The church has only two options: evangelise or fossilise. When we fail to share our faith with those outside the church, we either end up in a holding pattern or dying a slow death. The New Testament church’s growth is described like this: ‘The Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.’ Not only did they influence every level of society, but their enemies said, ‘These who have turned the world upside down have come here too’ (Acts 17:6 NKJV). Have a think about this question: if your church closed its doors tomorrow, would anyone other than your congregation notice the difference? Think about those early believers. Their assignment seemed geographically impossible; how were they to reach people in far-off places? They had no air travel, radio, television, printing presses, internet, social media, or any other modern ways of communicating the gospel to the world. It seemed legally impossible; they were forbidden by the government authorities to speak in Jesus’ name. And it seemed socially impossible; after all, who would really listen to a bunch of Galileans, who were considered uncultured and lacking class? But they were witnesses through the power of the Holy Spirit, and people did listen. They did so much with so little, and we seem to do so little with so much. It’s estimated that if just 10 per cent of the members in the average church got serious about evangelism, their church would double in one year. The word translated ‘witness’ is the same word that we get our English word martyr from. Those early believers reached the world for Christ because they were willing to devote their lives for His cause. And we must be too!
