The first session was prefaced with a winds orchestra and organ playing a number of instrumental pieces, conducted by the Grace Community Church minister of music, Clayton Erb. I’m seated in the 7th row back as we prepare for the commencement of the conference.

The Master’s Seminary student body joined together as a choir to open the session. They shared with us a beautiful rendition of “Be Thou My Vision”.

John MacArthur then stepped up the pulpit (which rose up out of the stage!) and offered a formal welcome to all the conferees. He thanked the choir, and as well made mention of the numerous conferees (indicated by a show of hands) that are staying in the homes of members of the church. As he prepared to pray for the conference, someone offered a loud “thank you,” to which MacArthur replied with a “You’re welcome… and there won’t be any answering back to the preacher!” *grin*

He prayed then for the conference, that God would accomplish His purpose for His glory in every life, and committed the time to the Lord in the name of Christ.

After the choir performed another piece, the whole congregation of men was invited to rise and sing together “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,” followed by “O Worship the King.” What a rousing sound to hear so many boldly rejoicing in Christ in song!

We were then treated to a moving performance of “Blessed Assurance” performed by baritone Jubilant Skyes, with Mark Grace on piano.

John MacArthur then took to the pulpit again to bring us the first keynote message, joking about having to follow Jubilant’s act many times (”Please, one more, one more!”). What follows will be in the first person as Dr. MacArthur preached it.

Introduction

I want to begin by expressing his desire to set the tone to the conference (and then made an chuckling allusion to last year’s controversial opening keynote on eschatology). I want to suggest that the heart of my message is “Why Every True Calvinist Must Affirm a Biblical Ecclesiology” (and reject church growth theory). If you believe the words of Matthew 16, that God has chosen and determined who He will redeem and written their names down in the book of life; if you believe that Jesus will receive all those the Father gives to him, keep them, lose none… the question is, “How does church growth theory fit into that?”

Sovereign election has already determined who will constitute the redeemed church. That was determined in the counsels of the Trinity before time began. Furthermore, our Lord has laready fully propitiated the wrath of the Father for the sins of the elect. Scripture teaches that there was an actual atonement. It is Biblical to use words like definite, actual, real, specific with reference to the atonement. Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice was designed to procure salvation/atonement, not just to make it potential/possible. Christ did not do on the cross the same thing for the people in hell as he did for those in heaven.

This is what Scripture affirms, though we defer to another time to defend it. That leads us to this necessary conclusion: since the Lord has determined the church, draws, regenerates, justifies his Church and brings his church through eternal sanctification to glory, this is a supernatural work. But it’s not a work apart from means. Through which God does His work and we participate. It is the Lord giving life, giving repentance, giving saving faith to his church; and it will not fall church by one soul.

The question for us is this: as the Lord builds his church, by what means does he do it? And secondly, has He revealed the mans to us. If we are undershepherds of Jesus Christ to be the human instruments to build His church, we need to understand how He does it. We need to get in line with divine pattern. There are many ways to build the “first church of the tares.” Behind which Satan is the real power. It can be done very effectively, it can be big and enduring. The gnostics did it, and it’s still around. The Roman Catholics have done it, the liberals, the cults. They’re all still around. The church of the tares is actually bigger than the church of the wheat. Even those who call themselves evangelicals today are busy doing it. There are anumber of places called “churches” where tares gather in increasing numbers. The successful assemblies of tares will eagerly market their skills at “tare development.” It can be very seductive to those motivated by pride, numbers, popularity. If you want to compete with other “tare pastors” there is ample information, seminars, data on the internet, to work on building your church of the tares with a smattering of wheat. However, if you serve Christ and recognize him as the head and builder of the church, then all you want to know is, “How can I be useful to him in the buiding of his church?” And that is why you are at the Shepherd’s Conference.

So back to our question, and the answer is not vague, complicated, difficult. It is simple, straightforward. It is so clear as to be inescapable, and singular as to make every one of us to be duty-bound to faithful to His will and means so clearly revealed. If you are caught up in chasing every fad for church growth, if you are buying the bags of church growth stuff that clever marketers are selling, if you’re reading every survey to analyze culture… I want to throw the gauntlet down today, and urge you to make a choice. You want to to be a means by which Christ builds His church, that’s a different thing altogether.

The heartbreaking thing, I’m not going to say anything you don’t know, or haven’t known for years. It’s not hidden under some obscure historical contextural reality or Greek nuance. It’s a plain message. Christ said he would build His church, and the book of Acts shows how He did that.

Is it too obvious to say that the book of Acts was given by the Holy Spirit to show us how Christ builds His church? Not in theory, but in reality. This is exactly how the Lord went about building the church He promised He would build. I want us to particularly see the amazing story of church growth in the early part of Acts. And this is only the beginning. There’s a hint at the size of this in Acts 2:39, “… as many as the Lord our God shall call to Himself.” In that verse is divine sovereign election, effectual call, the substance of everything from the opening remarks about the fact that the Lord is building His church. It’s for those who come after you, who are far away from you. This is almost an infinite verse, going beyond generations and places until finally we get to heaven and we see people from every tribe, tongue and nation gathering around the throne worshipping the Lamb.

How successful was Christ’s effort in the early church? Acts 1:12ff shows how in one day the church goes from 120 to 3000 souls. The Lord is building His church. In v. 47, “and the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.” Acts 4:4, “and many of those who heard the message believed and the number of the men came to be about 5000.” The number is growing and growing. Acts 5:14, “multitudes of men and women were constantly added to the church.” Now it’s in the multitudes of thousands. Go to 6:7, 9:21, 12:34, 16:4-5, 17:12, 19:20, over and over, the church continues to grow. So when we say that the simple obvious theme is the book of Acts is to answer, “How does Christ build his church?” it will help us for us to go back and see the components that produced this church growth. This is coming out of no history, it’s the first generation church.

What are those elements?

First, they had a transcendent message. This is so obvious it may those of who have embarrass those of us who have forsaken it. What is the agency by which the Spirit produces salvation? The word of God (Romans 10). So we understand that salvation comes by means of the Holy Spirit using the message. And that message is a singular message: if you preach any other message, you’re accursed. Any other gospel, you’re cursed. By definition this singular message must be transcendent. What is plain is that the message of the early church transcended all cultures, levels of education, notions of status, nations, etc. Please note, there is no “global village.” National identity was fixed and unmixed in those contexts, unlike the “universal mentality” we’re used to in our day and age. There is no mass media producing “world norms.” There were deeply engrained cultural perspectives all over the globe and they had no effect on the message.

Going back to Acts 1:8, “You shall receive power [for evangelism] when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be witnesses of me …” Note the utter indifference to geographical, racial, ethnic issues. The power of the gospel is all that matters, you can take it to the ends of the earth. 2:5, the Jews in Jerusalem would’ve had distinct characteristics. They were all there at Pentecost; the power of the Spirit came and they were speaking in languages. Note v. 8 how they hear in their own language from all variety of regions! “We hear them in our own tongues speaking the mighty deeds of God.” All that is necessary for the power of God to be released in a given situation is that the truth of God be proclaimed. It’s irrelevant what the cultural expecations are. Then Peter preaches his sermon, and all this diversity of people were pierced to the heart in response to his exposition of Psalm 16. It is a message of sin and repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Doesn’t matter what nation you’re from, what language; the message never, ever changes. We know who is going to respond to his message (v. 39), “those who the Lord shall call to Himself.” Not only did he not identify with the generation, he said, “You’ve got to be saved from it [”this perverse generation”].”

Practically, the transcendence of the message means that the message never changes, no matter who you are talking to. The Jews said, it’s a stumbling block. The Gentiles called it foolishness. Paul responds, I’ll continue to preach only Christ and Him crucified. Why would you change the message when the natural man doesn’t understand the things of God (1 Cor 2). So the apostles went out with absolute disdain for “any contextualization at all. The modern cry for contextualization is a curse. Because people are spending all their time trying to figure out whether they should have holes in their Levis as if that’s a mean to drawing in the elect. Instead of spending time figuring out the Biblical context. The apostles crossed hard national social cultural lines and the message never, ever changed. It’s the Word of the Lord. Contextualization, JM calls it “zip code ministry.” Is that what you want? “We’re big in our zip code!” You must affirm the message transcended it’s original culture. it ignores all the pecularity of style and envere descends to musical styles or clothing. So he posed this question, “Can your message go to any person, every person? not only in your zip code, but in your town? In your state, country? Can your message go anywhere in the world? Can you take your sermons anywhere on the road and preach them?”

I’ve preached my messages just about everywhere on the planet: from the high mountains of Ecuador to the business buildings of Hong Kong. And I never change the message. We have many translations of GTY radio, books, study Bibles… and the message never changes. Or… do we need an expiration date on our sermon CDs?

It’s pretty obvious: the Lord builds His church with straightforward, simple gospel truth. The Corinthians were bugged by the lack of contextualization, but Paul didn’t care. John the Baptist, all the OT prophets, and Jesus Himself didn’t care about contextualization. Don’t appeal to anything to people that is innate to their fallenness. Wherever their corruption goes, don’t go there. The true gospel has to be alien.

Second, they had a regenerate congregation. There’s an odd idea! Is it too obvious to say the church of Jesus Christ is an assembly of true believers? To call an assembly of non-believers “the church” is preposterous! There is a serious defect in a minister gathering non-believers and calling it a church. Modern evangelicalism seems to love gathering non-believers into a building and call it a church, and call it church growth. Maybe there’s a better way to identify these places, let’s call them “non-churches.”

In the early church it was about a regenerate congregation. Acts 2:42: they were devoting themselves to the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer. You had 3000 people who’d made a profession of Christ, were baptized; and doing nothing but those things that are connected to spiritual life. The apostles’ teaching, fellowship (the interchange of ministry, the “one anothers”), coming the Lord’s table, and prayer. That’s a real church, doing what real Christians do. You probably read sometime back about Willow Creek admitting they’ve been doing it wrong all along… and then had a conference with Brian MacLaren about how to find new ways to collect non-Christians. That’s not a church. Instead here in Acts 2, you have saints doing real ministry, “all those who believed…” That’s a church! They had all things in common, giving people to had need, day by day continuing in one mind, devoted to spiritual disciplines, taking meals together with sincerity of heart. That’s a church. What is the result? V. 47, the Lord was adding to their number day by day! In a matter of weeks, thousands and tens of thousands.

The Lord defines His church as real believers engaged in the spiritual disciplines, gathering for spiritual purposes. This is far cry from what goes on in the “non-church” today. An event is designed for unbelievers, and a few straggler believers in the assembly of tares getting nothing to lift them up from their spiritual weakness. The Lord builds his chruch from the foundation of true believers.

Third, when the Lord builds His church, it is marked by a valiant perseverance. You need a balance. The church is not to seek popularity. We understand that all who live godly will suffer persecution. The chuch does not seek to be popular, in its true expression, the essence of our message offends sinners. But the church should also gain some measure of respect in the world for the integrity, graciousness, etc. that comes with being a Christian. When in Acts there was a healing in the temple, and Peter healed the beggar, there were people in wonder & amazement at what took place. So there’s a sense in which people do see the church and see amazing evidences of transformed lives. They may see a drug addict, adulterer, criminal, totally transformed by the power of Christ. That’s why we see in Acts 5:13, “they held them in high esteem.” This is what Jesus meant by men “seeing your light and glorifying your Father in heaven.” We want to live lives of virtue and character and showing the power of the redeeming Christ. 1 Tim 3:7 says even elders are to have a good reputation with those outside of the church.

But alongside that general esteem or respect — and we’ve all experienced that from non-believers — they resent us for the message. The resentment comes at the point of the truth preached and proclaimed. So in the modern strategy, you big with the number one idea (”they like us becausewe’re nice”) and you pull back the rest so they keep on liking us. But if you continue with the message, they’ll start not to like us. So it was in Acts 2:36ff, “whom you crucified!” He’s talking to religious Jews. In 3:17ff, Peter calls his listeners to repent and return. Again the message clearly is repentance. Same again in 4:10ff, a continual tone of indictment. Same in 5:17ff. The picture that emerges is this: there is necessary a kind of integrity & virtue that’s manifest in the church and the world. But the message when preached honestly is rejected, it is hostile, it is offensive.

There’s a trend today to eliminate the law from evangelism. Prov 16:6 says by the fear of the Lord one keeps away from evil. But you only have that if you know what God demands. You can’t take the law away because (1) you take away from the work of the Spirit (convicting the world of sin & righteousness), and (2) you take away the ally in the unregenerate man (Romans 5) and his conscience accuses him even in the law already in the heart. We can’t back away from sin, righteousness, judgment, not perishing. This is an exclusive message that puts all those who do not believe in the category of those who are damned forever. We are called to alarm the sinner. That’s going to create hostility. Persecution. Jesus said it could even result in our losing our lives. And the early church felt it big. You would conclude from the early believers going to jail, if you were church growth, that “this is not good. We want to be accepted, we want to be liked by everyone. It’s tough enough to get them believe something that’s foolish. Tough enough to tell them they gotta be slaves to Christ. But to tell them they might be put in jail, executed? That’s not going to work!” Oh yes it is: “but many of those who heard the message believed… ” Persecution doesn’t retard the church. People come to salvation not because it’s an easy way, but because the Spirit of God draws them because they’ve been chosen by the Father!

You know the story of Acts 12:24. The church has a valiant perseverance in the face of persection. Even the threat of death cannot stop the church. We don’t need to mitigate the cost of becoming a Christian.

Fourth, the church growth plan in the book of Acts involves an evident purity. The biggest threat to the early church was this: there were so many signs & wonders, so many miracles that unbelievers might come to church for the wrong reasons. That’s the deadly danger. There are lots of sick people, diseased, disabled. Miracles were going on! This is beyond a light show, a rock band, skit or drama; it’s the real deal! And the fear in the church was that unbelievers would come in, and they knew that Satan would sow tares. So the wonder of it all had to be mitigated with a deadly fear. That fear had to be so great that it stopped non-Christians outside the door. This is upside-down from church growth strategy.

In Acts 5, God Himself provides the horror in Ananias and Sapphira. They tried to deceive the church, claiming to give everything they had, laying it at the apostles’ feet. I don’t think Ananias was a believer (”Satan fooled your heart”). And when his deception was revealed, Ananias dropped dead, and “great fear fell upon all who heard of it.” God was sending a message that you can’t fool your way into the church — you’re liable to drop dead in there. Then Ananias’ wife came in 3 hours later (JM joked, “Come on, how long does it take to do your hair!”). She’s coming in to make a show (JM also likes that church went on over 3 hours). Peter says to her, “Why is that you have agreed to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test… she immediately.. breathed her last.” (JM: “Nice job for early church ushers”). And the point: “Great fear came upon the whole church.” The church has to live in fear and awe of the holiness of God. The word went out from that city, community.

The church always of one accord, engaged in spiritual disciplines, in v. 13 the Lord got what he wanted, “none of the rest dared associate with them.” However, “the people held them in high esteem.” It’s a far cry from “Let’s go there, it’s fun.” No, it’s “Don’t go there, you’ll die!” What happened? Multitudes were added to the church? Why? it’s not a human thing. The Lord builds his church around a regenerate congregation committed to purity. The first instruction to the church is Mt. 18: it would be better to drown than to lead another believer into sin. You as a pastor or church leader never want to be responsible for leading another believer into sin.

As a pastor, I want to have joy with my people. But church is not about being a jokester, or clever pop jargon. It’s certainly not about coarse, dirty talk. It’s so interesting to watch the flow of church growth. It starts with meeting people at their social level (restaurants, peer groups). The second wave is all about felt needs (psychological connections). Now we’re in the third wave: sensually. Let’s connect at their visceral level. Let’s laugh at crudeness, rudeness. Let’s say explicit things on the pretense of identification. Planting evil thoughts in their minds and trying to recover them?! Worldliness: anything said or done that appeals to the flesh. If you can’t control your mouth, should you be in ministry? No, we pursue holiness, we take the high ground. True shepherds grieve over sin, they don’t lead their followers into fleshly thoughts (2 Cor 12). Gal 4:19, shepherds are not satisfied until Christ is fully formed in their people. You pursue godliness, holiness; and the Lord will add to His church, because it’s His!

Finally, a qualified leadership. The trend is against this in the “church of the tares” movement. Untrained, unqualified, untested people with no accountability. But look at Acts 6, the need to minister to some Hellenistic widows. There’s a call for leadership in v. 3. So they select seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom, to take care of the tables. Why? When they wanted spiritual leaders, they wanted spiritual leaders! What are you looking for in the leadership of your church? They chose men who fit these criteria! They weren’t looking for men full of business savvy, marketing experience, entrepeneurial background. They wanted people full of the Spirit able to minister to people with the Word of God. What happened? The church kept growing, “obedient to the faith.”

All of this happens in the power of the Holy Spirit.

One more consideration in conclusion: there is clear instruction in the New Testament about the kind of church the Lord rejects. It is contained in Revelation 2-3. Two churches out of seven he acknowledges and affirms: Smyrna and Philadelphia. The rest he condemns:

• Ephesus: no love for Christ
• Pergamus: tolerating error/heresy
• Thyatira: comfortable with sin
• Sardis: programs and no life
• Laodicea: the church at room temperature, upsets nobody. Lukewarm. Popular with everyone.

Seven times those letters end like this, “let him who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church.” Rev. 3:20 is Christ knocking, saying, “Do you have a place for me in your church?” Are you going to part of a church where Christ is the head?