Over the past several months I have been doing a study of Acts and then sharing it with our men on Saturday morning. I have to admit, it is messing with my mind.  Acts is radically changing the way I think about church growth and church in general.

One day last week, I had a conversation with one of our church members and he asked me, “Why do some churches grow and others seem to struggle. We have a dynamic speaker and our music is great. So why aren’t we growing exponentially?” I tried to answer using all the right church growth slogans and methods and cliché’s but all my answers seemed so “programmed”.

When you look at the early church leaders and all they went through to get the church off the ground and yet still have thousands join the church on one Sunday, you can only draw one conclusion-MUST BE A GOD THING.

Those poor fellows didn’t have the opp to attend every church growth seminar and learn from the those who have the secret formula for church growth or the opp to pay thousands of dollars to attend their denominations greatest seminaries or even have an opp to spend some one on one time with a guy who “GETS IT”.

No. These poor ordinary uneducated men and women who decided to go on a WILD GOOSE CHASE, had only one thing going for them-they were filled with the Holy Spirit and received power to speak the salvation message with boldness.

So, after years of doing it MY WAY, (Thanks Frank) I have made the choice that this old, poor ordinary uneducated guy is going ask God to forgive me of my past failures and cleanse me of all my wrong doing and then to fill me with His spirit.

If that formula was good enough for the early church leaders, I’m going to give it a shot and even if the results are not the same concerning church growth, I know in my heart it is still the best formula for my personal growth.

Just a thought.