Back to New Testament Church Living
The "Church" spent so much time and resources on learning how to "do it better", "build it bigger", and "buy a place in
ministry". All in the name of reaching the lost, conducting a ministry of "excellence", and building the kingdom of God.
The problem is that only 2% of the Church in America grew last year because of evangelistic
efforts. This means 98% of the churches are failing at the "Great Commission". From this statistic
we can conclude that the Church as a whole, we are not reaching the lost, we are not ministries of "excellence" in the eye
of God and we are not building the kingdom of God.
Through the years we have passed down opinion, philosophies, personal thinking and religious traditions on how to conduct
a church, grow a church and how a church should function, but somewhere in the process we have lost the essence and intention
of the New Testament Church.
The life of the New Testament Church in the book of Acts was about building people not
building churches. The purpose of the church was not to become and "organization" but a "organism",
a living cell that reproduces itself.
Ask any medical student "What is a cell?" and they will explain that it is the basic building block of the body.
Our bodies consist of millions and millions of cells working in unison. We cannot live without them. Within each cell is
carried the DNA, the genetic coding, or "blueprint" of life itself. By nature cells will seek to multiply themselves, reproducing
after their own kind, or transitioning to fulfil different functions according to hormonal influences.
What is true of the physical body is true of the body of Christ, the Church. We could call this Spiritual DNA.
We see the origins of the church began with Jesus calling 'the twelve' to Him. His Master plan' was to create a small intimate
fellowship of disciples around Him, pouring His life - His 'DNA' - into them. It was in this small "cell" gathering that Jesus
built relationship with them, taught and trained them, imparted authority and power, and sent them out to minister and witness.
"Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach and to have power to heal
sicknesses and cast out demons" (Mark 3:14-15).
Later, the Holy Spirit would reproduce the same kind of ministry in the lives of subsequent believers.
After Pentecost, we see two types of meetings in the early church. Not only did the believers gather regularly at the temple;
they also met in homes. The thousands of new converts and members received ministry in the homes of other believers. And they
also gathered for prayer, teaching, and worship in public meeting places. (Acts 2:41 - 47).
Unlike the modern days, there was no place for individualism, isolation, segregation or loneliness in the church. All over
Jerusalem, as believers worshiped together and witnessed on their jobs and in their neighborhoods, multitudes of various-sized
cell gatherings of people emerged, each linked to all others.
Through these cell gatherings they preserved unity, exchanged information,
improved and strengthened spiritual life, share resources, witness, and
changed their society.
The apostles understood what it meant to be a part of the DNA of Christ, reproducing itself into a living organism, the
Church of the living God. It is a church endued with supernatural power (Acts 2:43).
The DNA of Jesus has been successfully reproduced from Christ's "twelve" to this new church in Acts (Acts 4:13).
They knew how to construct their lives upon the Word of God.
They knew how to create close fellowship with each other so that no one is in need.
They knew how to reach out to the lost, restoring damaged lives by the spirit of God.
They knew how to draw the attention of both God and Man (Acts 2:47).
After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, the Church grew rapidly and spread throughout the entire known world of
that time. They erected no church buildings of their own. How, then, did they achieve such explosive growth?
They continued to meet in each other's homes as "cells". This New Testament Church had become a "living organism" and the
essence of this life was found in small cell gatherings.
They could continue without the large corporate gatherings in the Temple, because the life of the church was not in the
corporate gatherings, but in the small groups or what can be called cell gatherings.
The Roman decree issued by Nero made it unlawful for believers to build a church. The first church building we know about
wasn’t erected until 265 A.D. in Persia. The church- without temples, without cathedrals, without sanctuaries - experienced
such a remarkable growth that historians claimed the evangelization of the whole world was clearly in sight.
Then the church experienced a blessing which turned out to be a curse. Constantine declared the whole Roman Empire to be
Christian. With that decree, Christians stopped meeting in houses and started meeting in sanctuaries.
The church grew stronger as an institution, but weaker as a church.
Historically, this period is called the "Dark Ages". But tragically, under institutionalism the church
lost a dimension which needs to be recovered. Believers need to recover an intimate sharing around the Word, where there’s
and entangling of lives, in the power of the Spirit.
The church must dissolve it’s "organization" and once again become the living "organism" of PENETRATION, PRESERVATION
and TRANSFORMATION.
What was the DNA of this cell gathering, this New Testament Church organism?
Worship
Nurturing
Fellowship
Outreach
In worship believers will seek to be Christ-centered, coming under His authority. They will nurture each other from the
Word of God, seeing to apply its teaching to their everyday lives.
They will seek to fulfil Christ's command to love one another and build up each other in fellowship. However, they will
go beyond considering their own needs. They will be motivated to fulfil Christ's call upon every believer: win the lost and
"make disciples" (Matthew 28:19).
It is this last component that singles out a true cell from a mere Bible study or prayer group.
- Without worship, the group would be dry.
- Without the Word, they would become sub-Christian.
- Without fellowship, they would become cold.
- And without outreach, a cell would become introspective and self-absorbed.
If a church exist only for itself, it will surely die by itself.
The Church is the only institution that exists for the benefit of its non-members. Therefore we must not waiver from
the purpose of the church, which is the "Great Commission".
This purpose can be found in the New Testament cell gatherings. They existed to:
Win
Consolidate
Disciple
Send
These small cell gatherings were true to its purpose. The cell
gatherings were the primary place for winning new believers, discipling, training and releasing them to become
disciple makers of others.
Like the biological cell, a cell of believers will become the basic building block of the body of Christ.
They will transmit the DNA of Christ.
They will seek to multiply themselves, reproducing after their own kind.
And where necessary existing groups will transition to different functions in order to fulfil the purpose of cell ministry.
"The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise". (Proverbs 11:30)
Today, we have made "cell groups" a program of the church but biblically speaking, cells are not just one program of the
church. Rather, they are the church.
As the church, these cell gatherings were the way of:
Nurturing
Training
Mobilizing the members of Christ's body
This was what was meant when Jesus said: "Go and make Disciples..."
The apostles of the New Testament could never have achieved what they did without a cell church vision. For example, in
Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, 3,000 people were added to the church. They were all baptized in water and they all continued
steadfast in the faith. They were all taught in the apostles' doctrine. They were all faithful in prayer, witness and were
all a committed part of the fellowship.
This is a far cry from today's situation were up to 93% of those who make a commitment
to Christ fall away from it, and only 30% of those who get as far as some form of church
involvement actually persist.
The most significant thing about the early church in Jerusalem was that it was made up of cell gatherings.
"So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate
their food with gladness and simplicity of heart..." (Acts 2:46)
As well as the large meetings in the Temple courts, they met regularly in one another's homes.
Let us understand that these were not just house meetings or home fellowship groups as found in the traditional approach
to small groups today.
They were organisms, cells - that is, miniature
churches - doing everything that a church should do. They witnessed, they evangelized, they fellowshipped, they
prayed, they nurtured and they cared for the poor - all in the cells.
Nothing else adequately explains their effectiveness in making disciples and their experience of explosive growth.
This concept of the "cell group" has absolutely nothing in common with the traditional approach to house groups in many
churches today. Home fellowship groups, prayer groups, special interest groups, Bible Study groups may all have something
to offer, but they are not true cells gatherings.
New Testament cell gatherings were the church
. Within this group is where the real work
of the church goes on.
This leads to a number of significant differences between a cell church and a traditional church.
A traditional church is program centered
But a cell church is people centered
A traditional church is built on the strength of its magnificent programs. If you have bigger and better programs then
you have a bigger and better church!
But the church is not programs; it is people
This people centered approach can only be consistently sustained in a church where the
central thrust of its ministry is reaching people who primarily relate in the small group setting and not just in the big
services.
A traditional church is building centered. Usually, this is where it all happens. The size, location and architecture
of the church building then determine the activity of the church. People assume that once the meeting is over and the building
is vacated, that church is over for another week.
But the cell church is community centered.
Because the main work of the church is undertaken by the members in their
cells, making the cell church community centered, not building centered.
The central services are a celebration of what God has done throughout the week and a preparation for more of the same
in the coming week.
The traditional church sends the signal to one and all, "Come!"
But the cell church's message is, "Go!"
The traditional church's model of ministry calls for a passive response, "Listen"
The cell church's clarion call is, "Do!"
It has an active model of ministry. The people are empowered to do
the ministry of Christ.
All this implies a radical change of thinking on our part.
We must learn the power of cell life in the body of Christ so that we can successfully mobilize
the people of God to do the work of Christ and truly function as part of His body.
Let us go back to New Testament Church Living!
