A Spirit-Empowered Church

An Acts 2 Ministry Model

Alton Garrison

• Publisher: Influence Resources
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781681540030
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

It's not a mystery why some churches grow, some remain stagnant, and others decline. The biblical principles for spiritual multiplication are evident in the pages of the Scriptures...

if we'll only notice them.

In A Spirit-Empowered Church, Alton Garrison points us to the heart of dynamic church growth: creating Spirit-empowered disciples who are involved in five activities—connect, grow, serve, go, and worship—to change individuals, families, and communities with the love and power of God's mighty Spirit.Combining a strong biblical approach with inspirational insights and personal stories, Garrison shares the Acts 2 church model that can renew the spiritual vitality of your congregation.

The church of Acts 2 turned the first-century world upside down for Jesus. God wants to use your church to do the same today.

UNIT III

BECOMING AN
ACTS 2 CHURCH

11	BALANCING THE SPIRITUAL AND THE STRATEGIC

The question you must answer is: “Does God have a plan for my church—or not?” If you agree with me that God has a plan for every church, the next question is equally important: “Is the Holy Spirit willing to share it with me?”

The entire Acts 2 process is built on the understanding that God has a plan and the Holy Spirit wants to reveal it to us. Why wouldn’t He want to share with you the direction He has for your church?

This all fits in with what we’ve done in the last few chapters—construct a framework to receive from God. The process isn’t God’s plan, but it is the avenue and the method for mining His plan.

We established that our mission is universal, we began to build a vision around people, and we identified the core values and behaviors that reflect those values. Now, it’s time to put it all together into a strategic plan that will help you get from where you are (your values) to where you want to go (your vision).

Now we return to the five biblical functions of the first-century church. Described in detail in Acts 2:42–47, these functions form the pathway from values to vision. The five functions are actually a template you can use to develop a plan for your church, so consider this chapter a primer, introducing you to these functions as a way to help you discover God’s plan.

However, before we get into the functions, we must recognize that without Holy Spirit empowerment in our churches, the mission, vision, values, and plans merely amount to programs. Before we talk further about a strategy for building a plan from the five functions, it’s important to understand that any strategic plan finds its genesis in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We must focus first on becoming inspired (think about the indwelled disciples and Peter’s preaching on Pentecost) and reinvigorated—only then will we have the necessary power and perspective to implement any sort of strategy.

The odd thing is that in some churches, we see resistance to calls for revitalization while others resist the idea of planning. Some don’t see the need for the work of the Holy Spirit or feel their churches have enough of the Spirit already, and others act like the Holy Spirit has no place in a planning meeting. The truth is that we need Him in every component of our lives and churches.

Every church can use more of the Spirit. Needing revitalization doesn’t necessarily imply your church is dead and lifeless. Whatever the condition of our church, we can all cry with Isaiah, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens! That You would come down! That the mountains might shake at Your presence … to make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence! When You did awesome things for which we did not look, You came down, the mountains shook at Your presence” (Isa. 64:1–3).

In speaking to John the Baptist’s followers, Jesus explained how He was revitalizing the Jews: The blind saw, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, and the deaf heard. The dead rose up, and people received the gospel. Then He said something curious: “And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” (Matt. 11:6).

That is the message we would give to each and every church: Blessed is the church that is not offended because of Him.

We do ourselves a great disservice if we think that because we’re in a Spirit-filled church we have nothing to gain by praying for, seeking, and expecting revitalization. We can miss out if we assume we’re already as full of the Holy Spirit in our personal lives and services as we can be. Don’t be offended by this talk of revitalization if you’re in a church that’s already experiencing the Holy Spirit. Instead, see this as an opportunity to bring it to a higher spiritual level by being hungry for more of Him!

In addition, don’t think that the Holy Spirit has no place in a strategic plan because the Spirit who can inspire us spontaneously is the same Spirit who helps us learn God’s plans for our churches.

SPIRIT AND STRATEGY IN HARMONY

One of the churches that participated in the Acts 2 Journey had an amazing and unique story—a case study in what can happen when the Spirit and the strategic work together.

When we began working with them, there were exactly twenty-eight people in the congregation. Interestingly, fifteen of them were high school students. The pastor had been a youth pastor, and this was his first lead role. The church was in a virtual ghost town, and the church building may have been the only functioning public building that remained in this particular community. The pastor had brought a team of people with him, and five of them were high school students. What further stood out about these students was that they were very intense in their prayers.

One of our Acts 2 team members visited their church on a Sunday morning for the prayer service that preceded the 10:15 a.m. service. He arrived a little late because he missed a turn, but he walked into one of the most intense prayer meetings he had ever been in—and teenagers led it! The young man leading was a high school senior, and the atmosphere was like a youth camp, even though there were some older folks present as well. Students sat in the front rows of the church, and the older saints sat behind them supportively.

The dream team that came to the Acts 2 Journey consisted of the pastor, his wife, the dad of one of the students, and five high school students. Their dream team proceeded to build a plan together, and they were just as intense about building that plan as they were about praying before their services. They launched their plan right before several of the young people graduated from high school.

The students who graduated were leaving for college just as the fruit of their plan began to grow. Soon the church began to grow in health and numbers. All of the new people were unchurched families from the area, and the pastor found himself in need of basic discipleship tools because he had many people who had never opened a Bible before.

These were exactly the kind of people the students had dreamed of reaching!

Completely against prevailing trends, where young people leave their rural communities and never return, several of these students decided to change their college plans and go to school closer to home. They wanted to be a part of what God was doing in that church as a result of the plans they had helped to form.

This is a wonderful example of what can happen when the Spirit and the strategic come together in harmony. Having a plan doesn’t replace passion for God; it shapes that passion into a focused plan and then executes it.

Having a plan doesn’t replace passion for God; it shapes that passion into a focused plan and then executes it.

We sometimes act like anything from the Holy Spirit has to be last minute and that making plans is antithetical to being led by the Spirit. We confuse being Spirit-led with being spontaneous.

Some leaders fail to realize that the same Holy Spirit who directs us in the moment can also inspire us during the planning stages. Worship services are terrific examples of this. Most worship leaders will plan out the songs they’re going to sing even though they want their worship to be Spirit-led. The compromise is having a plan but remaining flexible; if the Spirit spontaneously puts a song on the worship leader’s or pastor’s heart, we must be able to flow with the change.

A vision without a plan to carry it out is nothing more than a dream. However, when we create our plans under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we position ourselves to catch God’s plan for us and our churches.

PEOPLE WITH A PLAN

The church in Acts 2 was a Spirit-filled church led by disciples who were Spirit-baptized and Spirit-directed. We read about their empowerment in Acts 2:4: “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Peter later confirmed that this was what the prophet Joel had described—God was pouring out His Spirit on all flesh (see Acts 2:14–21). This outpouring was what the disciples had waited for; it was the promised power to witness (Acts 1:8).

This was God’s plan for His people on earth. Contrary to some thinking, the presence and flow of the Holy Spirit doesn’t imply a complete loss of order. God established a plan for His Spirit-empowered church, and we can read about it in Acts 2:42–47, which clarifies the functions or activities of the newly formed church. The plan hinged on fellowship, discipleship, gift-oriented ministry, evangelism, and worship. (It’s interesting to note that revival is what the church first experiences; evangelism is what the church then engages in. Revival is periodic; evangelism is continuous. Revival cannot last; evangelism must not stop.)

God does nothing out of order. There’s a divine purpose in all He does. Similarly, He didn’t establish a pattern on this earth devoid of order and motivated only by how we individually interpret the Spirit’s promptings. No, God had something in mind, and because we have His blueprint, we are people of that plan.

When you’ve established your mission, vision, and values, it’s time to develop a strategic plan based on God’s model. If your vision is where you or your church are going in the next three to five years and your core values determine your actions and your identity, then the strategic plan is how you get from where you are (values) to where you want to go (vision). We build a strategic plan around the functions of the church: connect, grow, serve, go, and worship.

A congregation is like people in a car. Our vision of the preferred future is where we are going. Our mission is why we’re going on the journey together. Connect, grow, serve, go, and worship are what is going on inside the car, and our values and chosen priorities are the rules of the road and the road itself. Finally, the strategic plan is how we’re going to get to our preferred future.

We go forward with both the power of the Spirit and a plan.

COMMUNITY PASTORS

One of the more interesting Act 2 Journey stories resulted from a scholarship to the Journey that I gave away at a gathering in Phoenix. I said that the first one who got up to the front would get the scholarship, and a guy in the front row ran forward immediately. His wife, Kassie, was actually the pastor, but she and Greg were both Bible school graduates who were pastoring in a little town in the mountains of northeastern Arizona—a place where people go to hide from the government.

We go forward with both the power of the Spirit and a plan.

The community consisted predominantly of heavily armed survivalists or extreme Mormons, and, for a host of reasons, 60 of the 180 children in the elementary school had no official address. Many people didn’t have Social Security numbers because they were living off the grid.

It’s difficult to establish a church there because the people are afraid to be known. Imagine trying to build a church in a place where as soon as you get to know people a little bit, they disappear into hiding!

When Greg and Kassie received the scholarship, the church had seven people in it—not even large enough to engage in the Journey. But we determined that their scholarship would include paying for one of our team members to go out there for a weekend to help them build a strategy. He went out for the weekend, met with the couple, and discovered that they were a great, praying, and passionate couple. Still, it was difficult to come up with a plan for how they could effectively minister to their community.

One of the seven people in the church was a woman who taught fifth grade at the elementary school where they met for Sunday services. They began to build a plan around the idea of connecting to the community through its children. In fact, the goal was not to build the church at all. The plan that came together was for this couple to become pastors of the community. They realized they might never get people to come to their church, so they would go to the people.

The strategy centered on partnering with the elementary school, and the pastor and her husband sought to respond to members of the community in moments when they needed spiritual help.

The following year, this little church was incredibly excited to have more than thirty people in attendance on Easter Sunday. The best part was that nearly two dozen people come forward for salvation! A couple of years later, Greg went to work for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program as a counselor and chaplain. Kassie pastors the church and works in a convenience store, but throughout that community they are known as Pastor Kassie and Pastor Greg. Everyone knows where to turn when they need spiritual help.

Having a plan was a key element in this amazing story. Although our traditional thinking dictated that the church was too small for the Acts 2 Journey, it wasn’t too small for God! He had to reveal a plan to us because “traditional thinking” wasn’t going to work in that community. Their plan required a revival in their thinking, and the Holy Spirit led them to an unconventional solution for reaching lives.

THE PLAN IS ABOUT PEOPLE

The strategic plan’s primary focus should be to nurture people to become that God wants them to be—not merely to facilitate our programs. The strategic plan uses the programs and ministries of the church, but remember this point: It’s all about the people.

A vision takes the mission and biblical systems of the church and articulates them towards a preferred future, communicating where the church is going. In the next few chapters, we’ll spend more time on these biblical functions as part of the process that takes us from where we are to where we want to be. Your challenge will be to define what each of the five functions means for your church in order to develop a vision statement for each.

Using the template of the five biblical functions, you’ll begin to uncover God’s plan. For many pastors and leaders, this will be the clearest plan that you’ve ever completed for your church, and that’s what makes this so unique and amazing. The model from Acts 2 isn’t about constricting churches; it’s about helping them hear from God and providing a template to articulate His plan.

12

CONNECT

In our current context, connect is about far more than fellowship. It’s also about hospitality and welcoming visitors warmly so they want to return and become a part of your body of believe...