A friend of mine recently tried to convince me how weird we were. For a while now, he has been obsessed with the idea of what real community looks like and how the Book of Acts paints a very different picture than what the Church looks like today. During our conversation, he told me that if you read the Bible carefully, you’ll see that we’re not normal—that is, those of us in the North American Church in the 21st century. The Book of Acts describes what normal should be like, and it turns out that the “normal” Church in those days would be pretty radical now.
Take Acts 2:42. It’s a verse that describes life in the first-century Church just after the amazing events of the Pentecost: “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (TNIV). In this one sentence there are four devotions of the early Church, the Church that changed the world.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching
There’s a real sense of authority here. The nascent Church didn’t just drop by to sample what those who had been with Jesus were saying—they were devoted to this teaching. You can imagine that they weren’t just gunning for a 96 percent or better on the next test. The didactic message was, “God has been here, we have been with Him, and we declare Him to you.” These apostles proclaimed not only who Jesus was (Acts 2:36), but they boldly declared that a proper response should produce in a follower of Jesus a radical change from one’s society (Acts 2:40). If a new believer wasn’t “fed” by this teaching, there was nowhere else to go!
They devoted themselves to fellowship
Is there any word more tainted these days than “fellowship”? Does the phrase “Fellowship Hall” evoke images of vinyl tile, metal folding chairs and potluck food? Some modern churches have overcome the stigma and have actually managed to engage their members in community, but it’s a tough bridge to cross. Most people today prefer to hang out with friends in warmer environments surrounded by music and those who share a common life Monday through Saturday. Places like Starbucks, Panera Bread and, yes, even taverns provide an atmosphere more conducive to sharing life than the vibe found in church halls. But the first-century Church devoted itself to fellowship. No buildings to maintain, only people to love. Is it too big of a stretch to say that their passion was to be with one another? Conversion in those days meant becoming a part of a new family (the family of God) that was more real than a birth family.
They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread
This could (and probably does) mean at least two things: sharing meals with each other and the ritual we have come to call the Lord’s Supper, or Communion, or the Eucharist. Jesus Himself had instructed His followers to remember Him in the breaking of bread, and the early Church was devoted to remembering Him in this manner. Some churches still are. While the prevailing Protestant emphasis is on God’s word on Sunday mornings, our Catholic brothers and sisters organize their worship around the Eucharist. Perhaps they have something to say to us about this. Perhaps nothing: There are centuries of Catholic teaching about how to encounter Jesus fresh and new every time we come to His table. How can we be devoted to something that only happens once a month or once a quarter?
They devoted themselves to prayer
Yikes! Anything but prayer! My prayer life used to run like this: “God bless Dad, God bless Mom and … um … God bless the puppies.” I always felt like I ran out of stuff to pray about so fast. But prayer was a central devotion of the early Church. I expect their prayer gatherings were more intense than ours. Check out Acts 4: 24–31 to see what I mean, especially verse 31. Can you imagine God answering prayers immediately by shaking the building? And when the apostle Peter broke free from jail (Acts 12:5–19) he made his way to where he knew believers would be praying for him. He knew they would be at their post, doing something important. The praying Church even thought that an angelic manifestation on Peter’s behalf was a normal occurrence (check out the incredible assumption they make in verse 15).
What would the Church look like if we refused to settle for the same-old, same-old? What if we took a moment to realize how weird we really are? Maybe we could become normal at last.
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