Sermon Tone Analysis

Authentic Church Growth

Hook

We celebrate and give God all the praise and all the glory that we are in a season of growth here at Woods Harbour Wesleyan.

Last week we had 121 people in attendance for a regular summer Sunday.

Like last week, to no fault of the person putting together our communion elements.

That’s a good problem.

We are seeing amazing answers to prayer every single day.

God is up to something very special in our midst.

And you know it is not just about the numbers; it’s the sense that God is genuinely doing a work in peoples lives and people are having an encounter with the living God.

Someone said at Tuesday night prayer meeting that you can do all kinds of things to bring people in but ot all growth is necessarily good growth.

As a church we can do all kinds of things to bring people in and neglect to pray and seek God.

We can try and be the most attractive church and take our focus off of Jesus and we can easily lose sight of what Jesus has for us.

So how do you know the growth we are experiencing is authentically from God?

This mornings passage of Scripture shows us a few indications of what happens when we experience authentic growth.

So this morning we are going to talk about church growth and I want to tell you I am excited to talk about this.

You wanna know why?

Because we have to have this conversation now because we are a church that is growing and over the next season we are going to go through some potential growing pains as we adjust to ministering to more people and as we step up to meet the needs around us.

Introduce Subject

So today I would like to talk about authentic church growth.

Define Subject

There are three things I want to unpack from the text that point to the kind of growth God produces.

There are three things I want to unpack from the text that point to the kind of growth God produces.

1. Authentic Church growth produces disciples

What does it mean to be a disciple in the body of Christ?

2. Authentic Church growth creates good problems

3. Authentic church growth should calls others to action

What does it mean to be a disciple in the body of Christ?

Fallen Condition Focus

No before we dive into the text today I want to address a couple problems this text addresses.

Hope of Hearing

God wants us to be disciples and not just believers

Some of you are here and say yes I believe in Jesus but God wants to take you beyond just believing and to the point where your lifestyle reflects one who follows Jesus.

PAUSE.

2. God wants to change our perspective about the church and shake us out of our passiveness

Some of us need to change the way we think about the church.

For lost of different reasons including tradition we have come to think about the church in ways that don’t even line up with Scripture and need Scripture to change the way we think about the church.

Some of us here today need to be challenged or have our cage rattled a bit and we need to wake up out our spiritual slumber because we have a pary

God wants to raise our expectation and call us to believe him for greater things that our beyond our expectation

Some of us here today need to be challenged or have our cage rattled a bit and we need to wake up out our spiritual slumber because we have a par

Hope of Hearing

3. God wants to raise our expectation and call us to believe him for greater things that our beyond our expectation

If you have been hear over the past 14 months you likely have heard me preach that I am convinced that our Maritime mentality hinders us from believing God for greater things.

PREACH - Look, I believe with all my heart, that the stuff God has in store for us as a church are so far beyond what we can think or imagine - and I really mean that.

Like practically, the stuff God is going to challenge us to do over the next number of months and years are things we cannot even fathom they are so awesome.

God wants us to raise our faith and expectation so when we experience crazy growth and God begins to do some crazy things we are ready to believe God for crazy things.

Listen, when God challenges us as a church to take a major, huge, astronomic step of faith I want us as a church to be ready to believe God for it.

What about you?

So one of the problems the Holy Spirit needs to address with us is raising our expectations that God can do things so far beyond what we expect and that God can do a brand new thing here in our area.

Hope of Hearing

My hope is that some of you would make the shift from just being a believer to being a disciple Believer -> Disciple

My hope is that God would give us his perspective for how we should think about the church and our role

My hope is that God would cause us to believe him for things we haven’t even imagined for our church

Transition to Text

Acts 6:1-7

V. 1

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing,d the Hellenistic Jewsa e among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widowsf were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.g

So the church was going through continual growth since Pentecost.

This idea or phrase of increase was consistent over the last number of chapters.

We see starting at chapter 2 then through to this verse that the church was continuing to grow and expand.

MULTIPLIED - The book of Acts HAS this continuous thread of growth.

And this growth wasn’t just numerical growth; the words disciples reflects that they weren’t just making believers but fully committed followers of Jesus.

1. Authentic Church growth produces disciples

Churches can do a lot of things to draw a good crowd and can even be driven by that.

We want to see people who are fully committed followers of Jesus.

That’s the true litmus test of a church that is rooted in God.

Like we can

I love that they use the phrase the number of disciples.

The word disciples is used 3 times in these 7 short verses.

I think the author intentionally uses it.

They did not say the number of converts or believers in this context.

They said the number of disciples.

So as the church grew it did not just make converts or people who simply believed.

As the church grew it was making disciples.

We had prayer meeting this past week and we started to have a discussion about how many people came to church last Sunday.

It was amazing to see so many.

While we are so excited about the great numbers that come what we want to see is not just people come to church or even make a first time decision.

Hear me out, we do want that.

Hear me out, we do want that.

But in addition to that we want to see people grow in their relationship with God and become more than just believers in Jesus but disciples.

You become a believer by making a one-time decision to put your faith in Jesus.

A disciple makes a decision everyday to follow Jesus.

If you want to grow in your relationship with Jesus and be his disciple there are a couple things that are helpful in your journey.

Now these things often times fall on our ears and we don’t really see the value so often so I want to stress them this morning.

Prayer

If you want to be a disciple of Jesus you have to spend time with Him.

Prayer is the

My passion is that people would come to know God in an intimate way.

There are all different kinds of ways to pray that are even found in scripture

You can pray on your knees, walking around, leaning on stuff.

Whatever you have to do.

I love going for drives and praying but just a word of advice, don’t close your eyes.

Some people journal, some people do it with other people.

Whatever you have to do, do it but start praying on a regular basis.

Begin to develop that relationship with him.

But what do I pray about?

Pray about everything, your job, your family, your decisions, your finances literally acknowledge God in all your ways.

This is the key - as you begin to pray and draw near to God, God will draw near to you and you will begin to not just know about God you will know God

God will begin to show you his heart and he will begin to speak to you

You will begin to develop an intimate relationship with him as he begins to reveal his incredible love for you

You will truly be able to be his disciple because you will begin to recognize his voice and follow his voice.