It’s interesting.
It comes across from time to time as if the point of the good news is to escape the fate worse than death and then wait for Jesus to return. Regular gatherings are the order of the day in a set building which will be funded by those in attendance giving money. Those in attendance need to make sure they are in the number when the saints go marching in.
Nothing too much required other than that. Indeed other than showing up, paying up, singing up and then shutting up, there was nothing that different between those in the building and those outside.
It’s difficult to equate that style of living with the Acts of the Holy Spirit as chronicled by Luke’s second biblical narrative. When I say difficult, I mean they are virtually incompatible. On the one hand I don’t believe in a wholesale adoption of first century practices. This is chiefly because we don’t live in the first century. Yet the purpose of Acts is to outline what happens when the Holy Spirit is in action. When the Holy Spirit is in action people do various things – they see folks get healed, they go on mission to see the gospel spread, they get in trouble for their proclaimed faith and they develop a community spirit among themselves that sees them live sacrificially.
That kind of reading is very different to what I outlined as a typical approach to church at the beginning. For me it is not about quibbling about the status quo and bewailing the state of things as they are. Doing all that gets tiring and is ultimately fruitless.
What it is encouraging to do is see what the Holy Spirit did and ask what is He doing today? What is He doing to point us to Jesus? What is being done to motivate us to have Holy Spirit filled lives as a community? What is the call to act as the work continues?
Working through Acts this month has been revealing to me in asking and answering those questions in the context of my own life. It’s clear the work continues when I consider the situation in the city in which I live, even in the place in which I work. It’s clear the work continues among the community of grace in which I share life.
It’s applying the steps learnt and bringing others in on the job as it goes on for the glory of God.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 