In my epistle I want to focus on the gospel and it’s impact in the church. When the gospel impacts an individual it saves and sanctifies. When the gospel impacts a group of people it creates a community, a culture with certain characteristics. We call it the Church. The church community functions differently from how the broader secular culture functions. I want to do a brief study of fellowship in the New Testament and draw out some implications for our church.
Acts 2:42-47 says:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Here you’ve got an ideal picture of church community. Everyone is committed to growing and learning. They have dinner at one another’s homes all the time, not as part of a church program but spontaneously out of love and friendship. They’re incredibly self-sacrificial. So much so that no one is poor or needy. There’s deep joy, intimacy, support, and worship. No wonder they experienced daily conversions!
This is the kind of fellowship I want for our church because it’s organic. It’s not driven by pastors urging, nor is it a burden on congregants schedules. It’s spontaneous and sincere. However, I think there are several things about the fellowship described here that we don’t share and which makes our pursuit of fellowship more difficult.
- In Acts 2 everyone is a new believer. Everyone is at the same stage of growth together except for the apostles but even they were pretty clueless just a few months back.
- The fellowship in Acts 2 essentially consists of one culture and ethnicity in a broader environment of one culture and ethnicity.
- The fellowship in Acts 2 is in a cultural environment where “all the people” look on them favorably.
We don’t share any of these characteristics, each of which makes community much easier because it is strengthened by affinity. In other words, it doesn’t take a transformation by the gospel to be in deep friendship with people who share your culture, experiences, maturity and ethnicity. Acts 2 is what I’ll call “simple fellowship”. It’s what churches experience sometimes in their early years. The founding pastor draws a certain demographic of people. They convert to Christianity and grow together often developing deep and profound fellowship with one another. The community works together to purchase buildings, develop ministries, and face challenges. Because they come from more similar background and experience there’s a natural ease in decision making and leadership. The people are largely of one basic age group and social demographic.
Acts 16 describes another scenario. In Acts 16 three conversions are recorded which all took place in the early days of the Philippian church. The first is Lydia, a woman who is already a follower of God. She heard the message of Jesus and believed. Lydia was likely very wealthy. She was a dealer of purple cloth and she owned two homes. Because she was already a follower of God it can be reasonably assumed she was a spiritually interested person living a fairly moral life. Lydia converted to Christianity primarily through a verbal presentation of the gospel.
Second is a demon possessed slave girl. She couldn’t be any more different from Lydia. The slave girl was being exploited by her master for money. Her life was in shambles. God came into her life through an exercise of power when Paul cast the demon out of her. Entirely different from Lydia.
Third is the jailer. Paul and Silas are thrown in prison for casting out the demon. The jailer is tasked with guarding them. Then in the middle of the night an earthquake shakes the doors of the prison open and frees Paul and Silas. Verses 27-30 say:
The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!” The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
The jailer isn’t a wealthy spiritual seeker like Lydia in need of someone to just explain the gospel. Nor is he falling apart or oppressed like the slave girl who needed spiritual power. The jailer is a blue collar working guy who is primarily converted through witnessing the actions of Christians.
I believe these three stories are included in Acts to give us a snapshot of the Philippian church. Imagine Lydia, the slave girl, and the jailer in Bible study the next week. How different they were! This is much more like our world here at Faith. Some of us were spiritual seekers, maybe we grew up in church and our experience of conversion was largely one of learning and understanding the gospel and being convinced of it’s truth. For others of us we came to christianity through pain, addiction, and abuse. God set us free from alcoholism or drugs or mental illness. Still for others of us we came to Christ because we saw the character and consistency of other Christians. We didn’t necessarily have intellectual obstacles or disasters in our lives, we needed to see christianity lived out.
The fellowship that comes from this kind of story is much more complicated than that of Acts 2. Jailers don’t have much in common with cloth dealers and neither have much in common with formerly demon possessed slave girls. Actually their only commonality is Jesus but Jesus is enough to unite the most disparate people.
This is exactly what Galatians 3:28 says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Also Colossians 3:11-14
Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Jew or Greek is an ethnic, racial, cultural division. Slave or free is a class/economic division. Male or female is gender obviously. None of these should be causes for division but all could be.
In Acts 11 the gospel spread to the city of Antioch. Up to this point most of the converts to Christianity were Jewish. They were called followers of “the Way”. Christianity at this point was almost seen as a subset of judaism. The city of Antioch changed things. Antioch was a major Roman trade city which, like cities today, was multiethnic. Like today there was strife and segregation between these different national and racial groups. So much so that not only was the city walled, like all ancient cities, it was also subdivided by walls inside the city so that there wouldn’t be riots or fighting. The gospel came to Antioch and suddenly the church became multi-ethnic, both jews and gentiles united together through the gospel. Antioch is where believers were first called Christians. Some theologians believe the term Christian had to be invented to describe this new group of people who weren’t categorizable by their culture or race like everyone else.
This is the kind of community we must create here at Faith. It’s incredibly difficult. To show you how easy division over these issues can be look at Galatians 2:11-13
When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
This is Peter! Peter, an apostle who actually knew Jesus! If he could cause division between believers of different ethnicities then it is most certainly still a risk for us today. Race isn’t the only threat either. Churches all across America are dis-unified over differences in generations, dress, music, class, and education.
Faith needs to throw away any idea that we’re a church for old or young, black or white, rich or poor, democrats or republicans or any other demographic I haven’t mentioned. The gospel is powerful to unite the most different of people because the thing they share in common – Jesus. This church belongs to Jesus. We are His.
Here is where I get excited. God has put our church in a position to be an incredible demonstration of the power of the gospel. We are situated right beside Chester a community which is largely poor and african-american. In the other direction is Wallingford, voted last year the 8th best town in America to live in by Money Magazine! Wallingford is mostly white and middle to upper middle class. Media as well is largely white, professional, and middle to upper middle class. Brookhaven is mostly white, blue collar and is middle to lower middle class. Brookhaven has a rate of secondary education below the national average. We’re in the midst of a community that is incredibly diverse in race, education, class, background, experience etc. In other words, for Faith Community Church, the “community” in our name is going to need to be created by the gospel, not by the fact that we’re all like one another.
This makes being in and leading our church more difficult. I also believe this is an incredible blessing from God that many churches never receive. Many churches talk about diversity but don’t experience it. Many churches talk about young and old learning together but don’t actually experience it. Many churches talk about races coming together in reconciliation and unity but are situated in areas without much diversity. God has entrusted us with tremendous opportunities and with the gospel and his Spirit, the only thing that will enable us to meet those opportunities.
John 13:35
By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Posted by Meade 
It will take church to help 
