A New Testament Church?

My particular spiritual heritage is one that is based on trying to restore the church of the 1st century following Christ’s death. When thinking about church conceptually, I frequently step back and look at what we’ve accomplished compared to the goal of restoring a New Testament church. Honestly, I don’t think we’ve done a very good job. In fact, I don’t know if a majority of our churches are anywhere near what the church in the New Testament looks like.

That’s a pretty bold statement, and probably one that creates a lot of tension for some who read this blog. In keeping with the theme of the previous post, however, I think that many of us are comfortable feeling that we’ve restored the “visible” aspects of the New Testament church. We have communion once a week, we don’t use instruments, we don’t allow women to be in authority, etc. We look at those visible, outward things that define us as congregations and feel pretty good about restoring the New Testament church.

The other side of the coin is that we haven’t done a very good job restoring the invisible side of New Testament Christianity. The part that talks about being in each others lives on a daily basis. The part that calls us to a real commitment and dedication to Christ. The part that is relational enough that if a brother sins against us or falls in sin that we feel okay with going and talking to them about it instead of talked about them.

My heritage has placed a high value on Acts 2, especially verse 38. We forget, however, that the chapter doesn’t end there. There is an entire section on fellowship that follows, although we’ve played that down some.

Acts 2:42-47 – ⁴²They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. ⁴³Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. ⁴⁴All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. ⁴⁶Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

I’ve been hard pressed to find a congregation that lives these verses out in a way that indicates we’ve restored New Testament Christianity. Because of our fixation on the visible side of church, many have looked at verse 47 and surmised that something must be wrong with the church today because there are no longer people being added to the church on a daily basis. They usually follow that with some critique of church members and their lack of sincerity in faith because they’re not “doing evangelism”. Sometimes they try to dream up a plan to pack people into the churches, and the number of methods for advertising and outreach are limitless.

I would argue that the solution is much less complex, however more difficult. If the church would focus on the invisible characteristics and behave like the the church in verses 42-46, the stuff in verse 47 would take care of itself.

What do you think?