What does First B Jackson teach about church growth?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on church growth keeps returning to one conviction: God moves ahead of His people, and the church grows when ordinary believers trust that and stay available. In the messages Pastor Ray preached through Acts 9, the growth in Damascus, in Lydda, and in Joppa was not the result of anyone's careful strategy. Saul arrived in Damascus with a plan of his own, and Jesus interrupted it entirely. Peter was already busy doing good things in Lydda when he was called away to Joppa, and he went. In both cases, the people involved simply responded to what God was already doing. The healings and the conversions followed from that posture, not from the other direction.
The teaching also takes seriously how fear and internal division can slow that movement down. When Saul came to Jerusalem, the believers there were afraid of him, and Pastor Ray asked the congregation to sit with that honestly: are there people we have quietly written off, people we do not actually believe Jesus can redeem? It was Barnabas, not a program or a plan, who opened that door, simply by telling the truth about what God had done on the road to Damascus. Pastor Josh made a similar observation working through Acts 6, where murmuring among Greek-speaking believers over the daily food distribution threatened to fracture the community from the inside. He traced that word for grumbling all the way back to the Exodus and called it one of the more serious threats a growing church faces, not external pressure but quiet internal division.
What the apostles did in Acts 6 is what Pastor Josh kept returning to. They did not dismiss the complaint or manage it from the top. They called the whole community together, named what they needed to stay focused on, and handed responsibility directly back to the group that had been raising the concern. Every name chosen to handle the distribution was Greek. The pattern across all of these messages is consistent: church growth at First B Jackson is understood as something God does, and the human part is staying honest, staying available, and not letting fear or pride close doors that God is trying to open.
Taught from Acts 1:8 · Acts 6:1-7 · Colossians 1 · Ephesians 2:8-10 · Amos 3:3
The passage taught · Acts 1:8
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.”
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- February 2, 2025 This week's Sermon @ First B Jackson February 2nd 2025 Acts 9 traces Saul's escape from Damascus, his cautious welcome in Jerusalem, and Peter's healings in Lydda and Joppa as the early church grows bold and outward.
- February 2, 2025 God Is On the Move Ahead of You Acts 9: Saul's conversion stuns Damascus, Barnabas vouches for him in Jerusalem, and Peter heals Aeneas and raises Tabitha as the early church spreads.
- December 8, 2024 If It Is of God, You Cannot Overthrow It Peter and the apostles face arrest again in Acts 5, yet keep preaching Jesus as Messiah. A study in boldness, suffering, and the unstoppable advance of the gospel.
Mentioned along the way
- December 29, 2024 We Are On a Mission from God A Wyoming pastor walks through Acts 6, showing how the early church handled internal division and kept the gospel moving forward no matter the opposition.
- April 22, 2018 A Tree That Cannot Be Cut Down Jesus heals a bent woman on the Sabbath, then describes God's kingdom as a mustard seed: small in its beginnings, growing until every person finds shelter in its branches.
- July 14, 2013 Three Assaults of the Evil One Acts 6 reveals three schemes Satan uses against the church: persecution, hypocrisy, and murmuring. See how the early believers faced each one and how we can too.