Before a Watching World

Show me a church that doesn’t have a constant flow of new believers coming in, and I will show you a church that is stagnating. The church needs new believers to remind us of what it is all about. And new believers need the church to stabilize them.

When mature believers are around young believers and they see them discover for the first time what it means to know Jesus, it can revive them. It’s like the difference between going to Disneyland with adults and going with children. We see things differently as adults. But when we go to Disneyland with children, everything changes because we see it all through their eyes.

The Bible tells us “the generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself” (Proverbs 11:25). New believers will replenish us. The first-century church had new believers continually coming in. As we read in Acts 2:47, “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

What an attractive church this was to a lost and watching world as these believers learned, loved, cared, worshiped, and prayed. They looked out for each other. As a result, the world watched and paid attention—and people came to faith.

Witnessing is not just something we do; it’s something we are. Jesus said, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

There was regular, even daily, growth in the first-century church. Evangelism wasn’t a periodic event here and there. They were engaging in it continually. And every church ought to be. Every week we should be giving people an opportunity to come to Christ.