Why So Few Movements in the West?

I’m still working on that book on Acts and the Movement of God. Wondering why there’s such a chasm between our experience in the West and what we see in Acts.

Acts tells the story of the progress of the Word from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth overcoming all manner of opposition. The messengers are under continual pressure, yet God ensures the Word keeps moving on, never taking a backward step. Wherever the Word goes, the fruit is disciples and churches to the glory of God.

There are many ways we can deny the power of God’s Word and therefore stifle any hope that we will see disciple making movements in the West.

The first is to place ourselves above God’s Word, deciding for ourselves what is right and wrong. For many modern-postmodern scholars, the Bible only contains the Word of God, and they get to decide what that Word says. Once great movements of God have fallen into this trap and then faced spiralling decline. New generations of church leaders are following in their wake, at the mercy of the spirit of the age.

An opposite error is to uphold the authority of Word of God then confine its use to seminaries and church meetings. Of all the preaching in Acts, Luke records only one message before a believing audience, the rest are to people far from God. The Word goes out into public places and homes, prison cells, in the markets, a lecture hall, a governor’s palace, even on a sinking ship. Every disciple is a messenger empowered by the Spirit.

Others seek spiritual experiences as an end in themselves. They want their hunger for God to be satisfied at the expense of a lost world. But the work of the Spirit in Acts is all about the progress of the Word resulting in the birth and growth of communities of disciples. The Spirit was given that we might be witnesses to the world. Even a genuine work of the Spirit will atrophy if we keep it to ourselves.

A final way we deny the power of God’s Word is when we redefine our mission as economic, social and political transformation. Acts is explicit, God’s mission is all about the spread of his Word bringing salvation and the creation and growth of the people of God. Transformed communities may result, but there is no guarantee. Jerusalem was not transformed. Paul was run out of many cities, yet he still completed the work the Holy Spirit gave him to do. Heaven on earth will come, but only on the other side of God’s judgment.

In contrast to the above, disciple making movements view the Word of God as the power of God at work in the world bringing salvation and resulting in multiplying disciples and churches.