Community Formed

(Today’s audio reading on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7sxDnyGfrzD1sUwDmEyUr7)

All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals including the Lord’s supper, and to prayer. (Acts 2:42)

Community formation was intentional. Peter’s preaching ignited lasting change in the hearers. They took specific actions, and those actions gave rise to visible, Christian community. The time of the 11 disciples in post-resurrection confusion was over. The time of the somewhat confused 120 gathered after the Ascension of Jesus, trying to discern what was next, was over. No wonder the standard commentary on what happened on this Pentecost Day is that this was the “birth-day of the church”.

How different things would have been if their response was along these lines:

“Wow, that was a great sermon! I wonder where I can get a copy! I might want to hear that again.” Or,

“That was a special time of preaching! We need that every week. Well, I gotta go; time to get to lunch. (And I wonder who’s on TV in the first game this afternoon? Rams or Falcons?)” Or,

“He did pretty well for an untrained preacher. With a little more practice, who knows? He could go places. I thought of a couple of ways he could improve.”

None of that. They were so consumed by his message that they asked him what they should do next. He told them, and they did it (which was repent and be baptized). Now this large, baptized group, invaded by the Holy Spirit, formed community to move forward together. Interesting to think about: this formation of the church was not provincial. That is, it was not culturally or linguistically restricted to those Jews of one geographical area who all spoke the same language. These formers of the first recognized Christian community came from north, east, south, and west of Jerusalem and spoke many different languages. God used the beauty and diversity of multi-language speakers to form one body and to start an organized, world-wide movement.

The newly formed group immersed in teaching. They wanted to know the way of the apostles and what Jesus had taught them. They were committed to fellowship, or intentional times of gathering. That fellowship included what seems to be a cultural universal: they ate together in their bonding as a newly formed group. And they were committed to prayer.

The action denoted by the Greek verb here is that these actions represent things they continued to do with intense effort. Thus, their specific actions were not accidental (how did that happen?), or passive (we might get around to it), but they were intentional and intense. The list of actions shows that they were serious, and that they were willing to work hard to make this Christian community a success.

“Father, thank you for the community-forming-actions taken by those first church members, and may we be inspired to follow in their paths.”