Devoting Ourselves

Excerpt from Treasuring Christ Together as a Church on Multiple Campuses by John Piper

[References to Acts 2]

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1) Christ himself builds his church.

We plant. We water. But the Lord gives life. Verse 47b: “The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” The Lord did this. Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Church strategies are not decisive. God is decisive. There is far too much emphasis in the American church on the human dimension of church planting and church growth, and far too little emphasis on the divine dimension. Let there be no mistake: Treasuring Christ Together, as a strategy for spreading a passion for God, is not decisive in whether anyone cries out, “What must I do to be saved?” That is a work of the Holy Spirit. And we should be on our faces crying out for it continually.

2) The Lord uses the word of God in the mouth of his servants to grow the church.

Verse 37: “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart.” It was God who cut them to the heart. But God used the word spoken by Peter. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word about Christ (Romans 10:17). Bethlehem is a word-oriented church. We aim to be a Bible-saturated people. We believe it is staggeringly significant that God has spoken—that he has inspired a book. Campus and church plants and Global Diaconate teams are built around the word of God.

3) There was one church in Jerusalem, and it was big and growing.

At least as far as we know, this church was conceived as one church. In Acts 8:1, Luke writes, “There arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem.” Not “churches.” One church. In Acts 11:22, Luke writes, “The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.” Not “churches” but “church.” And in Acts 15:4, Luke describes the welcome of Paul and Barnabas in Jerusalem: “When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders.” Not churches, but church.

So there is no evidence that the believers in Jerusalem were several churches. But consider the numbers. In Acts 2:41, “there were added that day about three thousand souls.” In Acts 4:4, Luke says, “Many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.” And the word for “men” refers to males. So the real number of believers was at least double that, because it says in Acts 5:14, “More than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women.” So we have one church of at least ten thousand members. How did they do that? How were they structured? What did church look like?

Don’t misunderstand. We are not operating on the assumption that if we knew the exact structure of the Jerusalem church or the Philippian church or the Corinthian church we would have to structure ourselves just that way. We believe that where the New Testament commands us to do something or implies that it is right to do it in all times and all places, we obey. But there is no command in the New Testament that says, “Replicate all the structures that you see in the early church.” Some are commanded; some are not. Our aim was simply, “Can we see some guidelines? Can we see mandates and prohibitions if there are any, and can we see opportunities and permissions?”

4) This church met in large gatherings to hear the apostles in the temple, it seems, and in small gatherings in their homes.

Verse 46: “Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.” So it says they met every day in the temple. But be careful you don’t jump to the conclusion that all believers worshipped every day in the temple. Maybe. But I doubt it. More likely is that it means: There were Christians there every day listening to the apostles, not that they were all there every day.

The temple was large, perhaps a total of 26-35 acres depending on the exact measurement of the cubit. The court of the Gentiles could hold huge crowds. But an apostle shouting loud enough to be heard by ten thousand people would have been totally disruptive to the ongoing life of the temple. More likely is that there were gatherings of several hundred perhaps two or three times during the day every day and the apostles shared the teaching.

The reason I say they were probably being taught by the apostles is that, just like it says in Acts 2:46, “Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes . . .” so it says in Acts 5:42, “Every day, in the temple and from house to house, [the apostles] did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.” So we know that the church “devoted themselves to the apostles teaching” (2:42) and gathered daily in the temple (2:46) and that the apostles taught daily in the temple (5:42). So it seems to me that they had organized themselves so that as one church of over ten thousand they could be instructed by the apostles in larger groups in the temple courts and meet in smaller groups from house to house. We don’t know for sure how they did it. But we take heart that it appears they had to wrestle with some of the same things we do, and they did the best they could structurally with ten thousand people.

5) One more thing about this church: They encountered problems along the way owing to their size and their ethnic diversity.

Acts 6:1 says, “Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number [there’s the size cause], a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews [there’s the ethnic or cultural cause] because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.” In other words, even though they tried to structure themselves to meet everyone’s needs, it didn’t always work and they had to figure out some new structures.

So we see ourselves as one church, growing, by God’s sovereign grace and through the instrument of his word, from two thousand to four thousand to ten thousand people. And we believe that it is possible—indeed, strategic—to structure ourselves on multiple campuses and in hundreds of home groups so that the larger temple experience and the smaller home experience happens as we devote ourselves to the teaching of the apostles (the New Testament) and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

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