WHAT THE CHURCH SHOULD BE

( Acts 2 : 42 - 47 )

The community life and sharing of goods in the early church in Jerusalem is a model of community that has attracted many people and influenced countless renewal movements throughout history. In this message, preached at Greyfriars Presbyterian Church, Mt. Eden, Auckland, on 25 May 2003, Rob Yule examines the secret of its enduring appeal and shares its relevance for the life and witness of our churches today.

The book of Acts describes the beginning of the Christian church. Like a mountain stream near its source, it flows sparkling clear, unpolluted by later sediment of tradition. The life of Jesus and the joy of the Spirit are very evident. The early church radiates a vitality that is extraordinarily attractive, which has inspired countless renewal movements throughout Christian history.

In recent times, under the Holy Spirit’s influence in the Charismatic Renewal movement, churches throughout the world have been recovering patterns of church life based on the early church. Freeing themselves from centuries-old tradition, they have been rediscovering the dynamic of the Holy Spirit that made the church so effective in its infancy, turning first century society upside down.

The book of Acts attributes the vitality and attractiveness of the early church to the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2: 1-4, 14-18). If we would be a truly effective church today - glorifying God, building one another up, impacting our community, reaching out in mission - we mustn’t overlook the dynamic of the Holy Spirit. Luke’s description of the early church shows us what God intends his church to be.

Integration (Acts 2:42)

The early church displayed balance and wholeness. Churches - like individuals - tend to ride hobby horses and become unbalanced or exclusive in their emphases. Evangelicals emphasise sound teaching. Liberals stress fellowship and social relations. Pentecostals are into joyous worship. Catholics value holy communion and the life of prayer. The early church held all of these together. ‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer’ (Acts 2: 42, NIV).

The ‘apostles’ teaching’ has been transmitted to us in the New Testament. For us, devotion to the apostles’ teaching means letting the New Testament shape our everyday life today. It’s sad that many churches don’t teach the Bible or share its relevance for Christian living.

Where the Holy Spirit is at work Christians enjoy studying the Bible to discover God’s guidance for their lives. A beautiful feature of the early Charismatic Renewal movement was Catholics rediscovering the Bible. As John Stott says, ‘The Spirit of God leads the people of God to submit to the Word of God.’

The early Christians were also committed to ‘the apostles’ fellowship’. Christianity satisfies the mind, but it isn’t just intellectual. It’s also relational. It’s a new way of living, not just of thinking. The Spirit frees us from individualism and opens us to other people. Fellowship is a mark of a Spirit-filled church - whether team-work in leadership, fellowship in small groups, or a sense that we can achieve more together than alone. The Spirit makes us members of a body, helps us discover our gifts, creates a sense of belonging to a community that’s bigger than ourselves.

The early Christians also integrated private prayer and public worship. Luke says ‘They devoted themselves... to the breaking of bread and the prayers’ (Acts 2: 42, NRSV). The breaking of bread is holy communion, which was originally part of a larger meal. The definite article indicates that ‘the prayers’ were probably prayer services rather than private prayer.

The early Christians were balanced, combining organised worship ‘in the temple courts’, and informal worship ‘in their homes’ (Acts 2: 46, NIV). These early Jewish believers continued to worship in the temple. They didn’t cut themselves off from the life and worship of Judaism, but worshipped and witnessed within the setting of their Jewish culture - just as Messianic Jews are doing today. But they also preserved the Jewish heritage of worship in their homes, among families and friends, in more personal settings.

So their worship was both formal and informal, structured and spontaneous, institutional and intimate. Their Christian living was balanced and integrated.

Demonstration (Acts 2:43)

Bored with her lessons, Eliza Dolittle, the heroine in the musical My Fair Lady, sings:

Words, words, words -

I’m sick of words.

Sing me no song

Read me no rhyme

Don’t waste my time

Show me.

How often have Eliza Dolittle’s words been echoed by the critics of Christianity. ‘Poor, talkative Christianity’, lamented novelist C. S. Forster.

The early church gave people not just words, but a demonstration. ‘Everyone was amazed by the many miracles and wonders that the apostles worked’ (Acts 2: 43, CEV). Signs and wonders produce awe. This is the ‘wow’ factor that makes a complacent world sit up and take notice that God is real and that God is at work. They have an indispensable role in denting people’s scepticism, cracking open their secularist worldview, shaking their atheism and unbelief. Signs, wonders, healings, miracles, conversions, answers to prayer show that God is not just a legacy of ancient mythology, a figment of pious imagination, or a product of wishful thinking - but real, alive and active today.

When Paul evangelised the Corinthians he came to them ‘with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power’ (1 Corinthians 2: 4, NIV). Signs, wonders and miracles attested Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God (Acts 2: 22), and Jesus said they would accompany our preaching too (Mark 16: 17-18). Indeed, Jesus said we would do greater miracles than he did, when he defeated the powers of evil and ascended to the Father (John 14: 12).

While at Fuller Theological Seminary in the early eighties John Wimber studied the role of signs and wonders in church growth. He found that the Christian movement is growing fastest around the world where miracles or ‘power encounters’ occur. These are demonstrations of God’s power at work overcoming resistance in the form of evil, magic, curses, sickness, violence, crime, vested interest and corruption.

An example was the remarkable itinerant ministry of Liberian prophet William Wade Harris through the Ivory Coast, West Africa, in 1913. Harris was then sixty. He wore a white robe and a white turban, and carried a Bible and a bamboo cross.

These primitive animistic peoples were devil worshippers. Harris taught them that worship of idols was wrong. He challenged them to turn to God. He would invite those who wanted to follow God to come and kneel before the bamboo cross. They would place both hands on the cross and confess their sins. Harris would touch the top of their heads with his Bible, and expel demons from them. When demons were cast out the sick were instantly healed. Villagers came by their hundreds for healing, bringing their charms and fetishes to be burned.

The local witchdoctors were upset by Harris’s evangelistic efforts. They banded together to kill him with secret potions, but nothing happened. Then the French authorities arrested him on a trumped-up charge, and sent him to work at the local shipyards. Harris warned the governor not to interfere with what God was doing. A week later the governor died in an accident, and the boat Harris was working on inexplicably sank.

Harris would deliberately travel at night on roads that were forbidden by the witch doctors, to prove that God was more powerful than their spirits. The fact that no harm ever came to him was a demonstration that his God was more powerful than the local spirits.

Cooperation (Acts 2:44-45)

‘Cooperation’ is too mild a word to describe the early Christians’ community life and sharing of goods. But cooperation is where we should begin if we are to progress beyond our individualism towards true community and sharing.

Luke uses superlatives to describe the early Christian community: ‘everyone’ (43), ‘all the believers’ (44), ‘everything in common’ (44), ‘anyone who had need’ (45), ‘every day’ (46), ‘the favour of all the people’. There were no passengers or parasites in the early church. Everyone, every day, was pulling together !

The Greek word for ‘fellowship’ (koinonia) is the same word used for the collection of money Paul later organised among the Greek churches (2 Corinthians 8: 4, 9: 13). The related word koinonikos is Greek for ‘generous’. Fellowship is practical. These first Christians shared their possessions with one another. ‘All the Lord’s followers often met together, and they shared everything they had. They would sell their property and possessions and give the money to whoever needed it’ (Acts 2: 44-45, CEV).

The Holy Spirit frees us from selfishness, motivates us to share our lives and possessions. New Zealand poet James K. Baxter had a life-changing experience of the Holy Spirit just months before he died in 1972. He wrote, ‘The first Christians did not start to share their goods in a free and full manner till after the bomb of the Holy Spirit exploded in their souls at Pentecost. Before then, they would be morally incapable of this free and joyful sharing. The acquisitive habit is one of the deepest rooted habits of the human race. To say, “This is ours, not mine,” and to carry the words into effect is as much a miracle of God as the raising of the dead.’ (Thoughts About the Holy Spirit [ Wellington, Futuna Press, 1973 ], p. 11).

Unlike Communism, which this passage inspired, the early Christians’ sharing was not forced but free, not compulsory but voluntary. The Old Testament teaches care for the poor, and Israelites were to give a tenth of their produce to ‘Levites, foreigners, orphans and widows’ (Deuteronomy 26: 12). ‘How could a Spirit-filled Christian give less ?’ observes John Stott. ‘It is part of the responsibility of Spirit-filled believers to alleviate need and abolish destitution in the new community of Jesus.’

Celebration (Acts 2:46-47)

What a fellowship to belong to ! They worshipped God ‘with glad and sincere hearts’ (Acts 2: 46, NIV). They had an evangelistic lifestyle ! Joyful praise, powerful teaching, relevant worship, meaningful fellowship, a sense of awe, the excitement of things happening, people being converted. A celebrative community has a powerful impact on outsiders.

The Holy Spirit is the missionary Spirit, and the early church, inspired by the Spirit, was an outward-looking, missionary church, reaching beyond itself and across cultural barriers. Luke describes God as the principal evangelist, adding daily to the church’s numbers (Acts 2: 47). Church growth does not come about through better techniques or technologies. The church is God’s creation, and it grows because of the Holy Spirit.

In the early church there was a strong link between salvation and membership. Those ‘added to their number’ were those ‘who were being saved’ (Acts 2: 47, NIV). There were no nominal Christians - people added to the church’s number who were not saved. And there was no solitary Christians - people saved who were not added to the church’s number. Today’s individualistic society has produced large numbers of Christians who are loners or drifters, who need to become rooted in the local church.

Unlike many churches today, where conversions are rare, the early church experienced steady, uninterrupted conversion growth. If we were open to the Spirit who was the source of its life, we would see unchurched people regularly being added to the church today, to become effective disciples of Jesus Christ.

Rob Yule, 25 May 2003

© 2003, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church