Acts 13 and Some Thoughts on Sensationalism, Evangelism, and the Mega Church

Read Acts 13

In many of the hip Christian circles, mass evangelism is getting a pretty bad rap. The same goes for any kind of sensationalism. Of course, mega churches aren’t going anywhere. Crusades still happen. And TBN continues on. Nevertheless, it seems that more careful and thoughtful Christians (yes, I’m probably a bit biased) have concerns about the use of mass evangelism popular in broad evangelicalism and the sensationalism rampant in more pentecostal and charismatic arenas. Most of these concerns, I believe to be right and proper. However, it is quite clear that the early church successfully and frequently utilized both approaches. So how should the contemporary church view such methods?

In the first section of this chapter we see the sensational. Paul confronts unbelief and opposition to the gospel by casting blindness upon the leader of the resistance. A few things to note. First, God clearly uses the miraculous. While I believe that a fairly strong case can be made for the cessation of revelation, there seems to be no strong biblical argument for the termination of the miraculous. In fact, “power encounters” such as the one recorded here clearly still take place. Our Western-minded anti-supernaturalism does us a great disservice here, for there are well-documented accounts to God’s power triumphing over the demonic powers. Secondly, it is important to note the purpose of this miracle. What makes it so remarkable to the observers is that Paul demonstrates power over a “magician,” a wonder worker. Jesus whips the powers that oppose him. This the point of the miracle. Thirdly, in 13:12 Luke notes that the proconsul “believed, when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.” The power encounter was accompanied by the truth of the gospel. The sensational didn’t stand alone. The “magician” manifested the sensational apart from truth, and Luke calls him a “false prophet.” Miracles without gospel are not good. They deceive. The sensational is meant to serve the spread of the gospel and not stand alone. If miraculous becomes the center of attention, then it is no longer an evangelistic tool. It is a demonic one.

In the second section (13:13-52) we encounter mass evangelism. Paul and company’s gospel witness was limited at first to the local Jews, but by the end of the chapter “the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord”(13:44). What is intriguing is that the Jews were quite willing, even desirous to hear Paul’s words about Jesus, but once the crowds started to assemble they became jealous and eventually drove Paul and Barnabas out of town. Now the Jews were probably more worried about nationality than numbers, but it is curious that many Christians, like the Jews, get a little leery of any evangelistic approach that brings in the numbers. Again, much of this concern is warranted. But mass evangelism was clearly an accepted practice in the early church. The simple fact that the crowd is massive does not mean the evangelistic approach is suspect. It is fairly clear here(13:43), as well as in the rest of Acts, that the early church and its missionaries always developed more personal ministry from the masses, but so many times they began with the masses. The problem, as I see it, with the mega church movement is not the size of the crowd. It is making the crowd primary. The entire focus of the church often becomes getting and sustaining a large mass of people. There is often the lack of personal ministry mixed in with the mass ministry. The best churches do both mass and personal ministry as the early Christians did. In fact, the anti-megachurch mentality of some of us is really baffling. We’re questioning the power of the gospel and Spirit to subdue a mass larger than we can handle. But who is sufficient for personal ministry? All evangelism is more than we can handle. We need to be very cautious about determining what God can and cannot do, and very, very cautious about judging the ministries of other Christians. That especially goes for the ministries that are bigger than ours.