Hi Aaron
some thoughts that I wrote to a Missiologist/Missionary Professor friend off ours who has too many immature churches with too few pastors in his region. This grew historically so skew because westerners pumped in money without developing the indigenous people in their church stewardship.
Anyway, we know about the early church growing very fast but having the benefit of evangelizing among Jewish people who were already used to tithing and to religious leadership. However, further growth in outlying areas such as Greece, Roman Empire, Germania and Scandinavia must also have grown quickly. Can we learn from what happened during the Reformation and the Great Awakening itself?
All of this brings up the question, are we really ready for a revival? We pray for it but do we have a mechanism in place to absorb and feed the multitudes of immature Christians. What if the Spirit would move the people of an entire country to repentance? We assume He would also supply the tools. Or would He wait til we show a willingness to be ready. Perhaps Christ is calling the Church to make better preparations before He will poor out His Spirit. Perhaps we corporately don't even know what to do because we have been so focused on feeding ourselves. We have forgotten the Great Commission and staying largely in beautiful church buildings with well-paid pastors. How much of a building does one really need, how much maturity of a congregation does one need to be able to replicate, are elders able to feed and safeguard the flock while only seeing a preacher/pastor once in a while? Do we need more itinerant preachers, circuit riders?
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