What is the core activity of a church that wants to reflect the life and teaching of New Testament Christianity?
Is it loud music and professional musicians and singers?
Is it consistent religious ritual undertaken on a weekly basis?
Is it going out and feeding the poor?
Is it qualified paid clergy?
Is it clapping, jumping up and down and raising ones hands?
Is it study of the bible or the preacher’s sermon?
Is it providing as many programmes as possible for all those who attend?
Is it having a nice building that makes the activities held in it more spiritual?
Is it attending meetings and then ignoring one another the rest of the week?
Is it having nice orderly meetings and sermons that are decently and in order?
I am sure you can make various other suggestions and would defend any of the above as essential.
If you turn to the book of Acts and the letters of Paul, you will find it is none of the above. What you will find is that the core activity of the New Testament church was…hospitality.
Their life and ministry was usually carried out in the context of a shared meal which everyone who could contributed to. In Acts 2 we find that this was a daily occurrence.
In the context of families, everyone does this, that and the other and when they have done that, this and the other, they eat together. Every night my family sat down to a meal together before the evening’s activities were embarked upon. That might mean doing things together or it might mean doing things in different directions. One thing never changed though and that was an evening meal together.
Every one of us usually sits down to a meal. Why not sit down to a meal with your spiritual family as the New Testament church did. Whilst eating they fellowshipped, listened to and discussed doctrine, prayed together and grew close to one another. In such a normal environment free of religious ritual they could not do otherwise.
During the day they went about their normal business, performed a few miracles, helped one another practically and…changed the world. Does that sound like your church?
About Me
- marksman
- Drouin, Victoria, Australia
- A retired teacher who is married with two children and six, soon to be seven grandchildren. I have been a disciple of Jesus for 54 years. I am a member of the church, God's called out ones. This is expressed in where two or three are gathered together in His name which can be anywhere and does not need a sacred building. What makes a location sacred is the people who fill it as the Kingdom of God is wherever his people gather. A genuine desire to worship God needs no steeple, altar or priest as the New Testament recognises the priesthood of all believers, not just a select few.
Adrien
My number one angel
Faith
My number two angel
Abigail
My number three angel
Zoe
My number four angel
Jemima
My number five angel
Malachi
My number six angel
2 comments:
I totally agree.....so hope you enjoy this poem -
THE KITCHEN TABLE
There are lots of things wrong with Australia today
And I'd like to have something to say if I may,
You know that, forsooth, that our problem with youth,
Untidy, ill-mannered, untamed and uncouth,
Is the fact that their homelife is so often unstable,
And it's all for the lack of a Kitchen Table.
Remember how once we would sit down as one,
And Dad would say grace when the carving was done?
Our own serviettes from our own special rings,
And we all knew our manners and etiquette things.
Then our elders wouuld tell us of custom and fable,
When we all sat about at our Kitchen Table.
Now they're building new mansions with four car garages,
On working lives mortgaged to interest and charges;
There's less time at home for the tea to be made,
And it's seldom today that a table is laid.
There's room after room under gable and gable,
But there's not enough room for the Kitchen Table.
At weekend the parents are chauffeurs unpaid,
No wonder they're tired and their tempers are frayed,
As they ferry their broods to arenas of spore,
Where the culture of winning's intensively taught.
And there's more on the telly both free and by cable,
So there's no time for talk around the Kitchen Table."
This poem says it all and clearly shows that the price of progress has been far too expensive.
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