Jesus said:
“I am going to send you what my Father has promised, but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
Today we’re talking about growing your church in the Spirit and discussing the purpose of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told the disciples to wait until the Holy Spirit had come, and then the disciples went out in mass and preached boldly.
God added well over 8,000 new believers to the church in just 3 days.
Talk about church growth!
Your church needs to grow in the Spirit and this means understanding that the Holy Spirit’s role is to reach the lost.
As you reach outward it’s the Holy Spirit who enables and empowers you.
Acts says don’t you dare preach the gospel until the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
Well, guess what, the Holy Spirit is here and he’s ready to pounce into action if you would be bold enough to go out.
I grew up in a Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirit-filled Church with people being slain in the Spirit, praying in tongues and prophesying happening regularly in meetings.
Looking through the book of Acts I understood the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to empower us to be witnesses.
That’s not what I was seeing in the church – the meetings were predictable, the same people prophesying the same thing every week and I became frustrated…
I cried out to God because I didn’t understand why I only saw the Holy Spirit at work on believers in churches but not unbelievers outside.
I looked at the Toronto blessing, the Brownsville revival and the Lakeland revival – again I saw the Holy Spirit at work with believers but these cities were not changed.
In Acts, it says within days the disciples had turned the city of Jerusalem upside down.
So, hungry for truth, I decided to dig a little deeper into the Scriptures, looking at the Holy Spirit’s intended role in Kingdom expansion and Church building.
Let’s take a brief look at what the Bible has to say about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the ministry offices and our individual God-given abilities.
“There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.
And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.”
The Gifts Of The Holy Spirit
Read 1 Corinthians 12 carefully and we learn that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, healing, faith, words of knowledge, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues and interpretation.
“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant.”
Who do the gifts belong to?
The Holy Spirit. Not you. There’s an emphasis here that these gifts are given by the same Spirit for the benefit of everyone, as He wills and as the need arises.
“There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all… But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.”
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Ministries
Who do these ministries belong to?
They are gifts from Jesus to the church, so if you have the gift of an apostle it doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to the church.
“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”
Its purpose? To equip the saints and to build up the church.
I no longer say “I’m an evangelist – use me”. The gift belongs to the church which means the gift is not identified until the church begins to draw on the gift.
Abilities
In Romans 12, Paul stresses the importance of working together for the benefit of the whole church according to our natural talents and abilities.
He includes the gifts of prophecy, serving, teaching, encouraging, giving and leading.
Whether you’re good at administration, media, leading worship, design, counselling, getting a group of people together, welcoming, whatever you’re good at – God has given you these abilities to serve the church, each one of us complementing the other.
As leaders, it’s our job to recognise the giftings God has put into our church and help our people to develop and enhance these skills.
“For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.
Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.”
If you don’t know the purpose of something you will abuse it.
The Holy Spirit and His Gifts are to build up the church and do the work of the ministry which is to make disciples.
The Holy Spirit is to empower us to be witnesses and not to have strange meetings.
In most of our minds, we think the Holy Spirit is weird…
The world looks at that and says we need a psychiatric ward.
Don’t limit the Holy Spirit in your meetings, just limit the weirdness.
I want to see the lost get saved; I want to see that need that the Holy Spirit can minister to.
God never designed the Holy Spirit to be weird. Am I worried about what people think? Yes!
The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to reach the lost not freak them out!
The fastest growing churches in the world right now are ‘Neo-Pentecostal’ or ‘Spirit-Contemporary’ churches; churches that are full on in the Holy Spirit and full on reaching the lost.
They are Spirit-filled AND seeker-sensitive.
Imagine for a second that you invite a guest to your house for lunch, they knock on the door and instead of politely answering the door you just shout “Come in!”.
Then, as they came into the living room you were making out with your wife – awkward!
Is it wrong to be intimate with your wife? NO, just do it in private. It’s not appropriate when you have guests.
When you invite people into your church don’t be inconsiderate; be appropriate and welcoming.
So when we grow in the Holy Spirit we do not want to grow in weirdness, we want to grow in power. Stop the weirdness.
If you get someone coming into church acting all weird then just pull them aside and ask them to dance like that at home.
If they’re offended they can go to a different church.
Does Holy Spirit work through methods or life change? (Hint: It’s life change.)
Step out in boldness, speak to people in the marketplaces and workplaces, in the supermarkets and on the buses and the Holy Spirit will empower you to be a witness. That’s why the Holy Spirit is given to us.
And Finally…
In this church growth series, we’ve discussed church systems, finances, increasing attendance and how to make your church a place unchurched love to attend…
But all this is in vain unless God is adding to your church.
Though we preach the Gospel and provide opportunities and environments for people to encounter God, ultimately salvation is the work of God.
It is He alone who can regenerate the old sinful man, replace the heart of stone with a heart of flesh and lead a new believer closer to Christ.
My hope is that you have found this series thought-provoking and that it will prompt you into further study, applied action and change.
It is God who builds the church and in partnership with Him, I pray you will be eager to learn and develop yourself as a leader of God’s people and that your church will grow and flourish into everything it’s called to be.
I remember seeing my pastor preaching at the front of the church and thinking what a glamorous job it was – now I know it’s not!
Pastoring can oftentimes be a thankless and arduous task but I still think it’s the most important and fulfilling job in the world!
Grow yourself, build leaders around you, define your purpose, put the right processes, keep flexible, cast vision, raise your church’s faith level, train them to be students of the Word and in partnership with the Holy Spirit, develop their giftings and I pray your church will be bigger, better and stronger 🙏
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Over To You
Join in the discussion or start your own – what are your biggest takeaways from this church growth series?
And can you see how you can apply it to your local church setting?
Let us know in the comments! 👇
Simon, God bless you and your ministry because this write ups is always adding to my spiritual life and giving me the boldness to reach out
Thank you Simon for this information. I’m so blessed it. God bless you sir
Thanks Lizzy, I’m glad you’ve enjoying it. What’s your biggest takeaway?
A powerful read indeed, Sir. Greatly thankful to the Almighty God that I discovered your writings when my denomination and local church is concentrating on church growth and development. Blessings you and your ministry.
Thank you so much. I know God is ready and able to use your local church to reach, teach and mobilise people in your local area and beyond. May God give you a great harvest of souls, greater influence and impact in Jesus’ name!
Pastor Simon. God bless you sir. For this eye opener. I pray for More grace and in-depth knowledge and wisdom as you keep channeling the gospel. I am so so blessed. From Nigeria.
Thank you, I hope it helped to help start generating ideas for you and your church. All the best!
This is a very eye opening teaching series that can assist leaders and pastor’s to grow churches better. The practical approach in this teaching can be easily applicable in all churches that desires growth!
Thanks so much, I’m glad this helped. It’s true, these principles can work in any country, urban or rural. I would love to turn these into a YouTube series one day soon…!
Bless you, thanks so much for the encouragement, I really appreciate it!
Simon, I love this series.
So informative, so helpful and so real.
Many thanks
I’m so happy you’re finding this helpful, I pray it spurs you and your church forward in new and exciting ways!
This simple,but powerful thought provoking keys have helped me to understand how to grow the church the bible way. I’ve started to prepare my leaders and other ministry teams to get ready for explosive growth in our church.
So happy to hear that, the best is yet to come! It starts with us as leaders and ripples out from there. Can’t wait to hear updates on how your church is doing.