American Kerygma: Book of Acts shows the power of Jesus' Message
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Most pastors salivate when they read the second chapter of Acts.
Everything we could possibly want for our church is described there. In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit moves powerfully, the church grabs the attention of the city, there’s good preaching and there’s peaceful fellowship among believers. Most attractively, it says, “and that day about three thousand souls were added to them” (Acts 2:41) and “the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47)
Some pastors might focus on growth with bad motives, but the average pastor is a true believer, for whom growth means more and more people are trusting in and falling in love with Jesus because they are discovering abundant life in him. I want that kind of growth in our country! But that’s not the kind of growth we’re seeing in America in the 21st century.
According to the Barna Group, church attendance of self-reporting Christians dropped 7 percent in the decade between 2004 and 2014. In just the five years between 2007 and 2012, people who reported having no “religious affiliation” at all rose from 15 percent to 20 percent of Americans surveyed. Even if you can point to individual local churches who are doing well, the American church, as a whole, is not growing. It is declining.
Compare that to the church in other countries. Some estimates report that in the past decade, the Christian population in India has doubled. There are currently more Christians in China than in the United States. As church attendance declined by 7 percent in America, the Chinese church grew by 48 percent during the exact same time period.
The early church, the modern Indian church and the modern Chinese church have two things in common: persecution and devotion to the gospel. We have no control over persecution, but the church does have control over its message. The church in America must choose between the American Kerygma and the message that wrought such wild success for the earliest Christians. Our survival depends on it.
In the very first sermon preached in the church age, their kerygma (their “message” or “proclamation”) was, “Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ . . . Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” (Acts 2:36 and 38)
When Christians began to be persecuted, their kerygma was, “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) They even responded to the threat of worse persecution with prayers that they might proclaim their kerygma more boldly.
Non-Jews began to put their trust in Jesus because they heard that though evil men “put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross, God raised Him up on the third day . . . And He ordered us to preach to the people . . . that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins." (Acts 10:39-43)
A jail guard was told to “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved,” (Acts 16:31) and the whole town of Philippi was changed as new churches were planted.
In less than 30 years, this message — the kerygma which Jesus commanded his followers to proclaim — took the whole Roman empire by storm. In Romans 15:18 and 23-24, Paul explains that since the whole Mediterranean was so saturated with the gospel that there was no new place for him to preach the gospel, he planned to go to Spain, which was as far west as Paul could imagine.
First Presbyterian Church is 101 years old. The early church was able to reach half of a continent in less than 30 years, but if you asked a random passer-by in public what the gospel is, or what Christians believe — or anything close to that — they would either stare at you blankly or give the wrong answer.
Assuming a constant rate of decline based on the statistics I quoted above, the church in America will be dead in 50 years if we do not begin to focus on “Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2) soon. It was a strategy that worked pretty well for the early church, and it’s working today all over the world. The gospel is the only thing we have to offer. Go share it today.