The Church With Spunk

(Background Text: The first few chapters of Acts)

A Canadian pastor friend tells of a woman who stood in a testimonial service and announced, “I’m determined to do anything the Lord tells me to do — so long as it’s honorable!”

Most people would not express it quite that blatantly, but many of us erect conditions to be met before we will obey the Lord. This is particularly true when we make the decision to leave our comfortable buildings and impact our community with the gospel.

“Yes, sir, Lord — we’ll be going into our Jerusalem with the message of Christ! We plan to meet people and minister to them and share the gospel — and we intend to do this just as soon as all the conditions are right!”

Therein lies the barrier to obedience. We intend to obey the Lord’s command to evangelize our Jerusalem just as soon as the CONDITIONS are right, the COMMUNITY is receptive, and the CORE-GROUP is ready.

On the surface, that sounds like good, conservative, reasonable and solid thinking.

1) Ideal conditions within the church: the congregation is healthy, united and supportive of this plan. The offerings have been exceeding the budget lately, creating a nice surplus for missions. The timing is ideal.

2) Ideal conditions inside the community: as we move out into the city, the people welcome us with open arms. They’ve been eager for someone to bring the gospel their way. The gangs disperse, crime drops to nothing, and everyone rejoices that we loved them this much. The community is ready.

3) Ideal conditions within the core-group assigned to this task: they are all trained soulwinners, Spirit-filled, fully prepared for whatever circumstances they find, and eager to make a difference. The leadership is right.

That sure would be nice.

Too bad it hardly ever happens that way. It’s not how the real world works — not even in the original Jerusalem community where it was the disciples themselves infiltrating their community with Jesus’ message.


The pattern — the template — given in Scripture presents a more realistic picture, the kind we’re likely to encounter in our own situation.

1) Leaders go into the community and meet the opportunity head-on. (Acts chapter 3)

2) They encounter hostility from those who fear their message and oppose their faith. (Acts 4:1-3)

3) They present their findings — their predicament — to the church and all take it to the Lord in prayer. (Acts 4:23-30)

4) The Holy Spirit fills them and empowers their witness. (Acts 4:31)

5) They re-enter the community with the message of Christ. (Acts 4:31,33)

6) The church then makes an amazing discovery: the conditions some would have required before they went into Jerusalem with the gospel turns out to be the very blessings God gave as a result of their going. (Acts 4:32ff)

a. Unity in their relationships

b. Generosity in their offerings.

c. Power in their testimony.

7) Thereafter, everything intensifies — the numbers turning to Christ, the enthusiasm of the congregation, and the hostility of the enemy. (Acts 5-8)

Three great principles stand out from that event, like a mountain range poking through the cloud cover. They guide and inspire us today whenever we decide to bring the gospel to the people of our communities.

1. Conditions will never be ideal; but we are to go forward anyway.

“He that considers the wind will not sow and he who watches the clouds will not reap.” (Ecclesiastes 11:4) If we are looking for excuses to get out of obeying, we can always find them.

The veteran evangelist of a past generation, Vance Havner, used to say, “An excuse is the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.”

James L. Sullivan headed up the Sunday School Board for Southern Baptists for a generation some time ago. I once heard him tell our national meeting that he had been studying the history of a particular church he was acquainted with in a deep south community. In the early 1900s the membership had voted to put up a new building, but decided the economy was bad and the timing not right. The First World War came along, and they delayed. In the 1920s inflation was rampant; this was a poor time to build. The 1930s brought the Great Depression. The 1940s gave us the Second World War followed by the fears and economical uncertainties of the 1950s. The 1960s saw the Vietnam War and unrest on the national scene. Dr. Sullivan reported, “To date, that church still has not built their building!”

2. Satan will always be attacking, but the Holy Spirit has the upper hand.

The simple reality of the culture into which these early believers were thrust was that the Roman rulers would not be attending their little revival meetings. So, in order to reach them with the gospel, the Lord would arrange for the believers to carry the gospel into their venues. To pull this off would require some believers to be arrested and put on trial.

In Matthew 10:18-20, Jesus informed His followers they would be arrested and tried in order that the authorities may hear the gospel.

According to Paul in II Timothy 4:16-17, this is precisely what happened in his case. Even Caesar ended up hearing the message of Christ.

Students of physics know that a fire will always burn brighter under pressure. As smart as he is, Satan has never figured out how that applies to him. He keeps right on persecuting the church and God keeps using that for His own purposes.

3. The provisions of Heaven always come, but only to the obedient.

God’s blessings of unity in the congregation, abundance in the offering plate, and power in the witnessing are the results of obedience, not prerequisites to it. The church that stalls until it has enough people, waits for complete unity, delays until the offerings are plentiful, and postpones evangelistic work until it has enough trained witnesses will never leave the building.

The church that goes forth with what it has in order to do what Christ has commanded will always find ample provisions and abundant blessings waiting down the road.

The Lord Jesus was not real happy when people He called to serve Him began stalling. “Let me first go home and bury my dead,” said one (Matthew 8:21-22). Anytime we add “but first” as a precondition to serving Him, we might as well pull up a chair because we go no further from that point.

Whatever else stepping forward on faith means, it surely must mean that we are trusting the Lord to supply our needs when we get to the place where they will be required.

“Without faith it is impossible to please Him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

Now all we need is church leaders who are willing to live by faith.

My own observation — a personal conclusion not derived by any kind of a poll — is that this explains why the “wrong church” is the one almost always growing. The church with all the community leaders and grand tradition and highest-paid staff is rarely the one to step out and begin reaching large numbers of people in their town. They’d like to, but conditions are never ideal.

It’s the little church out at the edge of town, the one that never has enough workers or sufficient income but has plenty of spunk, that’s the one that takes the Lord’s command seriously and goes forth to do His will — and reaps all the blessings.

“Dear Lord, more than any other blessing, give us spunk.”

8 thoughts on “The Church With Spunk

  1. Amen,bro. Joe, Amen.

    God give us backbones to stand, heart and feet to mount a charge, and tenancity to keep on going.

    Dr. Paul W. Foltz

    Sovereign Grace, Southern Baptist Bible conference march 4-8-Georgetown Baptist

    Church, Chuncula, Al[near mobile]

  2. Thank you, was very helpful, as I am preaching on “WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR?”

    Pastor Aram

  3. Like many of us, I have an ongoing conversation with God regarding whether or not to do certain things. Once I know the thing to do, the conversation shifts to whether or not to do the thing now. A fairly constant refrain in that conversation is, “Obedience delayed is disobedience.” I am always so blessed when I go on and do now what God says now.

  4. Joe, your comments make it clear that God desires for His church to be ‘spunky’ and frequently, that might be easier to find in smaller congregations who have an abundance of flexibility and good leadership.

    I would make the case though that churches like Saddleback, Willow Creek and Northpoint, to name a few large churches that I am familiar with, have demonstrated a great amount of spunk. I am not sure why they are so successful in drawing people into the Kingdom other than it appears that they are led by Godly men who are completely open to God’s will for their lives and ministry.

    I am a member of Northpoint and am amazed at the great numbers of people who are getting involved in church leadership and in local and foreign missions. Most of us who are there, simply believe that we have a pretty good preacher and more importantly and for reasons we don’t understand, God has his hand all over our church.

    Spunky churches can be found in all sizes.

  5. Joe, your comments make it clear that God desires for His church to be ‘spunky’ and frequently, that might be easier to find in smaller congregations who have an abundance of flexibility and good leadership.

    I would make the case though that churches like Saddleback, Willow Creek and Northpoint, to name a few large churches that I am familiar with, have demonstrated a great amount of spunk. I am not sure why they are so successful in drawing people into the Kingdom other than it appears that they are led by Godly men who are completely open to God’s will for their lives and ministry.

    I am a member of Northpoint and am amazed at the great numbers of people who are getting involved in church leadership and in local and foreign missions. Most of us who are there, simply believe that we have a pretty good preacher and more importantly and for reasons we don’t understand, God has his hand all over our church.

    Spunky churches can be found in all sizes.

  6. Everytime our church gets tired of “telling the story” I remind them of the book entitled “He Moved a Mountain.” One person and the churches he started literally changed a society. The book drives home very clearly that spunky churches are composed of spunky Christians.

  7. In South Africa “spunky” christians are called arrogant simply because the differencence between spirit filled and ego filled cannot be discerned by some “wise” christians in non performing churches.I love your explanation about an excuse as it is something that we encounter regularly here at Papillon. But with an excuse comes also guilt and this is followed by avoidance. All that God is expecting of us is to step out in faith, but sadly our comfort becomes our cross.

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