Chairman of Willow Creek Association (USA)
There is nothing like the local church when the local church is working right. The local church has been entrusted with carrying the life-changing message of Jesus Christ and it’s the only hope I see for this hurting and broken world. There’s nothing else like it
Not only does the local church help lost people come to faith it helps lonely broken-hearted people cope with the brutality of evil in this world. When the local church is working right people of faith help bear the burden of those who have nowhere else to turn. Lost people get found lonely people find community the bereaved find comfort the committed grow deeper and stronger in their faith. In Acts 2:43 it says that sometimes people in the first church just stood in awe. Throughout the past 30 years I have had that experience myself over and over.
Helping churches like yours live out the Acts 2 vision for the local church is the very foundation of our work here at Willow Creek Association. That call began for me more than 30 years ago when I sat under the teaching of a seminary professor Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian. I remember him pulling out the Acts 2 text and reading about that very first biblically functioning community. I can still hear him say “Students do you really understand that there was once a community of faith that was totally devoted to God? This group of people said to God ‘We will go your way. Whatever you tell us to do we’ll do. Whatever you tell us to stop doing we will stop doing. You call us out on a limb of faith we will follow.’”
He explained that this community of believers was irrationally committed to one another. They took meals together. They shared their property. The rich got rid of some of their stuff to make sure the poor didn’t live in need. The gender walls dropped. The racial walls dropped. They loved each other in outrageous ways. And they were so committed to the propagation of the Gospel that when Christians started to be sawn in half thrown into prison fed to the lions they met in an upper room for prayer. They didn’t pray for the overthrow of the Roman government or for the persecution to stop. Instead in Acts 4 we read that they prayed for the boldness and the courage to propagate the Gospel even if it cost them their lives.
This professor who has since become a life-long mentor would go on and on about this first community of faith “This was a church of people who just abandoned themselves to God and into loving relationships with one another. They even abandoned themselves in the propagation of the Gospel at the cost of their own blood.” Sometimes near the end of this extemporaneous vision casting he would say “Tell me if such a community of believers existed in the first century A.D. in Jerusalem why can’t one exist this day? Has God lost his power? Has the Holy Spirit lost his stuff? Is the Gospel no longer capable of transforming lives? Why can’t it happen today?”
Why can’t it happen today? I believe it can. Through my travels to meet with churches and church leaders around the world I have the privilege to meet many who truly are giving their lives to the establishment and development of Acts 2 communities of faith. Coming alongside these churches in whatever ways we can and helping churches everywhere recognize what’s at stake—the hope of the world—is what drives our efforts and keeps us awake at night.
If God has given you even a mustard seed of faith to believe your church can become an Acts 2 biblically functioning community I pray for God to clear your sight to see the potential of the church the centrality of the church the beauty of the church. I pray for your group of believers to grow stronger get more loving get fired up and move forth on a mission that really can happen. And if we’re able to be of encouragement and of support to you in your efforts we’d count it our privilege.
