But when I open the book of Acts in the New Testament and observe the picture of the church there, I see such different images. I see a small band of timid disciples huddled together in an upper room. They know they need God’s power. They are Galileans, disrespected by the higher classes in Jerusalem as lower-class, rural, uneducated commoners. This is the group that the spread of Christianity depends on. So what are they doing? They are not plotting strategies. They are “joined together constantly in prayer.”5 They are not busy putting their faith in themselves or relying on themselves. They are pleading for the power of God, and they are confident that they are not going to accomplish anything without his provision.
Then God sends his Spirit in power, and everything changes. These uneducated Galileans start speaking the gospel in a multiplicity of languages that everyone can understand. The crowds are shocked, and Peter stands up to preach Christ. Peter, who just weeks before was afraid to admit he even knew Jesus, now stands under the power of God in front of thousands of people, proclaiming Jesus. More than three thousand people are saved.
Talk about church growth. Acts 1 started with about a hundred and twenty believers, and now in Acts 2 there are more than three thousand. If you do the math, that’s almost 2500 percent growth…in a day.
The story continues. People are coming to Christ every hour. In Acts 3, Peter and John speak the name of Jesus, and a forty-year-old man crippled from birth stands up to walk for the first time. In Acts 4, they pray until the building where they are gathered begins to shake. In a telling commentary, Luke says, “When [the crowds] saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”6
It only gets better from there. In Acts 5, the apostles are performing “many miraculous signs and wonders among the people.”7 The sick are being healed of their diseases, and evil spirits are being cast out. In Acts 6 and 7, the danger the disciples are experiencing is increasing, and so is God’s power among them. By chapter 8, the church is scattering to Judea and Samaria, preaching the gospel everywhere they go. Philip gets zapped by the Holy Spirit from one place to another to lead an Ethiopian to Christ. In Acts 9, Saul, the persecutor of Christians, becomes a follower of Christ. In Acts 10, racial and ethnic barriers to the spread of the gospel begin to collapse, and in Acts 11, the church at Antioch is founded as the future base of mission to the nations. In Acts 12, as Peter sits on death row in a jail cell, the church prays, and suddenly Peter’s chains fall off. He practically sleepwalks out of prison. Acts 13 launches Paul into his travels from city to city, preaching the gospel, healing people of diseases, casting out demons, and even raising people from the dead.
What I love about the picture that unfolds in Acts is the intentional way Luke (the author of Acts) makes much of God in the way he tells the story. Listen to the language in Acts 2 when Luke records the results of Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. He writes, “Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day” (verse 41). Did you hear the passive language? They were added. It begs the question “Who added them?” Go down to verse 47 in the same chapter, and Luke makes sure we get the right answer. There he writes, “The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
The trend continues. Acts 5:14 says, “More and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.” When Barnabas shares the gospel in Antioch, the result is that “a great number of people were brought to the Lord” (11:24). Later, in Pisidian Antioch, a host of Gentiles “who were appointed for eternal life believed” (13:48).
This is the design of God among his people. He is giving unlikely people his power so it is clear who deserves the glory for the success that takes place.
The story of the church continues throughout the rest of the New Testament, and as I read it, I cannot help but long to be a part of this kind of scene in the church today. A scene where we refuse to operate in a mind-set dominated by an American dream that depends on what we can achieve with our own abilities. A scene where we no longer settle for what we can do in our own power. A scene where the church radically trusts in God’s great power to provide unlikely people with unlimited, unforeseen, uninhibited resources to make his name known as great. I want to be a part of that dream.