given him regarding who Jesus was, namely that He was the Anointed One, the Messiah from God. This insight, owned and personalized by repentance and faith, would be the foundation upon which Jesus said He would build His people. His ekklesia, His group of people called out for His purpose, was to bring into expression the Kingdom of God on planet earth. They were to take people and territory away from the powers of darkness, which had been entrenched here for centuries. God’s promise was that the gates of hades would not be able to resist the assault of His assembled ones.

Jesus came to crush the head of the serpent. He came to strike a death blow to Satan’s power and kingdom. Satan knows now that his time is limited, but he continues to hold people under his bondage and darkness. Through intrigue and violence he has attempted to derail or stop the advances of the ekklesia in the world, but, at the end of two millennia, its advance has once again accelerated to a rate which is highly threatening to him. God has been pouring out His Spirit upon those of His children who are ready and open to receive it, and are willing to put its dunamis power to work.

After centuries of bondage to a hierarchical system of “doing church”, which kept most believers in immaturity and in a spectator-mode of living, the winds of the Spirit have opened up God’s people in fresh ways. Those who are led by the Spirit find themselves more and more propelled into active ministry. Spectator Christianity is out. Instead, God is raising up a remnant of His people who are stepping up the spiritual assault by meeting in small, interactive, Spiritually-minded groups. In these groups, people are built up and encouraged in their faith, and the Spirit leads them into ministry outreach which is practical and Spiritually-empowered.

This is not a new thing, it represents a return to a very ancient methodology, that which Jesus modeled for His disciples, and that which they utilized in the early church. In those early centuries, before the imprisonment of the church in large lecture halls and before the rise of a priestly caste of religious professionals supported by state taxes, the Christian movement grew at an astounding rate of 13% per year (even more in the apostolic period). No wonder that in three centuries it had swept through the Roman Empire and had infiltrated virtually every segment of society!

The secret to the church’s success lay not in its outward forms alone, but in the powerful, transforming work of the Spirit in the lives of everyday people. As people changed, and were mobilized into active proponents of the Kingdom, the impact was unavoidably felt in families and in society as a whole. People could not help but be curious, and the Christians were more than willing to share with their neighbors what they had discovered.

The infectious Christian movement spread rapidly, because it was almost entirely relational. It had no overhead expenses, since generally churches met in homes. They did not have to wait for a group to become large enough to support rental expenses, nor did they have to build buildings. They did not even have to wait for leaders to be trained. Training was minimal, because successful oversight and mentoring was more a function of common sense and intimacy with the Spirit, mixed together with an understanding of the Word of God. People gifted in caring for others in this way soon became evident, and were able to function adequately as they learned the ropes under the mentoring and oversight of others. Pastoring followed more of an apprenticeship model than a schooling model.

Note that Jesus said that He was going to build His church. If you look at the passages listed above, you will see that He does it through two major forces, the work of the Holy Spirit and the activity of His people in obedience to Him.

You will also notice that all of these passages emphasize a binding together of a people.

The passage in Matthew suggests a building together process, but then calls us an ekklesia, a people called out from the masses and assembled together for a purpose. That purpose is to lay siege to the strongholds of the enemy, and liberate people and territory from his control and influence.

In Ephesians 2, we are presented with a picture of the building process very reminiscent to that described in I Peter 2:4-10. We are like stones assembled together into a building, which Paul describes as a holy temple, a dwelling of God in the Spirit. The important thing to note is that we are assembled together, and we are to be in right relationship with Jesus, who is the cornerstone. This signifies a life in agreement with and obedience to His will. When we do that, we are part of a team that functions together. When we are out of place, out of agreement with His will, we affect not only ourselves, but those around us. The word picture describes how important it is for us to be in the proper place of orientation to Jesus so that God’s purposes could be accomplished and the building could proceed.

Paul then moves to a different word picture in chapter 4, that of a body. We are like the parts of the body. As we grow in every way into the head, Jesus, He directs us to be tightly-fitted together and knitted together in relation to each other. Then the joints of supply can provide the power and grace from God to minister. Note that this comes about as each part is working properly. This word picture marries the power of the Spirit to the functional activity of every believer in order for the Body of Christ to be built up effectively.

As we look at the passage from Acts, we see the practical way the apostles brought the people together. They met in homes, in small interactive gatherings where they could “be real” with one another.

For the first three years, or so, they also met in the temple, as well, but after the stoning of Stephen and the persecution that followed, that was no longer an option. During the next three hundred years, the church was only a small group movement, meetings in homes, cemeteries, and in other obscure or fairly secretive places.

Interestingly, this coincides with the period of time when the Christian movement enjoyed its greatest exponential growth, and Christians were most active, spiritually-charged and radically obedient.

It was also a time when signs and wonders often accompanied the advance of the ekklesia. There were open power encounters between the Holy Spirit and the entrenched forces of evil. The gifts of the Spirit were very evident in those early centuries, but with the Roman captivity of the church, those became infrequent and the growth rate also virtually flatlined, especially after 500 A.D.

During the next one thousand years, the church became little more than a religious institution, growing along with population growth and the conquering of non-Christian nations by those who claimed Jesus. Although there were always some bold evangelists in every age, generally during the Middle Ages, with political occupation came the introduction of Christian teachings and practices. The crusades captured the imagination and devotion of some, and stirred the pot, bringing about the evangelization of more, but the gains were lost during the Renaissance period. The all-time low of this period was the 1400’s and early 1500’s.

Then, with the Reformation, things began to heat up. The teaching of the priesthood of all believers, and the availability of the Scriptures in the common man’s language, opened up a surge of evangelistic fervor and there was also a rise in people rediscovering the gifts of the Spirit.

I say a “surge of evangelistic fervor” because the growth rate of the church went from less than two tenths of one percent over the previous 1,000 years to a quarter of a percent in the 1600’s, a third of a percent in the 1700’s, to over half a percent in 1800, and crossed the 1% growth rate by 1900. The growth rate peaked in 1990 at 1.74%, and has slumped down to 1.27% in 2,000. Pretty pathetic, huh? Of course, this represents the total loss and gain of all Christian groups worldwide.

It has become painfully apparent that much of what used to “work” (at least what was sufficiently attractive to keeping people coming to church) no longer is effective. Many of the more liberal, mainline denominations are losing people in droves, as are many of the traditional styles of worship and liturgy.

Offsetting the losses of more “traditional”, formalistic Christianity has been the explosive growth of Spirit-empowered believers since about 1850. The first wave were the early Pentecostals, followed by Charismatics, beginning in the 1950’s. Most of these were from the more liberal main-line denominations, or from the Roman Catholic church. Then, in the ‘70’s a third wave of Spirit-empowered believers began to emerge, this time from Fundamentalist and Evangelical denominations. They were people of the Word, who became empowered by the life of the Spirit. The spiritual gifts were released in their lives, often to their surprise.

Where this has really exploded is in third-world countries, notably Africa, China and Latin America. In total, these groups are growing at a rate of 8-10% per year. Worldwide, they have the same ingredients as the early Christian movement had, they are meeting in homes, they are very relational, deeply passionate about Jesus, and they are filled with the Spirit. Signs and wonders are common in their ministry outreach.

In the early church days there were 360 non-believers for every Christian. In 1960, there were 24 for every Christian. Today, there are only six. Jesus continues to build His church.

The Great Reversal
By Jim Rutz from Megashift (Empowerment Press: Colorado Springs 2005) Pp. 14,15

The direction of world events has made a sharp turn. Before the mid-1980s, Christians were growing about 2% a year, barely above the world population growth rate. Now God has stormed onto the scene like a tornado. Compare today’s annual growth rates:

Why the World Will Soon Be Christian. Not only are core apostolics growing far faster than Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and new agers, but in fair and even encounters, spiritual power prevails and Jesus wins perhaps 99% of the time. The main defenses of other religionists are not the-ological arguments, but violence, persecution, legal barriers, and propagandistic falsehoods.

Core apostolics are the new saints who are at the heart of the mushrooming kingdom of God. The term and the category are both mine, but they’re not at all subjective. They stand for a very real and countable movement of more than 707 million switched-on disciples.

As you can see, the growth rate of Protestants (and Christians in general) is so terribly low that they had clouded the picture, hiding the white-hot growth of the core apostolics. But now I feel you have yet another cause for celebration: the clear identification of an extremely strong center of the new Christianity.

If you don’t care for statistics, here’s the gist:

The growing core of Christianity crosses theological lines and includes 707 million born-again people who are increasing by 8% a year. These “core apostolics” are a powerful mix of Charismatics, Pentecostals, and Evangelicals whose main distinction is that they are in expanding, connected, easily countable networks.

The term excludes those groups that are so liberal in theology, so isolated in structure, or so deeply rooted in medieval tradition, that they are hardly growing at all.

More Christians Than People?

We rely on God, not statistical trends. Yet it’s fascinating to realize that the current core apostolic growth rate would produce a world composed entirely of core apostolic Christians by 2032! Of course, straight-line projections are a fool’s game because life never goes in a straight line. There will be pockets of resistance and unforeseen breakthroughs. Still, at the rate we’re growing now, to be comically precise, there would be more Christians than people by the autumn of 2032, about 8.2 billion.

In any case, the new realities are massive in scope. The future of your world is being rewritten at this very hour. For instance:

• Up until 1960, Western Evangelicals outnumbered non-Western Evangelicals—mostly Latinos, blacks, and Asians—by two to one. As of 2000, non-Westerners had shot ahead by four to one. By 2010, it will be seven to one! (Park this in the back of your brain for the next time you hear someone bad-mouth Christianity as “the white man’s religion.”)

• If you go through Latin America on a Sunday morning, you will now find more evangelicals than Catholics in church.

• As soon as we produce some church models that are culturally acceptable to Hindus, we could see an additional 70 to 100 million secret Indian Christians go public.

• There are now more missionaries sent from non-Western nations than Western nations.

Are you starting to see the outline of the new world? God writes history, but human eyes have trouble reading His handwriting. It’s not that He writes too small, but too big.