Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

Grace to you and peace.

2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, 3 remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 8 For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. 9 For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

Miracles, signs and wonders, and healings were a consistent part of the proclamation of the gospel by the early church in the book of Acts. No one who reads the Bible seriously as the very word of God understands it otherwise. How we read the book of Acts will determine what we expect in the life of the church today. Is it the story of the primitive church, or is it the story of the prototypical church?

Those who read Acts as the story of the primitive church assume that we are no longer the primitive church but the church that has matured and developed further. Therefore, we shouldn’t expect things to be as they were in the primitive church. The church is now an institution. We have highly developed theology and don’t need the miraculous as the primitive church did. We have the written word of God.

When we read the book of Acts as the prototype of the church, we read a very different story. What is a prototype? It is the first model of what will go into production for marketing to the public. Think of cars. The automobile industry is constantly creating new prototype cars and trucks to try them out and decide if that model will go into production. If so, each car is supposed to be produced exactly like the prototype, except some modifications that will allow for upgraded features for more money. But, the basics of the model will be just like the prototype.

Apply this thinking to the church as seen in the book of Acts and the letter to the Thessalonians. What elements of the prototype do we see in Thessalonians?

There is more to the prototype than miracles, signs and wonders, and healings (gifts of the Spirit). The other absolute element of the prototypical church is the word of God. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. (Acts 6:2) But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (6:4) And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem(6:7) Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.(8:4) While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. (10:44) But the word of God increased and multiplied. (12:24) And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region. (13:49) So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. (19:20)

So, the prototypical church has two key elements: the Word and the Spirit. We find this emphasis in verse five, “our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” This ministry of word and Spirit produced fruit in the Thessalonians that spread the gospel all around their region.

“ For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. 9 For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God…”

1 Thessalonians 1:8-9

Those who view the church in the Book of Acts as the “primitive church” do not see this kind of demonstration of the Word and Spirit resulting in exponential growth of the church. There are many places in the world today where the church is duplicating the description in Acts, where the Word is “multiplying” among the people in the region. Where this is happening, the ministry is one of Word and Spirit, not one of Word only.

I believe this kind of dual emphasis on Word and Spirit will heal many of the maladies of the contemporary church. Many excesses and acts of disobedience among the more charismatic/Pentecostal churches strongly emphasize the Spirit and his gifts with little application of the Word taught. The impact of these churches is limited from what it could be. I don’t want to fail to recognize that this branch of the church is growing more than any other segment. But it is not as healthy as it could be. There are common misuses of the gifts of the Spirit because of a failure to take certain instructions in 1 Corinthians 14 seriously.

Generally, the more Word-oriented churches, such as the conservative Reformed churches and Word-oriented evangelical churches, place an extremely high value on proper preaching and teaching of the Word of God. There is a strong emphasis on proper theology and doctrine. This emphasis has spawned a whole new category of “ministry” on the internet called “discernment ministries.” These folks are so focused on understanding certain doctrines that they spend all their time labeling ministries who don’t teach certain doctrines just exactly as they do as ‘heretics.” Many of these discernment ministries spend a great deal of their energy debunking the work of the Spirit, thus undermining the prototypical church that is a church of Word and Spirit. They would reduce it to a church of Word only.

My appeal for today is for the church to be a prototypical church. Whatever we see in the New Testament, especially in the Book of Acts, we should pursue today as the ideal. If your church is strong on Word and weak on the gifts of the Spirit, pray for an abundant outpouring of the gifts of the Spirit. If your church is strong in the gifts of the Spirit and weak in theology and sound doctrine, pray for the addition of sound doctrinal preaching to your church’s life. It isn’t supposed to be one or the other, but both emphasized strongly.

The Word and Spirit: better together.