Introduction
In this lesson I want to examine thee time periods in the history of the NT church, all in the first century. These three time periods will allow us to look at several biblical passages which describe the situations in the NT churches.
Reinhold Niebuhr has identified four stages of church growth and decline--focus on the man, message, movement, eventually declining to a mere monument. We can see at the least the first three stages of this sequence in the NT.
30 A.D., First Stage, DEVOTION.
The Jerusalem church represents what usually happens when a movement begins. This is the focus on the man. This is an aggressive dedicated commitment to the cause of Christ, the founder. The focus is on following Jesus. Dedication is to the founder.
This focus is continued in several of the NT letters, esp. the early letters to Galatia, Thessalonica, etc.
50-80 A.D., Second Stage, DEVELOPMENT.
As the church continued to grow, there appears to be some movement away from focusing on the man. This occurs as the institution is developed. This is why this phase is often identified as institutionalizing. This process is nowhere in the NT more apparent than in the book of Hebrews. When the focus moves from the man to the message, we are one step removed from the vibrant, aggressive cause we hope to be. The message belongs to the organization and the danger is that the organization may become more important than the original concept. During this period of church history, there are also positive letters to church indicating the presence of a continuing commitment to Jesus, but the danger of misplacing the focus continues to surface.
Regarding the Hebrew Christians, they were probably part of a congregation in some unknown area or city. They represent the second stage of the movement, institutionalism. The founder is often forgotten or deemphasized, the original goal is no longer in sight. The means become ends. Instead of going onward, the preoccupation is with the first principles. The focus is on the message rather than the man. When means become ends, institutionalism has set in.
80-100 A.D., Third Stage, DECLINE and DEFENSE.
We will look at only one example of this stage, from the letters to the seven churches of Asia in the early chapters of Revelation. The church at Ephesus was diligent in dealing with false teachers, but is said to have left its first love. This situation is also present in our day, with many congregations very careful to defend the faith, but indifferent toward advancing the faith.
The focus in this stage often becomes negative and defensive, even contentious. Division often results. Relationships are strained and brothers are estranged.
80-100 A.D., Fourth Stage, DETERIORATION and DEATH.
Again from the letters to the churches in Revelation, the church at Sardis is described as dead. The church fits into the same time period, but represents the fourth stage of the cycle. In fact, Sardis, Ephesus, and Laodicea had all deteriorated to being near the point of death. The result is either to go out of existence or recognize the problem with repentance that renews the return to the first love. Where are the seven churches of Asia today? They do not exist. But their representatives are yet among us.
Body
I. Dedication, Beginnings--the Evangelistic Thrust of Jerusalem. (Focus on the Man)
Churches begin with an evangelistic thrust. There are not very many members, and members are desired and needed. This is consistent with the words of Jesus in Acts 1:8b. The gospel was to be preached. When it was preached, there were 3000 converts. The zealous proclamation of salvation continued and there were daily additions. Soon the number was 5000 counting only the men. Many estimate that the church had 15000-20000 members within a few months. Luke ceases to give specific numbers. But multitudes are added and Jerusalem is filled with the teaching about Jesus. Clearly, this is evangelism. The apostles spoke of their need to minister in the word and prayer, Acts 6:3,4. The churches were edified, 9:31, and were multiplied. There was a connection between teaching and growing.
This principle must be recognized. Where there is little preaching, teaching, and evangelism, there is little growth. God's edification results in multiplication, 2 Tim. 2:2,24.
Why did the early church grow?
In this way they turned the world upside down.
II. Developing the Institution--Internal Concerns. (Focus on the Message)
We could call this phase, institutionalizing. Within about 25 or 30 years of that marvelous beginning, things began to go awry in some places. Institutionalism began to set in. The dictionary says institution signifies "established methods or customs." The message ceases to be vibrant and applicable in every situation. The past becomes entrenched. Tradition is equated with Scripture. The means became the end. The teaching loses its focus, the focus is on mere milk, rudiments, first principles. The church must always advance spiritually, Heb. 5:12-14. This process leads to self-satisfaction. Nothing is worse than a satisfied church, business. The vigor is gone. This produces a state of lukewarmness.
Institutionalism usually focuses on routine forms, church attendance, weekly worship, and pure doctrine. We are today teaching and training people in institutionalism. We cannot solve our problem with greater emphasis on the Bible and its truth. The message is the means of evangelism, but the message cannot motivate evangelism. Only a relationship with Jesus can motivate evangelism. Only the dedication of the first stage can restore vibrant Christian living.
The majority may go through the forms of Christianity and worship, even with vigor, but the spirit and purpose of the church is no longer present. Cold lifeless formalism has taken over. When the spirit and purpose are gone, only the forms remain. When moral and spiritual sensitivity is replaced by a focus on a lifeless word, the spirit has been removed. Such have returned to the law without knowing it (2 Cor. 3:1ff).
Involvement in various programs may continue with sufficient prodding, but biblical motivation is gone. The programs of work become ends rather than means to God's purposeful ends. This problem was present in Judaism during Jesus' lifetime, and thus he continually criticized and condemned the Pharisees for their emphasis on traditions which removed the heart of religion (Mark 7:9; Matt. 23:3,23).
We must ask if we are at this stage today. Do we clearly understand the end? What responses would we get if we were to ask today, "What is the mission of the church?" Does the church actually have multiple missions, or have we confused the means and the end?
III. Declining and Defending--Holding On. (Focus on the Movement)
The church at Ephesus is described in Rev. 2:2-4. We see that the church was diligent in handling false teaching. This is commendable, and they were commended. But there is also a danger. Often a declining church has as a primary goal doctrinal soundness, even when there is no progress for advancing the gospel. We must restore a genuine compassion for the lost.
Many Christians drift from their original commitment and devotion, even while being careful to remain sound in doctrine. In this phase, even with an emphasis in sound doctrine, the focus moves from the message to the movement. This is represented by more and more emphasis on the church and less and less emphasis on the Bible.
We have already seen this happen in the Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries. What began as a restored effort to make the Bible available to the common person, and to use the Bible as one's guide in Christianity, the focus rapidly degenerated into various church movements, partially but not exclusively as a result of the latent nationalism of that time period.
Many congregations today are asleep with regard to the danger of this progression. We in name may profess an allegiance to Jesus, but we have subtly over time allowed the focus to shift to the message and eventually to the movement, and in this shift, we may understand why there are so many that now identify the churches of Christ as only another denomination. For when we are focused on the movement, we have followed the same path toward decline as have other religious groups (denominations) before us. Further, when a church reaches this point, it has usually gone to sleep with regard to missions and evangelism. As one author wrote, "They are straight as a gun barrel and just as empty." Elmer Towns wrote, "One of the dangers of dead conservation is degenerating into a single desire for doctrinal purity." (AFGC, 181). When the church is more interested in preservation than in pressing forward, the church has become the field in which labor must again be invested rather than the force for going into the unharvested fields of the world.
This is precisely the situation we find in many churches today, for most of the energy is devoted to maintaining the needs of the members. We must understand anew, "Every heart where Jesus does not live is a mission field; every heart where Jesus does live is a missionary." We must return to our first love even as Ephesus was admonished to do.
When the emphasis is on defending, we become contentious and divided. Relationships are strained, suspicion is rampant. The number and proximity of congregations in our cities, and even in some smaller towns, does not reflect an evangelistic zeal and determination to reach our cities. It reflects our inability to get along with one another. It reflects our inability to distinguish the core from the periphery, the biblical from the cultural, the absolutes or essentials from the non-essentials. We are afraid, and we will not change anything because we are not certain what can and what cannot be changed. Every change in methods throughout our recent history has been viewed with suspicion and doubt and has caused problems in at least some places.
The tragedy of this situation is that the unity we have sought we have not achieved. Issues spring up regularly rending our churches and crippling outreach efforts. Some of our periodicals and colleges and are doing more to promote division than unity. Some lectureships are so focused on defending that there is almost no concern for reaching the lost. Other lectureships are so focused on change that evangelistic emphasis is never mentioned. And the lectureships focused on touching our world with the gospel through missions and evangelism are pitifully few. Further, this lack of emphasis is reflected in the budgets of our churches as we turn more and more inward.
The only genuine focus for unity is Jesus Christ. Yet many sincere, dedicated Christians are criticized for focusing on our commitment to Christ. Jesus was talking to us and to all in this phase when he spoke of the word being choked out by the thorns, including cares of this life, and failing to bear fruit (Luke 8:14 and parallels).
IV. Deterioriating and Dying--All But Gone. (Becoming a Monument)
The church at Sardis is described in Rev. 3:1. Laodicea has a similar indictment: 3:15.
One difference in these two churches is that nothing good is said of Laodicea. Of Sardis, the commendation of 3:4 must be noted. Sardis was a badly deteriorated church nearly dead. Laodicea was a dead church. A dead church lacks the spirituality necessary to produce spiritual fruit. When a church reaches this state, major surgery is required. Without repentance and rebirth, it will go out of existence. It may return to zeal and the purpose of its founder.
We are largely in a defensive or deteriorated state in our nation. We are beyond focusing on the man or the message, we are people of a movement and more and more of our church buildings are becoming monuments.
Notice some of the characteristics of churches in this category.
The solution for us as a church is always the same. We must return to focus on Jesus. Yet we often resemble a sick child resisting the medicine that will restore health. Think about these four conditions with reference to the last 200 years of church history.
Conclusion