[Ref. Sermon-Witness in Jerusalem: The New Covenant Community, Acts 2:43–47, January 22, 2023]
What are principles of a healthy church?

This question is different than what is the Church?  The universal Church is made up of all those called out from the world and united into the body through faith in Christ. The local church is where this is made visible through the ordinances, public worship, the preaching of the word, regenerate membership and discipline, pastoral care and discipleship, the ‘one anothers,’ evangelism, etc. True churches may be weighed as more pure or less pure depending on their faithfulness to the Scriptures.

There are many principles we might ascertain from Scripture as to what a healthy church is (vs. the human intuition and wisdom many church growth specialists rely upon [though this has its place]). However, an excellent near one stop shop is to find the principles of a healthy church is Acts 2:43–47. Luke provides a cameo of life in the early New Covenant Community that provides measurable principles by which later generations of the Church may fairly be tried. So, how does our/your church compare to the early Jerusalem church?

​After reading this passage take the following test to find out.

A DEVOTED COMMUNITY, v. 42
The Church was devoted, committed, to the Lord, each other and the things He had ordained for church life.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
 
AN APOSTOLIC COMMUNITY, v. 42, 43
The teaching and practice of the church was that of the Apostles and Jesus Himself as we find faithfully recorded in Scripture.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

 
A FELLOWSHIPPING COMMUNITY, v. 42
The Church was committed to the fellowship (membership) and to fellowship (sharing in the bond of the Spirit).
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

 
GATHERING COMMUNITY, v. 46
Day by day, in formal and in informal ways, the church met together.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

 
A LEARNING COMMUNITY, v. 42
Topping the list the church studied together and grew spiritually.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

 
A WORSHIPPING COMMUNITY, v. 42, 46, 47a
The church was marked by gladness and expressed this in personal and public worship.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

 
A PRAYING COMMUNITY, v. 42b
They not only prayed, they prayed together (“the prayers”).
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

 
A GENEROUS COMMUNITY, vv. 44–45
Related to fellowship, the church met one another’s needs as the family of God. Living as God would have them live as redeemed humanity.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

 
AN EVANGELISTIC COMMUNITY, implied in v. 47b
Since ‘faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God’ (Ro 10:17) they had to share the Gospel in order to grow. There good works adorned the Gospel (Tit 2:10).
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

 
A GROWING COMMUNITY, v. 47a
Just as healthy organisms grow the Church grew as they did what they were supposed to do.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

 
Out of 100, how did you do? What areas must you devote your attention to become a healthier Church/Christian?

On November 13 I preached a sermon on Euthanasia as we believe life is sacred from conception to natural death. More and more this issue will be less theoretical and personal and practical. How can we minister to those contemplated or booked for medically assisted suicide. Below is a suggested approach/guide.

MAiD Flashcard
*A Christian guide in witnessing to persons considering MAiD.

Prayer before you go, while you go, after you go. Use God’s Word. Be humble and respectful. Be bold. Be supportive.

As of 2019 (expanded in 2021) MAiD is legal in Canada.

Convince
Convince them of your sympathy; listen to them. Those who contemplate or choose MAiD are hurting in body, mind and/or soul. We must show compassion and have a discerning ear to discover how to best speak into their situation (Mt 9:36; Prov 18:13, 20:5).

Convince them of God’s value of life: that being created in the “image of God” every person has value and that since God is the author and giver of life it is precious (Gen 1:26, 2:7). Tell a better story.

Convict
Convict them that taking one’s life is not God’s plan; it is immoral. Every Biblical example of suicide is negative (e.g. King Saul and Judas) and murder is prohibited (6th Commandment, Ex 20:13). To take one’s life or seek help in this, no matter how difficult, is to despise the gift of life that God has given and take for yourself what is rightfully God’s: to decide your days (Dt 32:39). Rather than trusting God as Creator, Judge and King, MAiD makes the self god as we decide life and death, right and wrong and what is best or may or may not be possible for the future.   
Comfort
Comfort them that despite our suffering there is a better way. While God is the giver of life, as a consequence of our sin and rebellion against God [including the desire to take one’s life] (Ro 6:23a) we’re all spiritually dead and physically dying. Without God we’re eternally lost to hell (Mt 10:28). Taking your life won’t solve your pain and suffering, it will add to it.

But God has given us a free gift by sending His Son so we might be forgiven and find new life (Ro 6:23b). When we repent and trust in Jesus we become at peace with God and are given the Helper, the Holy Spirit (Jn 16:7). Sympathizing with us in our weakness (Heb 4:15) His presence will help us live for God and others amidst our suffering and not for self alone. He will bring joy in the midst of our present suffering and assure us of the hope of eternal life free from suffering that awaits the believer (Rev 21:4).

God does not want person X to die but to find eternal life in Jesus (Jn 3:16). Offer an invitation for them to respond to the Gospel, to pray with them, to leave information, to speak further. Also, many considering MAiD do not believe they have other options, are lonely and want support networks. Offer to help them make alternative plans, seek to meet their most pressing needs while they consider what you have said.
​
So convince, convict and comfort.

In a recent blog I noted statistics regarding the visible decline of Christianity in Canada. This raises the question, ‘What Happened to Christian Canada?’
​
In a book by this title historian Mark Noll reached the conclusion that we exchanged a Christian vision of Canada for a multi-cultural one. This is true. Canada was a bi-lingual, Anglo-European, Protestant-Catholic nation. Our identity, while different (and sometimes divided), was also one in heritage. While multi-culturalism (language, ethnicity, religion, etc) is not all of itself wrong, this new vision for Canada was an intentional subversion of the existing Christian vision by cultural Marxism (e.g. the thoughts of Antonio Gramsci [1891–1937]). Christian values were assaulted and a Christian vision was replaced by a vision that divided, and accelerated by individualism, made Canada far easier to control to ideological ends.  
 
While Noll is correct, his social theory is not the whole story as he alludes in his conclusion.

One must recognize that even at its height all of Canada was never truly Christian, there was much nominalism, of people buying into the Christian vision or attending church culturally but not truly and spiritually. One must believe the Gospel to be a Christian.

Still, many denominations faithfully preached the Gospel and so it could be assumed that many Canadians truly were Christian. However, with the arrival of theological liberalism in Canada (which accelerated in the 1920s), countless Canadian denominations, pulpits and churches became arid wastelands that gave the appearance of Christianity yet without Christ. Long before an assault from without can an attack from within. William Booth of the Salvation Army foresaw this shift in the 1800s when he said of the 20th Century:

“The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”[1]

If truth is not presented it cannot be trusted and it therefore does not transform.

There is nothing less attractive than nominal Christianity, no meaning, no joy, no fruit of faith, no substance. As more and more Canadians became nominal Christians is it any wonder ‘Christianity’ was spit out? Like the story of the Return of the Unclean Spirit in Mt 12:43–45 Canadians spit out nominal Christianity only to embrace other isms far worse than the first.

People began to look to the old worldly isms of materialism, commercialism and individualism in increasing degrees. (A corporatism in Christian Canada gave way to the extreme individualism of today).

Christianity was also beset by other isms such as Darwinism, Communism, atheism, the Sexual Revolution and post-Modernism. (It is interesting to note how a decline in the number of children necessitated an immigration policy that supported multi-culturalism).

While the full answer is even more complex than this some major contributors to the decline of Christian Canada were recasting our identity (cultural-Marxism), liberalism, nominalism along with various other isms.

No doubt some genuine Christians of the past bear spiritual and social responsibility for allowing us to drift away from orthodoxy and slip into nominalism as a nation, thus allowing this shift to take place (a giant can only be toppled if it blindly believes itself unstoppable).

 The faithful remnant in Canada (e.g. the Church), now often bolstered by new Canadians who are already Christian, must rise to be the vanguard of society’s wellbeing (salt and light, Mt 5), do honour to our Christian heritage and offer a bright hope and alternative vision for the future. However, this will not be done through worldly means (2 Cor 10:4) but by the faithful preaching of the Gospel and lives lived to the glory of Christ. This is how the early Church began and transformed the Roman and European landscape. This is how we must win Canada today; one soul at a time.


[1] https://caringmagazine.org/the-best-18-quotes-from-william-booth/

Christmas of 2022 was unusual for many congregations, we had a blizzard that closed roads and forced many churches to suspend their Christmas Day services. The second thing that was unusual was that Christmas Day and the Lord’s Day coincided, something that only happens every few years.
For our culture Christmas (without the Christ) is the high holy day of the year. On Christmas even the shops are closed, family is a focus (which in itself is good), the pagan myths are brought out and of course there is the worship of self through materialism. For our culture Christmas is paramount.
​
For Christians, it is not wrong to remember the Incarnation, but our high holy day, a New Testament ordinance, is the Lord’s Day. It is the day we remember the Resurrection. It is the day we express our dependence upon the Lord, and that our lives revolve around Him. It is His day through which we honour and worship Him in a special way. It is the day on which the church gathers. Every Sunday, including when it is Christmas Day, we do not neglect to meet together (Heb 10:25). This is because Christians believe God’s will for the church is set forth in the New Testament. We do not get to choose how to live and worship, He does. 

We have begun a New Year. It is no longer 2022 but 2023. That is a boundary. The Bible says that boundaries are a God given gift to be respected. A classic verse on the subject is Proverbs 22:28:
Do not remove the ancient landmark that your fathers have set.
​
What is that about? It means that in ancient Israel farmers marked the boundaries of their lands (allotted by God through Moses) by large stones or piles of stones. A greedy neighbour could sneakily move those stones over time and enlarge his land at the expense of his neighbour.

The world is filled with myriads of boundaries at God’s design. Because God designed them they are good and not to be understood in a negative way as many might see words like ‘division.’ They are good and we’d do well to respect them. Some boundaries like those at Creation are fixed and immoveable: day and night, land and sea, etc. Other boundaries are moveable. Yet it is only in our pride that we seek to move what God has fixed. This is because in our desire to be as God (Gen 3:5) we don’t respect God or others but move those stones to our own advantage. (Even the Creator-creature distinction is a boundary, Ro 1:25. We can’t actually move it but we try!). How we respond to God’s boundaries can be appropriate and inappropriate, good and evil.  All sins and troubles, particularly of the inter-personal kind, stem from, in pride, breaking God’s boundaries.

Considering just some of the good God-given boundaries that we find in the Bible:

• Between families, or parents and their children’s families, Gen 2:24- Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
  • Family (both parents and grown children) are a wonderful gift. We should always love to spend time with them. However, it is God’s design that when a child is married there is a new family unit created. It is to be respected. Too many of our relational problems today come from children not letting go of the umbilical cord and learning to live in independence with their spouse or parents not relinquishing the umbilical cord and failing to respect the new family unit’s independence.
• Between neighbours, Prov 25:17- Let your foot be seldom in your neighbour’s house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you.
  • A good neighbour is a gift. But discretion teaches us when it is appropriate to visit (invited, to bring back a garbage bin that blew away, etc) and when it is not (in the middle of the night when there is no fire). It also teaches us what frequency is appropriate (probably not three times a day) and how we visit (e.g. stopping at the front gate on your way to work or always coming round the back door).
• Between a spouse and someone who is not your spouse, Ex 20:14- Do not commit adultery.
  • God’s boundary is that the marriage union is special. Husbands and wives share intimacy together in many ways that is not to be shared with another. To push into a marriage to obtain what is not yours is theft, it is breaking a boundary.

When these boundaries are respected, of course, there will be healthy life-giving relationships between parents-children, neighbours and spouses and other couples.

Perhaps with this in mind you might now see more boundaries in Scripture and identify them in the world around us.

May we repent of boundary breaking, seek the boundary Maker for forgiveness, and find the Holy Spirit’s renewing power to respect the boundaries that God has established for our good.