The early church as described in Acts 2:42-47 was a learning, loving, caring, sharing, worshipping, witnessing church. We may feel we don’t measure up very well and it’s always good to ponder carefully our shortcomings and look at how we can change and improve (the purpose of our ‘Building Blocks’ meetings and team building days.) All such things have to be done in an attitude of expectation and humility: expectation that God hears and answers prayer and an awareness that He is the one that adds to the church those who are being saved, not us. Salvation is His work and He is the head of the church. Nonetheless, it’s good to ask ourselves hard questions about the state of the church as we meditate on these verses in Acts, for these adjectives are useful in considering our church life and our commitment (‘devotion’) to that life.

A learning church

Are we keen to learn? Do we devote ourselves to studying God’s word, both privately and in our corporate gatherings? We live in a society where concentration spans are being eroded; I’ve heard numerous people tell me sermons above ten minutes are ‘too much’ for people to bear. In India, people gather for hours to listen to God’s word because of the value they place on this. We need to be people who are hungry to learn. As Heb 5:11-14 reminds us, we need to grow in our faith, moving from the milk of the word to solid food! How can we demonstrate devotion to the apostles’ teaching and grow through our delight in God’s word?

A loving, caring, sharing church

Jesus firmly placed the emphasis on loving God and loving each other and told us this is a valuable witness to a world desperate for love. ‘As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ (John 13:34-35) These verses in Acts 2:42-47 challenge us to move beyond being ‘churchgoers who pass each other by on a Sunday’ to believers who share everything together. Community living is messy, heart-breaking, discouraging and frustrating… but it’s also invigorating, reassuring, exuberant and worth it! We need to learn to care for each other the way those early disciples did. Perhaps that starts with a phone call or visit to someone this week, just reminding them that they are loved and appreciated? At our recent Team Building day we discussed the different ‘love languages’ needed for different personalities. Perhaps someone needs to hear that they are appreciated and valued. Another person may need you to spend time with them to signify they’re important. Someone else may need a hug, that physical touch that connects them to another person or perhaps a bunch of flowers or small gift may be the way to their heart. Someone else may need to see love in action – mowing a lawn or making a drink, perhaps. Whatever the means, as we focus on the needs of others, we can serve Jesus and show His love to others.

A worshipping church

When we worship, we take our eyes off ourselves and fix them on God. When we join together in prayer, singing, reading the Word and sharing Holy Communion, we acknowledge the centrality of God to our lives and we acknowledge that we are not in the driving seat. Only as our eyes are firmly fixed on Jesus can we hope to see the signs and wonders that the early church experienced. (Col 3:1-3) As a church, we need to be firmly rooted and established in God:  ^‘So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.’ (Col 2:6-7)

A witnessing church

We need to be committed to witnessing, to outreach, to telling others the good news of Jesus Christ. God is the only one who can save people and add them to the church (Acts 2:47), but we have to be willing to be His witnesses (Ps 107:2, Acts 1:8). Corporate outreach is crucial (helping at the youth club, the Parent & Toddler group, teaching children on Sundays, serving at the coffee morning, talking to the folk at Cherry Tree Court), but there is always more we can be doing. Let’s ask God to show us how we can best fulfil the ‘Great Commission’, as individuals and as a church, and let’s be praying for opportunities to speak to those around us – neighbours, acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family – about the wonderful works of God.

Generosity and sharing go hand in hand. There is much debate about private ownership and communal living in the early church, with Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:32-37 being cited as the ‘model’ for the New Testament church. Certainly, many people sold property and possessions and shared and gave this to the apostles, but this was always done on a voluntary basis, and since people broke bread in each other’s homes (Acts 2:46), clearly some people retained their own homes. The sin that caused such judgment on Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) was not so much that they kept money from the sale of their property but that they lied to the apostles about this; deceit and lying were the problem here, it seems.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that we should be generous people (see 2 Cor 8:5-17, 2 Cor 9: 6-11). God is a generous God and longs for us to reflect His nature in every aspect of our lives. The early church was characterised by generosity and giving, and we need to understand that there should be an overflow from our lives as we reflect on all we have received from God. (Luke 6:38) There is no place in the church for stinginess and meanness; so often, our carefulness and prudence are masks behind which our selfishness runs rampant.

Matt Skinner says, ‘the reign of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ creates the potential for mutual service that embodies God’s justice. The life and work of a Christian community can reflect–even if only dimly–the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed while on earth and secured through his death, resurrection, and exaltation.’ Some people believe that the book of Acts shows us the ‘perfect’ church in its initial purity, but in reality, the church on earth will never be perfect, for it is made up of imperfect, flawed, sinful people. Nonetheless, one way in which we can reflect the reign of God is through our generosity to each other (and this goes beyond financial generosity to the sharing of our lives in many smaller, practical ways – a phone call to someone, a visit to someone, practical help as outlined in 1 John 3:16-18, Matt 5:39-41). This kind of living is counter-cultural and certainly goes against the grain of selfish humanity, but this passage ‘anchors humanity’s deepest hopes for community, justice, generosity and meaning specifically as a result of people coming to embrace the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ as God’s designated agent, as the particular means by which God institutes and exercises God’s reign within creation.’ (Matt Skinner) This is the church’s role as we fulfil Jesus’ commandment to love one another as our greatest tool in evangelism. (John 13:34-35)

Sharing is not a natural concept. Anyone who has brought up children knows this for a fact! The toddler does not like to share; they have to be taught to do this. Their natural tendency is to want to keep all the toys for themselves. They don’t like sharing; they don’t like taking turns; they don’t like waiting. In their world, everything revolves around them.

This is a picture of people in general: it’s just seen in the pure, unadulterated form in a toddler (whose tantrums when encouraged to share can be truly impressive.) We are all selfish creatures who believe we’re the centre of the universe.

As we encourage the toddler to share, it’s interesting to note that they understand this concept easily; they just don’t like doing it. So my granddaughter is more than happy to come to any member of the family who is eating something interesting and say, ‘Share!’ But she is not happy if we ask her to share her food!

In the New Testament, we are introduced into a new kind of sharing, known as ‘koinonia’ or fellowship. This sharing marked out the church as something different. Acts 2:42 tells us the believers devoted themselves to fellowship and goes on to give us challenging and practical examples of what this looked like. (‘All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.’ Acts 2:44-45) Over the years, believers have struggled to work out what this looks like in their present times. The concept of monks who took vows of poverty was one example of this (everything they owned before becoming a monk was given to the monastery; there was a ‘pooling’ of resources), as were some hippie communes in the 1960s. Even communism, in some ways, was an attempt to look at communal resourcing and to eliminate the divide between the rich and the poor.

However we interpret these verses, the call to share our lives with others is one which the selfish self will rebel against. We don’t really like sharing. We don’t really like honouring others and putting their interests before our own. But Paul tells us that if we have any fellowship or common sharing in the Spirit, this is what we must do. (Phil 2:1-4) The fellowship which God gives us with Himself (see 1 Cor 1:9, 2 Cor 13:4, 1 John 1:3) has to be worked out practically in every other relationship we have. (1 John 3:14-18)

I don’t know about you, but I’m as challenged as any toddler by this one word, ‘koinonia’. Sharing is the grass roots of our faith. We’ve been given so much, Paul says, that our new natural response must be to share. That will only happen as the old sinful nature is put to death and the new spiritual nature allowed to flourish.

In Acts 2:42-47 we are told what the early church devoted themselves to. Devotion is a strong word, meaning love, loyalty and enthusiasm, and points to constancy, purpose, or resolve. When we are devoted to something, we give our time and allegiance gladly to that thing, and the church devoted itself to 4 main things:

1. the apostles’ teaching
2. fellowship
3. the breaking of bread
4. prayer

The apostles’ teaching

Having 3000 new converts to teach may be every church’s dream, but it’s not an easy task! The apostles had to ground these disciples in the truths of God, just as Jesus did to those two on the road to Emmaus (‘beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’ Luke 24:27) We need to be people who honour God’s word, giving it due time and attention (see 1 Tim 4:13, 2 Tim 4:1-2). Steven J. Cole says, ‘a healthy church must be devoted to sound doctrine, because God has chosen to reveal Himself in the written Word.’ There is no room for us to neglect God’s word, either privately or publicly, if we want to grow spiritually. We need to prepare people to be able to defend their faith and to understand that faith, for we live in a world hostile to God, faith and the Bible.

Fellowship

Fellowship (‘koinonia’) is something we are now able to share with God because of the reconciling work of Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor 1:9, 2 Cor 13:4, 1 John 1:3) and therefore is something we can also now share with each other. Fellowship means sharing: our time, our talents, our homes, our lifestyles, our possessions. These verses in Acts 2:42-47 challenge us to look beyond our Western individualistic culture to a community which cares. The early church shared meals, shared possessions and shared property. They understood something of the fact that in Christ we belong not only to God but to each other.

The breaking of bread

On the one hand, fellowship is achieved whenever we ‘break bread’ (i.e. eat) together. Meals together are a great way of getting to know people; over the table, all manner of things can be discussed and shared. Jesus ate many meals together with His disciples (to the extent that the Pharisees called Him a glutton! – Luke 7:34). At the same time, the use of the definite article (literally, ‘the breaking of the bread’) probably refers to the Lord’s Supper, inaugurated by Jesus just prior to His death (Luke 22:14-19). Every time we take the emblems of bread and wine in Holy Communion, we remember the death and resurrection of our Lord, and this central act keeps us focussed on the essentials of our faith.

Prayer

Again, the use of the definite article here indicates not private prayer, but corporate prayer. The early believers joined together to pray, understanding the value of meeting together in a way that can easily be forgotten in our individualistic society (see Heb 10:25). Whenever and wherever the church meets, whether in a large meeting (“in the temple”) or from house to house, prayer needs to be woven into the fabric of church life, for it is as we pray that we show our dependence on God.

We need to consider our church life and look at each of these four aspects and our devotion to them, for these are the ‘building blocks’ of the church, the ‘interior life’ from which all our outreach overflows.

My life interestingly has become involved with mosaics. I am involved with a mosaic project as part of the Dearne Community Arts’ Festival as we aim to make a community mosaic involving local residents and community groups from the area to exhibit at the festival on 28th September.

I have no artistic or practical experience with mosaics and so the logistics of this project are both daunting and challenging to me. I want the tile pieces to form a coherent picture, not just a random mish-mash of colour, and so I’m having to consult artists whose design skills and flair for this type of thing are far greater than mine. I’m not especially dextrous or fond of mess, so there is a large part of the practical aspect of this project which repels and terrifies me. I’m well out of my comfort zone here and the distance between the vision I have of a perfected mosaic reflecting the individual logos of different groups incorporated into a unified whole and the pile of resources heaped onto a table seems to me too far to be bridged in a matter of weeks!

Yet as I ponder these things, I’m aware that a mosaic is a parable of God’s work in our lives. Mostly our lives seem to us to be a mess. We may start off whole enough, but life, with all its misfortune, tragedy and diffcult circumstances,soon leaves us feeling like broken tiles, smashed into different pieces with jagged edges and rough surfaces with a picture that no amount of sticking pieces together seems to recreate.

Yet just as a mosaic picture in the hands of an artist tells a bigger picture through a variety of broken tile pieces, so God is building His church out of flawed, broken, sinful people, fitting us together with perfect purpose and unity We don’ see the finished picture yet, and at times it’s hard for us to fathom why He allows X or Y to happen to us. We are broken and bewildered, yet He has not finished with us yet.

So I believe my mosaic project, with all its daunting demands, is a valuable reminder to me of the bigger picture God wants to recreated through broken people.

And if you’d like to be involved with the mosaic project, the launch session is on Saturday 1st June (10 a.m. – 1 p.m.) at our church!

Just as we would all think carefully about what we were going to say if we were going to testify in a court of law, we should think carefully about how to give our testimony and how to talk to people about Jesus. The question ‘How did you become a Christian?‘ is one we should have an answer for, for only we can give that answer! (see 1 Peter 3:15)

For some of us, we were  brought up in a Christian home and taught the way of faith from a young age. This doesn’t mean we don’t have a personal testimony. We can still talk about God’s goodness and how we came to believe this truth for ourselves.

Others had no Christian background and perhaps no interest in God or spiritual matters at all, so they can talk about what piqued their interest and how God got their attention. I came from a family where faith seemed to have been forgotten (my paternal grandparents were devout Christians and my parents attended church until their marriage, but they seemed to have ‘grown away’ from faith by the time I was born.) Then my youngest aunt went away to teacher training college in Leeds and found Jesus in a very real way. Her testimony affected my maternal family very much, leading my grandmother, mother, uncle and his wife to faith. For me, though, fond of her as I was, this had no real impact other than to make me mildly curious.

It was only when I saw young people my own age talking about Jesus and being passionate for God that I started to wonder if I had written off this spiritual talk too quickly. God provided people who were willing to talk about God both intellectually and experientially and so I found myself on a journey that led to me realising I was a sinner in need of God’s forgiveness. Then I was able to talk to my Mum about this and to pray with her to receive forgiveness and new life.

In a court of law, one answer often leads to another question, and it’s the same with testimonies! We might perhaps be asked why we believe. It’s good to have thought about that as well! Questions are not always hostile; people are genuinely curious. We need to be able to explain that our faith is based on historical fact and that the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus are crucial to our belief.

We need to be people who tell our story, who share our faith with others. Think about how you can do this, what you can say… and then ask God for opportunities to do this!