"There's nothing today's church needs so much as to rediscover the doctrine, spirit, and commitments of the early Christian community," writes James Montgomery Boice.

The power the early church exhibited for changes and growth is overwhelming. Although it faced enormous obstacles--it was completely new, it taught truths that seemed unbelievable, and it suffered intense hatred and persecution-the church managed to spread across the early world within the lifetime of the first generation of believers.

In fifty chapters that progress through the book of Acts, Boice issues a challenge to believers to follow the first-century church. We are encouraged to glean the vital principles that enabled the early church to expand, and then apply them to our modern-day church. If we take time to study the expansion of the early church, we can spread the gospel the way it was spread during the first century-by the faithful preaching and teaching of the great truths of the Bible.

James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000) was senior pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was also president and cofounder of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, the parent organization of The Bible Study Hour on which Boice was a speaker for more than thirty years.