When people speak of an "early-church-style community," many first imagine a "warm atmosphere." They picture an ideal scene where everyone understands each other well, smiles without conflict, and meets one another's needs. Yet the church portrayed in Acts is never merely a romantic indoor garden. There was always the danger of division; there were misunderstandings and fears; and at times human desire revealed itself bluntly. And still, the church did not collapse-not because its moral quality was above average, but because the Holy Spirit rewove their relationships, and the events of the cross and resurrection rearranged their worldview. This is precisely the thread Pastor David Jang (Olivet University) persistently emphasizes in his exposition of Acts. An early-church-style community is not "a gathering of good people," but a workshop where faith in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ breaks down human self-centeredness and rebuilds life anew. Thus, the church growth strategy Pastor David Jang speaks of is less a set of eye-catching techniques and more a long formation process in which kerygma (the proclamation of the Word) aligns the community's center, kenosis (self-emptying) transforms the way authority operates, and koinonia (fellowship/communion) rewrites the rhythm of everyday life.
Pastor David Jang often leads his listeners by holding tightly to a single verse from Acts 2 and using it as a lens to survey the whole. One verse he repeatedly highlights is Acts 2:23, which binds together two phrases in one sentence: "the definite plan" and "foreknowledge." These expressions hold in tension God's providence and human responsibility, the mystery of salvation and the historical reality of violence, refusing to let us remove one side simply to feel at ease. Pastor David Jang treats this verse not as a rigid script for history, but as a spiritual screen that illuminates history, and he asks: If God has a definite plan, what are we to do? And if human hands erected the cross, where do we place the weight of that guilt? The direction he chooses is neither moral escape nor cold fatalism. The "definite plan" is not a metallic conclusion that renders humans powerless; it is the breathing space of providence that opens a way for repentance and faith to actually occur. And "foreknowledge" is not surveillance that manipulates human beings; it is God's patience that, in the end, translates human tragedy and violence back into the language of the gospel. Without that patience, the cross would remain nothing more than an instrument of execution. Because of that patience, the cross becomes an event of salvation, and the community learns how to lay down its self-justifications before that event.
To keep such vast concepts from remaining only in cold logic, he sometimes borrows the vocabulary of art. Art does not replace doctrine, but it reaches strata doctrine often struggles to access-shame and resentment, anger and resignation, and the deep inner place that confesses, "I have failed." One distinctive strength of Pastor David Jang's exposition of Acts is that it moves people away from the habit of reading Scripture as mere information and toward the sensibility of reading Scripture as the language of events. The cross is not a signpost for doctrine, but the reality of human violence; the resurrection is not moral optimism, but God's answer that passes through the heart of despair and generates a new grammar of life. Pentecost is not an emotional peak inside an individual; it is a divine intervention that reconfigures the structure of a community. Within this frame, church growth strategy turns from "bigger, faster" to "deeper, truer." Before asking whether the church can expand outward, Pastor David Jang first asks what the church's inner center is anchored to. If the center becomes achievement rather than the gospel, the community learns the language of competition. If the center is the gospel, the community learns the language of repentance and faith-the language of beginning again.
The first breath of an early-church-style community is kerygma. The first sermon in Acts is not rhetoric designed to persuade so much as proclamation directed toward an event. When the sentence "Jesus has been made both Lord and Christ" resounds publicly, the inner life of individuals can no longer remain a private storehouse of feelings. That proclamation shakes the structure of life. Pastor David Jang refuses to reduce proclamation to a pulpit "event"; he sees it as long-term formation in which the whole community learns a new language. Here, "language" means not merely word choice but a framework of perception. If "grace and peace" remains only a greeting, the church becomes a religious ornament. But if grace and peace are translated into how conflicts are handled, how money is treated, how the weak are regarded, and how time is used, then the greeting becomes the air the community breathes. In the end, kerygma reveals not only "what you believe," but also "what you love." That is why repentance and faith are not a one-time emotional decision, but a repeated turning that keeps moving the gospel's center into the center of life. When "turning back" becomes a habit, the community grows sturdy.
If kerygma sets the center, kenosis protects that center from being distorted into power. As a community grows and ministries expand, organization and systems become necessary. Systems bring efficiency, but they also carry the risk of turning people into tools. Pastor David Jang treats this risk as a core issue of ecclesiology. The church is not "an efficient religious organization," but "a body that operates by the pattern of the cross." Kenosis is not merely the virtue of humility; it is the event in which Jesus' self-emptying is translated into the grammar of leadership. The greater one's influence becomes, the freer one must be to go lower; the more praise one receives, the more courage one needs to empty oneself more deeply; the better the outcomes, the more restraint one must show in returning credit to the community-this is the realistic face of kenosis. When Pastor David Jang emphasizes "emptying," he does not mean self-erasure as self-abuse. He means a spiritual discipline of laying down the habit of idolizing the self. A community can grow healthy only where there is training in emptying. Otherwise, cracks grow in proportion to speed, and wounds grow in proportion to size.
Koinonia is the place where kerygma and kenosis solidify into the concrete forms of daily life. The early church was not merely a religious group that gathered together; it was a community that experimented with a new way of living together. In Acts 2, the teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers are not four separate items but one shared breath. Those who heard the Word could not turn their backs on one another; those who prayed could not pretend not to see hungry neighbors; those who broke bread could not absolutize possessions. Pastor David Jang says that if koinonia is understood only as "a good atmosphere," people burn out easily and are wounded easily. Koinonia does not rely only on emotional intimacy. It is also a discipline, a promise-a communal covenant that trains love. The tenderness of remembering one another's names, the attentiveness that reads needs, the courage to speak truth rather than bury conflict in silence, the patience that does not hand out cheap forgiveness yet refuses to abandon restoration-these are koinonia in practice. The early church can be called a "community of love" because love is not merely an emotion; it is training.
The scene that most vividly shows this daily structure is Holy Communion and the breaking of bread. The act of breaking bread is not simply a liturgical step; it is an event that resets the community's worldview. To share one loaf is to declare that my survival cannot be separated from another's survival, and it is repeated training that gently breaks down the hard boundary called "my portion." Pastor David Jang warns that if Holy Communion remains only inside the church, it can easily degenerate into a mystical ornament. If breaking bread does not expand into life, Communion may strengthen communal self-satisfaction rather than awaken communal conscience. But when Communion flows into the community's ethics, the breaking of bread becomes the beginning of social responsibility. A hand extended to poor neighbors, hospitality toward the lonely, care for the wounded, and reflection on unjust structures-all of this ultimately begins in the table confession: "We are one body."
At this point, a single masterpiece of painting shines a startlingly clear light on early-church breaking of bread and resurrection faith. Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus captures the disciples' moment of recognizing the risen Jesus through an extreme contrast of light and shadow. The bread and fruit on the table do not sit as mere still life; they become a stage preparing for the explosion of "recognition." Arms flung wide in astonishment and bodies leaning forward show that resurrection faith is not merely intellectual conviction but the response of one's whole being. The theology of breaking bread that Pastor David Jang emphasizes resembles this. The resurrection does not end as a doctrinal conclusion; it takes form at the community's table. When someone lays down their portion and looks after another's, when someone confesses failure instead of hiding it, when someone turns anger into truth and chooses forgiveness-and when these moments repeat within the rhythm of prayer and proclamation-the community gains a tangible awareness: "The Lord is here." The church becomes not the lighting of a building, but a relational space that, like the Emmaus table, generates a small lamp called grace and peace in the middle of life's darkness. This light is not the spotlight of success; it is a small flame that helps wounded people breathe.
When Pastor David Jang speaks of a "Spirit-filled community," he does not reduce the Holy Spirit to a private spiritual experience. The Spirit is a wind that comforts my heart and, at the same time, a wind that reconstructs our relationships. When the Spirit comes, language changes. Even when stating the same facts, we speak not with attack but with responsibility; not with argument but with repentance; not with information but with testimony. When the Spirit comes, time changes too. A schedule of consumption and overwork is replaced by a schedule of worship and care, and priorities shift from "performance" to "people." When the Spirit comes, money changes. In a world where possession guarantees identity, the community moves into a world where sharing reveals identity. Pastor David Jang explains this shift in the language of ecclesiology: the church is a social body formed by the Spirit, and that body is an alternative community that lives "differently" within the world. Therefore, embodying an early-church-style community is not copying the early church's outward form; it is obeying the process by which the Spirit reshapes the community's sensibilities and institutions.
Resurrection faith is the driving force of that process. Pastor David Jang clarifies the source of the church's energy with the sentence: "Before Pentecost, there was the resurrection." The resurrection is not first a comforting message; it is a reconfiguration of worldview. The fact that the cross did not end as failure redefines the meaning of failures we face today. The conviction that even when things look like the end, God holds the ending and prepares a new beginning strengthens the emotional foundation of the community. Without this conviction, communities fracture easily. Whenever wounds appear, whenever the future seems invisible, people split into smaller groups that feel safer or retreat into individualistic faith. But resurrection faith gathers people again. The strength to refuse surrender to despair's grammar without denying the language of wounds-that strength becomes the fuel that sustains koinonia. This is why Pastor David Jang emphasizes repentance and faith: so the community will not be maintained only by emotional highs. Repentance is not self-hatred but a change of direction; faith is not boiling emotion but the endurance that keeps direction. If a life of prayer helps an individual not to lose direction, then solidarity-remembering one another's faith-helps the community not to lose direction.
In this flow, the church growth strategy Pastor David Jang describes is not so much a "success formula" as wisdom for cultivating a "Spirit-shaped ecosystem." A flashy sermon can draw crowds; a larger building can widen visibility. But the early-church-style community grew in a fundamentally different way. They chose not "what to consume" but "what to testify to," and they trained not "how to compete" but "how to love." Pastor David Jang diagnoses that the more the language of growth in the modern church resembles the language of the market, the greater the risk of treating people as "users." Conversely, the more the community's center aligns around kerygma and Communion, prayer and care, the more the church raises people up as "witnesses." As witnesses multiply, the community reproduces. Here, reproduction is not the expansion of an identical brand, but a process in which the same gospel life force manifests in new forms in each person's place. Therefore, the practices Pastor David Jang proposes are simple but deep. He builds rhythms of weekday teaching and meditation so proclamation does not remain only on Sundays, and he forms communal habits of intercession so prayer does not remain merely an individual effort. He repeatedly interprets the meaning of the table so Holy Communion does not weaken into an annual event, and he creates channels of care so breaking bread connects to actual sharing. He also does not end with welcoming newcomers, but places them on a discipleship path where they learn, serve, and take responsibility within relationships. This is not growth aimed at "rapid expansion," but growth aimed at "deep rooting." It may look like slowing growth, yet it is a strategy for driving roots deeper.
In a digital environment, koinonia becomes more difficult. Connection is easier, yet actual isolation is more likely; information overflows, yet relationships easily become shallow. In such conditions, Pastor David Jang says that to embody an early-church-style community we must restore fellowship not as "content" but as "commitment"-moving beyond merely knowing each other's updates to bearing responsibility for one another's collapse. This is not to say online communication is evil, but to propose intentionally recovering the embodied language the online world cannot provide: eating together, weeping together, walking together, praying together. The verse that says the early church "broke bread at home" and shared fellowship with glad and sincere hearts is not primarily testimony about location, but about an attitude of life. A home is not an institution, but it is the most concrete unit of life. When that unit comes under the influence of the gospel, the church finally becomes "church on weekdays, too." This weekday-ness-this everyday-ness, this lived texture-is where Pastor David Jang places his weight when he speaks of an early-church-style community.
The recovery of weekday-ness ultimately interlocks with the recovery of a life of prayer. As Pastor David Jang says, prayer is a private act that orders one's inner life, and at the same time a public act by which a community adjusts its speed before God's providence. When alone, a person easily falls into self-certainty; when praying together, people learn-through each other's breath and tears-that their vision was narrow. As prayer deepens, proclamation changes as well, because the Holy Spirit opens channels through which the Word proclaimed from the pulpit flows immediately into the community's conversations and care, economic choices and use of time. When those channels open, repentance and faith become not the memory of "being moved," but a "repeated direction," and the grace of Communion expands beyond the sanctuary into workplaces and homes, streets and schools. Just as the early church did not separate prayer and breaking bread, today's Spirit-shaped community does not separate prayer and practice. That union is the hidden backbone of the church growth strategy Pastor David Jang speaks of. Prayer becomes the quietest ember that preserves the community's warmth.
The embodiment of an early-church-style community does not ignore social wounds. The church in Acts could not instantly overturn Roman power and economic structures, but it endured differently the isolation and exclusion those structures produced. Even as persecution scattered them, they turned scattering itself into a missionary route, and when the poor became poorer, they opened tables and formed networks of survival. While speaking of God's providence, Pastor David Jang also stresses that we must not romanticize real suffering. Providence is not a slogan that justifies pain; it is the language of faith that God is at work even within pain. Therefore, a community that speaks of providence must listen more sensitively to the tears of the vulnerable, perceive structures of inequality more sharply, and take the signs of ecological crisis more seriously. The cross of Jesus Christ is not an event that deals only with private guilt; it is an event that exposes the violence of human society. And the resurrection is God's answer to that violence and the promise of new creation. This theological direction restores the public character of the church. Where the community connects with the local society, protects the dignity of the vulnerable, and becomes a shelter for the wounded, the church becomes not a defense against the world but a sending into the world.
Pastor David Jang understands Holy Communion as a passageway toward such publicness. The breaking of bread is the climax of worship and the beginning of social ethics. When a community frequently celebrates Communion, it is not merely keeping a tradition; it is training in which a self-centered worldview is repeatedly broken and reconstructed. Without this training, the church easily becomes a self-protective mechanism. But when breaking bread becomes a communal habit, repentance and faith expand beyond a private inner drama into communal responsibility. When someone confesses a wound, the community does not treat the person as "a problem," but receives them as "someone to be cared for." When someone acknowledges sin, the community walks the road of restoration together rather than excluding them. This does not mean ignoring justice. On the contrary, the restoration the gospel speaks of is not a pardon that evades responsibility, but a new ethic in which the way responsibility is borne changes. Thus, a community of love is not defined merely by emotional warmth; it is proven by mature relationships that speak truth, ask responsibility, and rebuild again. Grace and peace appear as the fruit of that maturity-and at the same time, as the communal language that makes that maturity possible again.
If you look even briefly at early Christian history, the early church often clarified its identity through conflict. Where Jewish tradition collided with Gentile life, the church asked more clearly, "What is the gospel?" The conclusion of that question was not the reinforcement of exclusion, but the expansion of welcome-a powerful hint for today's church. As culture shifts, generations divide, and political tensions rise, the church easily becomes factional. But an early-church-style community learns the language of the gospel before the language of camps. Kerygma is not a megaphone for a faction; it is a declaration that shines the light of the cross upon all factions. Kenosis is not a strategy for winning; it is the gospel paradox that the more I go down, the more the community lives. Koinonia is not an alliance of taste among similar people; it is a strange and holy companionship in which different people are trained to become one body in the Spirit. Such companionship is possible because the community does not abandon a life of prayer. Prayer is not a technique to soothe emotion; it is training in which a community aligns its desire with God's timetable-slowing the speed of speech, lowering the temperature of anger, and entrusting to the Spirit the impulse to make the other into an enemy.
Restoration into the gospel is always present tense. Today's cities differ from the early church's cities, but human loneliness and anxiety, desire and shame still share a similar texture. That is why the "grace and peace" Pastor David Jang often speaks of is not an antique phrase, but an alternative language that heals a fragmented age. Grace is a gift beyond my control, and peace is the way that gift spreads into relationships and institutions, economics and culture. If a community speaks of grace yet pressures others, grace becomes cheap language. If a community speaks of peace yet sacrifices the vulnerable, that peace becomes a lie. Therefore, embodying an early-church-style community is hard work of aligning words and life, and what Pastor David Jang's preaching urges is precisely that road of alignment. On that road, the Holy Spirit refines our haste, the cross shatters our arrogance, and resurrection faith leads us to ask:
What have we placed at the center? What story do we believe, and what story are we being pulled by? Do we consume the cross merely as "a tool of salvation," or do we, through the cross, reflect on how power and violence operate and allow ourselves to be repositioned into a life of kenosis? Do we reduce the resurrection merely to "a guarantee for the afterlife," or do we, through resurrection faith, redefine the meaning of failure and loss here and now and gain the courage to choose what gives life to others? Do we perform Holy Communion and the breaking of bread merely as a liturgical sequence, or do we receive that table as an event that binds us into one body and sends us into the world? When a community answers these questions honestly, the church learns anew the meaning of the word "growth." To grow is not to possess more, but to love more deeply; not to secure broader influence, but to serve longer from a lower place; not to have a louder voice, but to bear a clearer testimony.
Pastor David Jang's vision of an early-church-style community gathers into one imagination: the church should not be a sponge that absorbs the world's fatigue and disappears into it, but an ignition point that translates the world's fatigue back into the gospel's language and turns it toward hope. That imagination begins with kerygma, passes through kenosis, and becomes concrete in koinonia, breathing together both the depth of the cross of Jesus Christ and the height of resurrection faith. And when that breathing is sustained by the rhythm of a life of prayer, the community is continually corrected and renewed by the Spirit's touch. An early-church-style community is not a completed building, but a dwelling the Spirit remodels every day. Therefore, what the church must do today is not replicate an idealized utopia, but yield itself so that the gospel becomes real in the small choices of each day. When the community does not evade the questions and endures to the end, the church becomes not a stage for self-proof but a platform for witnessing to grace; it learns not the obsession of growth but the joy of maturity. And that maturity becomes the most persuasive way for the fire of the early church to return again into our lives today.
