The Wonder of the Church

“And they devoted themselves the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

We continue our series on the Book of Acts today. We discussed last week that Acts is the training manual for the church, the “Who We Are and How We Do It” book.

Acts describes the Church in action. So we find at the end of chapter two Peter has just preached this simple and powerful sermon on Jesus Christ the crucified one and risen Lord. The listeners are “cut to the heart” and ask “what should we do?” What’s the next step?

After repentance and baptism, the next step is community. It is the wonder of the church. Now I know that when the word “church” is mentioned to many people, the first word that comes to mind is not necessarily “wonder.” Unless it is along the lines of “I wonder when I will go next?”

But if you look at this early church in action, the word wonder truly fits.

This description of the church is just that, descriptive, but it is also prescriptive, meaning that this what the church should always look like. This is the Holy Spirit’s prescription, if you will, for the Church for all time, until Jesus comes again. In the words of Luke Timothy Johnson, it represents “continuing and consistent patterns of behavior.” So what is the prescription, what are the patterns of behavior of the church?

One “They were together and had all things in common.” Acts 2.44

This verse is a repeat of the first verse, “when the Day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place,” of the chapter.

They were able to arrive at a common mind because they had a common purpose, which was really quite extraordinary, quite uncommon. They had the ultimate mission – it was from God! Because they had a mission they didn’t get bogged down in trivia like what color the carpet should be or other raging issues that occupy the church today.. That’s the irony - we squabble and lose sleep over stuff that doesn’t matter much. If we are going to disagree, let’s make it be a disagreement over something that is worthy of all of us.

I think we’ll find if we devote ourselves to oneness in the mission of the Kingdom, most of our disagreements simply fade away.

St. Cyprian once wrote of this common mind, “God is one, and Christ is one, and His Church is one; one is the faith, and one the people cemented together by harmony into the strong unity of a body.”


Love “And day by day, they attended temple together and ate together in each other’s homes, and they ate with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.”

The people of God love each other. If you look at this verse alone, you could make a strong argument for this prescription:

Food = Love

Although the blessings of good food and hospitality are not to be discounted, I would suggest that there is more going on here than just tasty potluck.

Open lives are going on here. They shared their lives with one another. They shared their food, their homes, their worship, their possessions, their prayers, their time. Sometimes, oftentimes, familiarity makes the heart grow fonder. Love is born.

It wasn’t the food alone that made outside observers say, “Wow, those people of the Jesus Way are something special – look at their chicken!”
No, they “had favor with all the people” because of their loving relationships.

As Erwin McManus writes, “Influence travels through relationships.” The early church had influence on the people around them because of the quality of the relationships. Love resulted in witness. Luke is careful to record, and it’s not an accident that “the Lord added daily to their number those who were being saved.”



Jesus “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching (didache).”

The love the church experienced is found in the teaching of Jesus. The Greek word used here for teaching is translated more strictly, “doctrine.” Doctrine was and is a good thing for God’s people. We don’t become the church without it. Why? Because the truth of Jesus is both beautifully simple but wonderfully deep and complex.

It’s like when my friend, who is a pastor, was buckling his toddler son in the car seat one day, he asked the boy, “Do you know why you have to be buckled in this seat?”

His son answered, “because of Jesus?”

We must become thinking Christians well-versed in the rich and complex tradition of the living faith that has been believed “by all, always, everywhere.” We must become indoctrinated in the faith. That means setting patterns in your life of study, prayer, reflection. It means regularly thinking with other Christians in community.

Are you setting these patterns in your devotional life? Is there a pattern in your life of attending classes and group studies with other believers?

The more we learn of Jesus and the Way the more competent we become to live life as God wills and the more deeply we love and become one in community. We’re not here simply to express our opinions. And we are not here to take opinion polls and arrive at the lowest common denominator position. We are here to devote ourselves to the teaching of the apostles that will set us loose on our mission.

It’s like what Bishop Will Willimon said in support of alternatives to abortion and against the “sin of abortion”–
“Christians are those who are remarkably unconcerned about what eight out of ten Americans can swallow without choking. Christians are those who appeal to divine revelation. . .a truth we did not make up.”

We are called to think with the Church of the Ages. We are called to think with Jesus. We believe that Jesus is the Lord of Life, the Master Teacher, and school is still in session. We believe that anyone “who hears these words of (his) and does them is like a wise person who builds his house upon a rock.”

Jesus words both describe and transform reality. To paraphrase Donald Miller, “Reality is like fine wine. It will not appeal to children.”

We are called to grow up in our understanding of Jesus, to “no longer be children” in our faith, “tossed back and forth” by mere opinion.


The prescription of the early church is unity, love, and teaching in Jesus. Are these patterns found here? Is love found here?

“God’s love, God’s voice and presence, would instill our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them. Perhaps this what the apostles stumbled upon.” Donald Miller