Summary of the Acts Course

UNIT 1

• We studied how to use the book of Acts, a historical book, in today's twenty-first century church.

• We did an extensive study of the keys to the establishment and expansion of the first-century church. ( I have included my Competency Project for unit 1 for your review as we will be using it as a guide in our ministry planning.)

UNIT 2

• We studied that the Great Commission is more than merely telling people about Jesus and making new believers, but included the entirety of telling people about Jesus, baptizing them, teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded and multiplying Churches upon the earth.

• We did a deep dive into understanding that the Local Church has been commissioned by God to be the primary worker of fulfilling the Great Commission. Thus, Abundant Grace should not just be multiplying believers, but should be multiplying believers and gathering them into new churches.

• Our vision is to see an entire network of churches gathered together on Sunday morning for the worship and the equipping of the saints.

UNIT 3

• We learned that all Christians should be involved in missionary work at some level. This makes perfect sense since a local church is a gospel community on mission together.

• We studied the apostle Paul's missionary strategy called the Pauline Cycle, which included 10 steps or activities. These steps help us to understand the scope of how we define and view the Great Commission.

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UNIT 4

• We learned that local churches are God's choice for the Great Commission and therefore it is the local churches that hold the primary authority upon the earth to accomplish the Great Commission.

• We learned that para-church ministries such as missionary agencies, evangelistic agencies, etc. should be structured in such a way as to assist and serve the local church. They should not operate separately, independently, or in competition for resources with local churches.

• We studied that it is an ideal situation for local churches to develop extensive kingdom-relationships with many other local churches and para-church ministries to accomplish the Great Commission as a large, unified team.

UNIT 5

• In this unit, we put the pieces of the first four units together to create a missions strategy for a local church.

• We listed and created guidelines that every church could use to keep their missions plans both biblical and effective.