The Church of Acts in America

Modern-day churches in America are quite frankly a mess! Instead of welcoming all the weary souls who are suffering, the front doors are locked tight. The oh-so-lucky people with a key to the church are the supposedly “self-righteous Christians,” who care more about keeping people out than pulling people in. If you’re “lucky” enough to fit such un-Christ-like standards to enter, you’re met with the greediness and pridefulness from the very person who stands at the pulpit teaching you about the Word of God!

Roots Assembly of God (or, Roots AG), located in Metro Detroit, Michigan, is an example of a group of believers breaking the American mold and returning to the church model from the Book of Acts. Unlike “typical churches,” groups of thirteen or so believers meet in small home-run churches, focusing on personal spiritual growth.

Pastor Locke also speaks on the current state of the modern church, calling for a return to the Book of Acts: “I’m not in any way against parachurch organizations, but there’s a reason they’re called parachurch. They are not the church, but they do come alongside to pair with the church. Don’t miss that. Jesus didn’t die for a parachurch organization. Jesus didn’t die for a Bible college. Jesus didn’t die for a homeless shelter. Jesus died for the church, and every one of those types of organizations actually should be coming out of the ministry of the local church. Their disjointed existence and mixed messaging is one of the great failures of the body of Christ.

There was a time in history when the local church was the nursing home. The local church was the hospital. The local church was the orphanage. The local church was the seminary and Bible college. The local church was the widow care center. And the local church was the bank to take care of each other’s needs. There was a time when the local church took care of its own no matter the need, and as we learn from the Bible, that never should have changed.

So why do parachurch organizations exist? Certainly not because they’re wicked and want to lure people away from the church. No, it’s because of the deficiencies of the churches and the disobedient and greedy stewardship of their leaders in an increasingly demonized world. Consider the Bible colleges that used to be arms of the church.

Somewhere along the line local church leaders decided they would take the cream of the crop of their young people whom God had anointed for ministry and send them to be trained by people they didn’t even know. These non-church colleges began opening their heads and filling them up with a bunch of Calvinistic nonsense and other cessation foolishness. Then they’d send them back home when they were twenty-two years old, thinking they knew more than the pastor who’d been there teaching the Bible for fifty years.

You see, there was a time when good preaching trained good preachers. The church brought up its own. But then, through bad leadership and sloth, the church began to abdicate the professorial role. It abdicated that responsibility. Again, I’m not against most non-church organizations. I’m not against Cru. I’m not against the Gideons. I’m not against the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I contribute to each of them.

For more information on Greg Locke’s new book, The Generosity Journey, visit MyCharismaShop.com.