Today (10AM-11AM) is our first day of teaching our class on the Book of Acts at our local church. Pray for my wife and I as we embark on this new adventure. And pray for all the class members to have ears to hear (that includes us too). We need to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying in this hour. We need His presence and anointing to be in that room.

One of the first things we will share with the class is the current status of church growth since the Book of Acts. The following are just a few numbers that may be enlightening to you.

As most of you know, the Church started with 120 in the Upper Room along with the 11 apostles. There are now (as of 2011) 2.28 Billion Christians in our world of 7.7 Billion. That is very close to 30%.

In 1980 – Pentecostals were 6% of the Christian population in the world.

In 2011 – Pentecostals were 25% of the Christian population in the world with 35,000 being added every day.

There are presently 600 million (Pentecostal+Charismatics) out of the 7.7 billion world population, plus another 285 million evangelicals, for a total of 885 million in these designated groups.

The church is not dead!!! It's growing and actually exploding in other countries like Nigeria as just one example.

The Redeemed Christian Church of God – Lagos, Nigeria (www.rccg.org)

Overseer Enoch Adeboye (since 1973) started as a translator in this church.

Members - 15 Million in Nigeria, 28 million worldwide (100 different countries)

Church attendance – 2016 – 50, 000 (1 square mile) doubling in size

US News & World Report (2016) list of 50 most powerful people in the world listed Pastor Adeboye as one of those fifty.

Predictions by some Religious Scholars

By 2040 – The largest world distributor of Gospel literature will be Nigeria.

By 2050 – The entire African continent will be Christian (Pentecostal).

Pastor Enoch Adeboye came from a very poor background. His family could not afford to send their children to school. However, Enoch had a great desire to go to school so he went on a hunger strike and his father finally relented and sold their goat to raise enough money to send Enoch to school. Enoch excelled in school and earned a Master’s Degree and Doctorate Degree and was inline to become the head of a college when he gave his life to the Lord and entered the ministry. He started off as a translator in his church and later took the position of overseer when the founder died. You can see more about this church at www.rccg.org.

God is still building His church!!!!

(To Be Continued)