When a follower of Jesus embraces the “both/and” reality of the Kingdom of God it colors the work of evangelism with bold strokes of color and passion. The revolutionary mission of the church consists of proclaiming the hope of eternal life and heaven through a personal relationship with God through Jesus, and working to bring “heaven on earth” by following the teachings and principles of Jesus in everyday life. N.T. Wright in his book Surprised by Hope paints this word picture with bold strokes writing:
“When the church is seen to move straight from worship of God we see in Jesus to making a difference and effecting much-needed change in the real world; when it becomes clear that the people who feast at Jesus’ table are the ones in the forefront of work to eliminate hunger and famine; when people realize that those who pray for the Spirit to work in and through them are the people who seem to have the extra resources of love and patience in caring for those whose lives are damaged, bruised, and shamed, then it is only natural to speak of Jesus himself and to encourage others to worship him for themselves and find out what belonging to his family is all about but it is also natural for people, however, irreligious they may think of themselves as being, to recognize that something is going on that they want to be a part of.”
As I read these word pictures, my mind is draw back to the pages of the book of Acts. In a sense, Wright has captured the spirit and the urgency of the early followers of Jesus who were not shackled with hundreds of years of tradition. Their movement was a movement of the heart, and the hands. They literally were a people who turned the world upside down in one generation.
I loved the statement: “it is also natural for people, however, irreligious they may think of themselves as being, to recognize that something is going on that they want to be a part of”. This allure of the gospel-living has been lost in many of our churches and in our personal lives. Jesus had practically no problem drawing a crowd, because when the Kingdom touches real people in the real world with real answers you cannot keep it to yourself.
The historian Luke recorded the birth of the early church movement with this eye-witness description of the first “mega-church” at work. He wrote:
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Acts 2:42-47 (NIV)
Notice Luke’s observation that the early church was “enjoying the favor of all the people”. Granted this lasted for only a season because the threatened religious establishment role up to stop this movement—that could not be stopped because it was of God—but as the movement sweep the first century world the “people” were drawn to the good news in word and deed, only the established religious system attacked this movement, because who in their right mind would oppose this kind of life except those who had something to lose like control, and even some of them crossed over in time.
Imagine your local newspaper doing a story about the day to day ministries of your local church would this story be good news for your community? Would it be a boring story buried on the back page of the paper that even your members would not read? Would it be a story that would draw the curious next Sunday to check out what is going on? It appears when a church gets the “both/and” nature of the gospel right the word gets out!
3 Comments
July 1, 2008 at 1:17 pm
The evangelism of Acts arose from a people who were spirit-filled, praying, witnessing, people for whom the message of Christ had become the priority of their lives. How else could one explain what they did? Good post, David. Thanks for bringing us back to the main thing.
September 18, 2008 at 4:44 am
Dear Sir,
greetings to you in the name of Lord Jesus Christ,
I am very glad to write this proposal to you with love of God in Christ I introduce my self through this letter P. Devadanam GSBM the Christian Non profitable organization (Christian Faith BasedOrganisation ) working at costal Andhra Pradesh south India .
We come to know that you noble organization is providing funds for women and child welfare programs (who are victims of hunger and poverty) community development project and Health awareness comps. At rural and Simi urban areas. Our organization Bible Faith Ministries (means care) is working same areas with out caste, down – trodden communities and low – income people. Whose are like, Errukala, Yanadi, Buddukkala communities, those are belongs to ST, SC more than 98% of Illiterates and working hired slave & rat hunters. Scavengers, sweepers and rishapullars. They are homeless living on canal side road margins and slams. They neglected by the society in this dismal conditions those affected by humanitarian erases to the physical needs and right to life. We identified 60 villages at Delta area in Krishna and Guntur Districts.
We Bible Faith Ministries, vision and aim of working agilest poverty hunger, and we dedicated to promote them towards gospel and welfare of the people at the grass root level who ever it be and without any discrimination and whole hearted services.
Now we are proposing to take up projects following below in order.
Infancy / Infant and mother nutrition program set 100 villages in Krishna and Guntur District.
1. Formation of self help groups 4. Rehabilitation programmes
2. Literacy program for rural areas 5. Income generating programmes
3. Health and Immunization 6. Awareness programme on AIDS
7. To give support for the orphan, Semi – orphans, widows and old aged people, thought socially, mentally, physically and spiritually.
We would like to know more about your organization is providing assistance to search above projects and other priorities of your organization also we would like to receive the necessary guidelines and it any, specified project application, common grants formats so as to enable us, to submit a detailed project proposal with all relevant documents from our end.
We shall be extremely thankful if you would kindly fine time at the earliest in attending to our request please feel free to contact us for any further information in this matter origin. I request you kindly forward our proposal for problem of people needs of the area people
Thanking you Sir,
Best wishes and regards.
Yours sincerely,
(P.Devadanam)
Good Samaratian Baptist Ministries
Challapalli-521 126,
Krishna District,
Andhrapradesh,
South India
September 18, 2008 at 4:48 am
Dear Sir,
greetings to you in the name of Lord Jesus Christ,
I am very glad to write this proposal to you with love of God in Christ I introduce my self through this letter P. Devadanam GSB. Ministries the Christian Non profitable organization (Christian Faith Based Organisation ) working at costal Andhra Pradesh south India .
We come to know that you noble organization is providing funds for women and child welfare programs (who are victims of hunger and poverty) community development project and Health awareness comps. At rural and Simi urban areas. Our organization GSBM Ministries (means care) is working same areas with out caste, down – trodden communities and low – income people. Whose are like, more than 98% of Illiterates and working hired slave & rat hunters. Scavengers, sweepers and rishapullars. They are homeless living on canal side road margins and slams. They neglected by the society in this dismal conditions those affected by humanitarian erases to the physical needs and right to life. We identified 60 villages at Delta area in Krishna and Guntur Districts.
We GSBM Ministries, vision and aim of working agilest poverty hunger, and we dedicated to promote them towards gospel and welfare of the people at the grass root level who ever it be and without any discrimination and whole hearted services.
Now we are proposing to take up projects following below in order.
Infancy / Infant and mother nutrition program set 100 villages in Krishna and Guntur District.
1. Formation of self help groups 4. Rehabilitation programmes
2. Literacy program for rural areas 5. Income generating programmes
3. Health and Immunization 6. Awareness programme on AIDS
7. To give support for the orphan, Semi – orphans, widows and old aged people, thought socially, mentally, physically and spiritually.
We would like to know more about your organization is providing assistance to search above projects and other priorities of your organization also we would like to receive the necessary guidelines and it any, specified project application, common grants formats so as to enable us, to submit a detailed project proposal with all relevant documents from our end.
We shall be extremely thankful if you would kindly fine time at the earliest in attending to our request please feel free to contact us for any further information in this matter origin. I request you kindly forward our proposal for problem of people needs of the area people
Thanking you Sir,
Best wishes and regards.
Yours sincerely,
(P.Devadanam)
Good Samaratian Baptist Ministries
Challapalli-521 126,
Krishna District,
Andhrapradesh,
South India
http://gsbm.fcmteams.org