Acts 17:6

     As we rapidly approach another Regional Convention, I must admit that I become a little more excited as each day draws closer. Nine more days for this grand event to begin!  I daily trust and pray that it will be a time of great renewal and inspiration as we get on with the task of being like the Early Church, our prototype “A Church for the Times!” 

     In fact, the more we read is the more we realize that the Early Church was no dry, anemic irrelevant, out-of-touch church. To the contrary, they were more than ever – a passionate, incendiary (in a good way), communal and celebratory church. They made sense. Like them, this church, the church of today, this twenty-first century church is expected to make sense. Our churches today must be relevant, meeting needs, daily experiencing the power and changing lives.

     It cannot be successfully downplayed or dismissed that for this church to be effective, she must remain prophetic, messianic, apostolic and charismatic. Anything less than this, is to be sub-standard and to fall way beneath the level to which He has called us to function and operate. It’s either we measure up or continue to be mediocre churches, drying up, with very little impact on our communities and those all around us. 

     Concerning the Early church, it was said that “. . . These that have turned the world upside down have come hither also” Acts 17:6. I wonder what they are saying about us. Do they know that you as a church exist in their community? Have you made any impact at all on your surroundings? Have you left an imprint or a footprint in the lives of the community you were called to serve? 

     I mean what an unusual way to describe the representatives of the Church of God in the first century. They were movers and shakers. I wonder what they were saying about us if anything at all. I think it is about time that we stop being ordinary and trying to fit-in to a world that can’t stand us anyway. May we always know that we belong to the upside-down kingdom. We are subversive and counter cultural. We were never sent to blend in but to mold and shape the world around us. 

     Am I wrong, after reading the New Testament, in wanting to believe that something beyond the ordinary should always be transpiring in our local churches? If this is still a New Testament church, then should not miracles happen often when we go out and come in for praise, worship and evangelism?  

    We must be people who make things happen. We make waves in this world.  We are not just content to leave thing as they are.  We need to upset the whole system.  We were sent here to disturb the comfort of sinners.  We were sent to upset Satan’s apple cart – to overthrow the tables of the money changers and those who corrupt and defile the temple (Matt 21:12). Every time we take a step, the world should shake! I mean that’s what Pentecost is all about! Even though they were viewed as turning the world upside down, what they were really doing was putting the world right. 

    As the covenanted people of God, we must confess that we are tired, extremely tired of the ordinary. Ordinary won’t do for today. Today, nothing is ordinary: Everything is extreme! Here in the Northeast, we are now in search of the extraordinary, in search of a real supernatural move of God to take us through these extreme times. May this convention help us to become indeed an extremely relevant church! 

Leroy V. Greenaway
Presiding Bishop – Northeast Region 

July 10th, 2021