Acts 4:2
Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead.
The growth of the early church did not happen without God’s people growing spiritually. There is something about spiritual growth and the church’s numerical growth that cannot be separated. One of the things that I have seen at Maranatha Baptist Church is that as our church grows, so grows the spirituality of the believers. It is not that everyone is growing spiritually, because all churches have people who are only attending to pay a spiritual penance to feel spiritual, but there is much spiritual growth among many believers that results in the numerical growth of our church.
Spiritual growth doesn't have to take long to happen. Spiritual growth depends on each believer’s yieldedness to the Holy Spirit to obey what God tells them to do. You will grow spiritually your entire life if you have a desire to grow. I have been saved for five decades, and I am still growing spiritually; therefore, you must never feel that you have arrived spiritually. However, two things are essential for any believer to grow spiritually and to have continued growth.
Teaching is the first essential to spiritual growth. People must be taught if they are to grow spiritually. One of the criticisms of the early church was that they taught Christ’s doctrine, and their teaching filled the city with the doctrine of Christ. Oh, this would be a wonderful problem in our cities if we could fill our cities with the doctrine of Christ.
Teaching in the church is done during the Sunday school hour. It saddens me that so many churches have canceled Sunday school only to have one main service, and this is one reason that churches are dying and our nation is spiritually dead. If we don't teach, we will get people grounded in the doctrines of God’s Word. Sunday school is essential to the spiritual growth of God’s people.
Preaching is the second essential to spiritual growth. These critics in Jerusalem said that the church taught and preached. In other words, teaching was being done, but so was preaching. You cannot build solid Christian lives without both the teaching of God’s Word in Sunday school and the preaching of God’s Word in multiple church services. Preaching is as essential to Christian growth as is teaching.
Herein is the problem: some only come to Sunday school and miss the church preaching hour, while some come to the preaching hour and miss the teaching in the Sunday school hour. My friend, you cannot be a mature believer without the teaching in Sunday school and the preaching of the preaching hour. Both are essential to Christian growth. This means that you should make sure you are faithful in attendance to both the Sunday school hour and the preaching services if you are to grow spiritually.
Moreover, this also means that churches don't need to cut down on the teaching and preaching times, but they need to add teaching and preaching times if they want people to grow spiritually. In my church, we have a teaching hour before every service. This allows us to teach God’s Word multiple times a week, but right after each teaching hour, we have a preaching hour. Both together develop spiritual growth in God’s people. If you want people to grow spiritually, you must have both teaching and preaching multiple times a week for God’s people to grow.
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