What can the early church teach us about the conditions for power in the church of today?

Archive: The Price of Spiritual Power

by Michael Green, Rector, St. Aldate’s Anglican Church, Oxford, England

Reprinted with permission from the June 1981 issue of Pastoral Renewal, a newsletter for pastors.

Spiritual power in the church: that, of course, is what we all want. At least, we think we do. And there are many instant remedies for restoring spiritual power to the church; as many as the various brands of hair restorers, and as useless.

In most parts of the western world the church is no longer a power to be reckoned with. It has had its day and is no longer in the van of decision-making and attitude-forming in the community of nations. It has a better organization and structure than ever. In some countries it is blessed—or cursed—with enormous wealth. It produces endless paper. But in the end it does not achieve very much. The power has gone.

You must forgive me. I keep going back to the New Testament to seek inspiration and direction. Skip the rest of this article if you do not want to follow me. But I have a feeling that the Spirit and the Word are uncomfortably closely intertwined, and that if we want to know the power of the Spirit in our church life it is to the Word of God that we must turn.

I want to begin at the beginning—at the beginning, that is, of gentile Christianity. Let’s look at the city from which Christianity burst out like a torrent from a lake once the dam has been breached. The city was Antioch on the Orontes. This was the rich, powerful capital of the Roman province of Syria. It was the third city in the world. It was multiracial; it was also militaristic, libertarian, wealthy, and sex-mad. Very modern. Yet its church became one of the greatest spiritual powerhouses in the world and launched the first mission into Europe. And where would we be without that?

Where lay the secret? There were, in fact, a number of secrets which they discovered and which are always the accompaniment of spiritual power. We read about them in Acts, chapters 11 and 13.

1. The power of every-member ministry. This church was not founded by apostles or by the church-growth experts. It happened by mistake. You see, some believers in Jerusalem found the place too hot to hold them when they were testifying to Jesus, so they moved up the Phoenician seaboard until they came to Antioch. Traditional folks to start with, they spoke only to the proper people, the Jews. But in Antioch they found they could not keep quiet, and they told outsiders about the good news of the Lord Jesus (Acts 11:20). Remember, there was not a minister among them; just ordinary Christians, full of Jesus. It communicated powerfully. It still does.

2. The power of fellowship. An amazing place, Antioch. The first believers broke the kosher barriers down. They found it ridiculous to tolerate any man-made barriers, because they were united with brothers in Christ.

It is revolutionary stuff, of course. It raises the eyebrows when senators and prisoners sit down together in Christian fellowship at Fellowship House in Washington. But unless our churches show a quality of love and caring which surpasses anything in contemporary society, we shall not be demonstrating the power of the Gospel; we shall merely be talking about it. And that takes nobody in.

Just look at those first believers mentioned as the leadership in Antioch (13:1). There was Barnabas, a Cypriot of priestly family, Simeon nicknamed “swarthy” (no prizes for guessing his color), Lucius from Cyrene in North Africa (another black man), Manaen from “top New York society,” and Saul! What a bunch of improbable partners. Yet that is the quality of Christian fellowship that spoke with such power at Antioch. If you want spiritual power in your church, pay attention to the quality of the fellowship; It must be totally open, caring, honest, and sacrificial.

3. The power of shared leadership. We are not told who was bishop or leading minister in Antioch. There wasn’t one. Instead, five men constituted the leadership. Five very different men. They worked as a team. I guess they did nothing by vote. They prayed till they were of one mind. Their fellowship of leaders had a profound effect on the church. It was a model others could follow in their fellowship groupings.

Most churches I know, of whatever denomination, find such a model of leadership too costly, too demanding. So they go for the one-man band. And the minister has a breakdown because he can’t do everything and is always looking around for folks to help him. The people criticize him behind his back both because he doesn’t do everything and because his one-man-band approach inhibits other gifts of leadership within the body of Christ from manifesting themselves.

They had a shared leadership at Antioch. We have in our church. It works.

Two types of leadership were active at Antioch: prophets and teachers. The teachers were well-taught, well-prepared, and predictable. The prophets were impetuous and totally unpredictable. You would not have thought they would get on. Yet they did. That partnership became the source of great power in the church. Would you dare risk it?

4. The power of dynamic worship. Look at Acts 13:2-3. They were worshiping the Lord (literally, holding liturgy to the Lord). They were serious about it, so serious that they gave themselves to fasting. Suddenly the Holy Spirit guided one of the congregation to get up in the middle of the service and deliver a prophecy, a direct word from God into their situation. It was a remarkable message: “Take your two best leaders and send them off on a mission for which I have called them. ” Most remarkable of all, they acted on that revelation. They fasted again, prayed, and sent the two men off on that epoch-making first missionary journey.

We know it so well. But think of the quality of worship that little cameo presupposes. They were united in worship. That’s a marvelous thing.

The unity, the intensity, the variety in worship should raise questions in the mind of the stranger which it is the purpose of preaching to explain. But you don’t often get that Godcenteredness in worship, or that concentration of the whole congregation on the Lord, or the willingness to fast, or the readiness for a member to break in with a word from God, or the church’s willingness, after testing it, to act on it. Prayer is often pathetically weak and unspecific. Many congregations would not know if they had had any answers to prayer because they had not been serious enough or specific enough to notice if they had been answered. As for fasting, it’s not our thing. And as for sending out our two best ministers-you must be out of your mind!

You never get spiritual power in a church unless the worship is mighty and God-centered, unless unity and sacrifice and prayer and fasting are part of the life of that church. But when those elements are present, along with praise and joy and freedom, well, I’ll tell you what happens. People come to repentance and faith in Christ before ever the sermon comes on. They are converted through the sense of God that comes through the worship. Could that happen through the worship in your church?

5. The power of consistent Biblical teaching. There was plenty of that at Antioch. They took teaching so seriously that they imported Barnabas, and he in turn dug out Paul from Tarsus to come and help him. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a large company of people (11:26). We have a further reference to their teaching in 13:1, and an extended period of teaching followed their return from the first missionary journey (14:26-28).

Very few churches take teaching seriously. As a result, church members do not even begin to suspect that there might be a Christian mind on major issues of the day—let alone adopt it. The underlying Christian understanding in most congregations is puerile, the unbelief vast, and the conformity to the world’s standards almost complete. The lack of critique of contemporary culture by the churches, the lack of concern over social and political themes, the lack of wrestling with the Gospel and how to translate it without dilution into the thought forms of the day, the absence of training courses and study programs are appalling.

A lively church should teach, teach, teach. Teaching for agnostics, for new converts, for leadership, for personal relationships, for mission. Teaching by proclamation, by discussion, by study, by joint activities of teacher and pupil—all are valuable. A church where there is little grasp by the ordinary member of the dynamic Word of God is not going to display spiritual power.

6. The power of the Holy Spirit. That is what we would have noticed about the Antioch church. It was full of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit would be seen flowing from Barnabas in his faith, his teaching, his encouragement of others (11:24). The Holy Spirit was very evident in the church: they allowed a man like Agabus, a visitor at that, to speak under the influence of the Spirit in their assembly, urging them to make a major contribution for the victims of a natural disaster that had not yet taken place. They then gave sacrificially for Christians whom they had never seen and of whose communal ism and financial incompetence they doubtless disapproved! …

And the fascinating thing was that these men at Antioch did not oppose the Spirit, as we often do, by disobedience, unbelief, ecclesiastical tradition, or theological prejudice. They were open to the leading of the Spirit, open to His gifts, open to obey Him. And that made for power. …

7.The power of Christlikeness.Had you noticed that it was at Antioch that the disciples were for the first time called Christians (11:26)? They did not call themselves Christians, you will notice. It was a nickname given them by others. They saw the disciples as “Jesus people “—sent by Him, devoted to Him, like Him.

I fancy that this is the supreme mark of spiritual power in any church: when the locals notice the Christlikeness of the church members. …

Well, there are seven pathways to spiritual power, as I see them in this primitive church which became the launching-pad of world mission. I doubt whether God’s conditions for power in the church have changed. The question is, do we want that power badly enough? And are we willing to pay the price?