Sermon Transcript
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teachings and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.
And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
The people who study such things say that when an organization is trying to implement a new emphasis, the last step of implementation of the emphasis is rooting it into policies and procedures, institutionalizing it, so to speak. Apparently this is required to teach folks because some people think that they can create a new organizational emphasis by having one big meeting, hanging one banner in the lobby for one week, and that will be enough for everyone in the organization to completely change the way that they have been doing everything, um, with no further follow-up. Did that ever happen in your office? The CEO was like, hey everyone, we’re gonna be a green company from now on. Uh, so they had a speaker in the cafeteria, they gave everyone a t-shirt, they put a recycling bin next to the trash can, and that was it.
Life went back to normal. Um, and you were like, that was weird. That’s not how a new emphasis is added to an organization, right? It must become part of the daily rhythms, part of the procedures, and must be enforced and then reinforced or it’ll just be a little blip that came and went and nothing really changed. So I am under no delusion with our current emphasis that we can talk about the importance of one-anothering as we have for the last month and that will do it, right?
Like having 5 sermons and some discussion questions for our life groups who actually utilize those questions is the beginning, that’s not the end of a focus of building community with each other. Today we’re looking at how the early church seemed to root communal practices into their policies and procedures, which they might have a pretty good idea how to institutionalize communal living since they passed on to us all the one another commands that we’ve been talking about. Here in Acts 2, which we just read, thank you, look at verse 42. It says they devoted themselves to 4 practices: the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. They were devoted to those 4 practices.
Devoted, right? When you are devoted to something, maybe your health, I don’t know, you’re devoted to something. Think about what you’re devoted to. Your career, your family, your budget, whatever. You’re devoted.
What does that mean? It means you prioritize it, right? You sacrifice for it. You say no to other good things because you are devoted to this thing. They were devoted to teaching, fellowship, prayer, breaking of bread together, which shows community was a big deal to them, a really big deal, because out of their 4 devotions, 2 of those are explicitly communal, fellowship and breaking of bread, those are explicitly communal, and then prayer, at least in the book of Acts, is almost always seen as a communal activity, Of course, you can pray by yourself.
I wouldn’t say you can’t do that, but in the book of Acts when people pray, they usually pray together. So, out of their 4 devotions, we could really say 2 and a half are explicitly communal. Even teaching happened in a group setting because very few people would have owned their own books, right? They were never going off by themselves to study somewhere. So, even teaching is a little communal, though not explicitly.
When we look at what they were devoted to then, we see there was no such thing in the New Testament as an individual Christian, no such thing as an individual Christian. The picture of some kind of spiritual mystic who climbs a mountain and lives alone with God, not a Christian thing. Not to say there aren’t short periods of time when we need to get alone with God, Of course, right? Jesus even did that. But the idea of completely pulling away from the world and living in a hut in the woods where it’s just me and God, not a thing in Christianity.
Christians engage with others, engage with the world around them. They prioritize community and they are devoted to it. So today we’re not going to look at all 4 of their practices. We’re only going to look at the 3 that are the most communal and how they might play out in the life of our church. It is possible, not for all of us, but it is possible some of us need to adjust what we are doing so we can be more closely aligned to what they prioritized.
So we’re looking at prayer, fellowship, and breaking of bread. So first, prayer. Prayer was not an afterthought for them. Out of the 30-something references to prayer in the book of Acts, there are 20-something unique instances when people prayed because sometimes one instance is referenced more than one time. But out of these 20-something unique instances when prayer happened in the book of Acts, there only appear to be 3 instances when someone was praying alone.
And even then, even those 3 instances, it’s not exactly clear if the person was alone or not, or just— it just doesn’t say. Which means the far majority of times when prayer happened in the book of Acts, it was communal prayer, people praying together. Again, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with individual prayer or getting alone with God, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with that, but it does mean if we only pray by ourselves we are certainly missing something important. If the only time we pray is in our head before we go to bed or something, we are not showing that we are devoted to prayer in the same way that the early church was devoted. I was convicted in our young professional group a couple of years ago when we started placing such an emphasis on relationships.
I was convicted about the large amount of time that we spent teaching in YOPROS and the small amount of time that we spent praying. If I were being honest, I could say that we were devoted to teaching, but I could not say that we were devoted to prayer. I would study and prepare a fantastic lesson, in my humble opinion, for our young professionals because when I first got here I’m like, this is Silicon Valley, right? These are bright people. I need to make sure I’m giving them theologically and intellectually rich content so I’m going to teach and then they’re going to discuss it and that’ll take over an hour of our time together.
And then, well, we need to pray of course so at the end we’ll take prayer requests and someone will pray. And usually that looked like about 5 minutes before our time was up we’d ask, does anyone have any urgent prayer requests? And if someone did, they’d share it, but they probably felt rushed, right? Because, oh no, we’re out of time. It’s like the worst thing in the world, going over.
And then one person after that would pray for about 30 seconds, sometimes remembering all of the needs just spoken, sometimes not remembering the needs that were just spoken, which makes sense because I was rushing them, right? But we could say that we prayed, we did it, we checked it off the list, right? That’s not devoted to prayer and it doesn’t help anyone feel like they matter. It shows teaching is important but it doesn’t show that whatever is happening with you is important. So this is what we did, we significantly cut back on our content and teaching time.
And significantly boosted our prayer time to where they were about even. Not that we were against content, right? Of course we want to be devoted to content, obviously, like the church in Acts devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. Amen. We want to study the same texts that they were writing in the first century and apply what those guys wrote to our own lives today.
That’s what we’re doing right now. That’s important. That’s awesome. But we can’t be devoted to teaching in a way that undermines other practices to which we should be devoted, like prayer. So we would cut off our content teaching time, move into men and women’s prayer groups where we would first share what was happening in our lives.
We would just talk about life first. Each person would talk about what’s going on at work, what’s going on in our relationships, What’s going on in our families? What are we excited about? What are we stressed about? We share everything with each other, right?
This goes back to letting people see us to the bottom. One, so they can accept us like we talked about, but two, so they can pray for us. And then we would actually pray for one another. Here’s one of the neat things. The next week when we would come back together, people would ask each other about the specific thing that we prayed about the week before.
Hey, how’d that interview go? Hey, I’ve been praying for your mom. Is she feeling better? What does that communicate? Communicates that you matter to me.
I’ve been thinking about you this week. On the other hand, if someone shares with you that their mom is sick and you don’t think about it until the next week when they share it with you again, It doesn’t show a real interest in that person, right? Or worse, they have told you every week for the last 4 weeks, will you guys pray for my mom? She is sick. And then on the 5th week you say something like, oh, I didn’t know that.
How long has she been sick? Right? And the person is like, well, I have been telling you about it a month, so at least for a month. That just, it shouts, you don’t matter to me. I haven’t thought about you.
That burden that you’re carrying, that never crossed my mind. Good luck with that. That is not devoted to prayer. That is not carrying one another’s burdens, and that decimates any sense of community. So, can I ask, are you devoted to praying with and for others?
And if you’re in one of our groups, how much group time is spent learning what to pray for and praying, and how much time is spent studying, teaching, learning?
Prayer has to be one of our devotions, has to be. Okay, next, the early church devoted themselves to fellowship, which was total shared life even among new people. People, total shared life even among new people. Verse 46, all who believed were together and they had everything in common. Verse 47, they met each other’s needs.
They hung out in each other’s homes. Again, Christianity is not an individual you and God religion. That’s not what it is. There’s no such thing as a Christian who just stood at the edge of the group while teaching happened in the temple area, listened to what they were saying and then went back home to their own life apart from the group. That was not a thing.
All who believed were together. All who believed. All together. Meaning no one who believed was away from the group. You’re like, what about the introverts?
No, they were part of the group. What about those with a really busy schedule? No, they were part of the group. What about those who had some drama going on with other people in the group? No, they were part of the group too.
They were all together. They were meeting each other’s needs. They hung out in each other’s homes. They shared all of life together. Do you know where this type of togetherness would most naturally happen in our church?
Life groups. Thanks for answering. Um, life groups. Total shared life would most naturally happen in a life group or maybe a service team, right? If you’re in the band or you’re working the lights or setting up the outdoor service or teaching children’s Sunday school or serving in our student ministry, deacon, deaconess, other leadership, you, you can end up spending a lot of time together, so it could happen there too.
Shared life could happen in one of those settings. And let me tell you the difference this makes in our church at Bridges, specifically us. We took this survey a number of weeks ago. 209 of you filled out our survey. Thank you.
That is statistically significant. There’ll be another one coming up in a little bit, not today. And remember, I told I told you when we took this survey, about a third of our total people don’t really feel like they belong here. So if you look to your right and look to your left, one of the 3 of you don’t really feel like you fit in at Bridges, don’t really feel there’s a sense of brotherhood or sisterhood here. That’s about a third of us out of the total, which is a problem.
However, good news, that third drops to a quarter who participate in some kind of group. Out of the 209 of you who filled out the survey, 159 of you say that you belong to some group. We’re very happy we have that much participation in groups, right? And we’re very glad that being part of a group is somehow correlated to feeling like you belong here more so. I’m not so glad that 1 out of 4 of you in a group still don’t feel like you fit, so we have some work to do regardless, like whether you’re in a group or not.
But there is evidence to say being part of a group probably helps, at least for many people. It gets really interesting when you look at the 50 people who said they don’t participate in a group. So 159 do participate, 50 don’t participate out of the people who took the survey. Obviously there’s more people than that here. But out of the 50 who don’t participate in a group, 42 of you say that you don’t really feel like you belong.
42 out of 50, that’s 84%. So among the people who participate in a group, 25% of you feel like you don’t belong, but among the people who do participate in a group, 84% of you say you don’t feel like you belong.
I’m not happy about the 25% and we’re going to keep working on that, all right, but for the people who are not in a group and you feel like you don’t belong, I know one step that apparently makes a difference, right, you’ll go from an 84% correlation to a 25% correlation. That matters. Now I know simply attending a life group may not be enough to help you feel like you belong. There is no guarantee trying to participate in a group will actually help, more on that later, but an 84% to a 25% difference is significant. And remember from our first week in the series, if you feel like you belong you will live longer, you will be healthier, you will accomplish more of your goals, you will actually feel less physical pain, right?
So get in a group or at least try one out. Okay, the church in Acts 2 shared life together, but maybe more convicting for us was that total shared life didn’t only happen with existing people. Total shared life happened with new people. Verse 47, the Lord added to their number daily. The Lord added to their number daily.
When people came into the existing community, they were added to the shared life, the prayer, the fellowship of the people who were already there. They were not only added to the corporate worship gathering where they didn’t interact with anyone else. And it’s not like when new people came in they kind of formed their own group within the larger group and they just stayed separate from the existing shared life fellowship prayer that was already happening, like they didn’t make their own subgroup apart from what was already there. You’re like, well, obviously, Dan, why are you even mentioning this, right? Of course when people were added to the group they were added to The group, right?
Like, why are you even saying this? Here’s why I’m saying this. It’s a big reason why we’re doing this series. Not today yet, but every week during this series, during this series, so not a long time ago, now, while we have been talking about community, every week I have seen a new person on the patio or in the lobby standing by him or herself with no one talking to them. During this series, every week I’ve seen someone standing alone and I’ve gone up to them and I’ve said, hey, I’m not sure I’ve met you before, I’m Dan.
I’ve done that every week, no one else talking with them. I thought maybe it’s just me. I asked Steve and Nate and they said they’ve done the same thing. They’ve seen new people standing alone.
If you read Acts 2 where it says the Lord added to their number daily and you wonder, I wonder, why isn’t that happening here?
Maybe the Lord is bringing us new people every week. But we don’t add them to our number. We’re like, my number of people’s over here. This is my group. I’m not going to add it.
I’m not going to go up to a new person and add them to my group. They can be added to some other number. Now, some of you will reach out to new people and are very welcoming, and I appreciate you so much. May your tribe increase.
But I don’t think that’s the majority of us. I don’t think so because there’s new people standing alone every week, right? And new people can’t be added to our number if they are not added to our shared life, our prayer, our fellowship. If you’re new this week, I apologize. I hope we don’t overcorrect and overwhelm you.
One at a time, okay? If you see somebody standing alone, you don’t need to form a line, okay? Be not awkward about it. It’s been interesting going through this series the last month because some of you are like, why are we talking about this? Everything’s fine.
This is the friendliest church I’ve ever been in. When’s this going to be over? And others of you are like, as soon as we get done with this series, we need to do it again. Again because people aren’t getting it. So if you’ve had a good community experience here, awesome.
Now you can help create a good community experience for someone else because not everyone does have a good community experience here. People have told me life group stories like, I went to a life group for the first time, got there a little late, they had already started. No one greeted me. No one told me what they were studying. Afterward, no one came to introduce themselves to me.
Another person told me, I started going to a life group. I had been going to the group for 6 months before anyone told me how the group communicated details of social events. So I hadn’t been invited for 6 months. Another story, I went to a life group. They would have group socials but not invite everyone from the life group to the social because they thought it would get too big.
And I wasn’t invited, but they would talk about the so-called group social the next Sunday in front of people who were not invited. Another story, I went to a life group. I kept going for 6 months or a year. No one invited me out to lunch. No one checked on me during the week.
No one tried to get our kids together to pray— I mean, to play. Nothing other than hello and being friendly on a Sunday. So I haven’t gone back to a life group since. That’s why I said simply attending a group may not be enough to help someone feel like they belong. It is possible— we don’t know— it’s possible the 50 people in our survey who are not part of a group already tried a group and they had one of those experiences I just mentioned.
They’re like, I’m done with this, right? They felt rejected by the group when they tried the group and that’s why they’re not in a group and that’s why they now say, I’m not in a group and I don’t feel like I belong. So, I totally understand when we say 84% of the people who aren’t in a group feel like an outsider and only 25% of the people in a in a group feel like an outsider, I totally understand the solution is a little more complex than simply saying, well, why don’t you just join a group? Right? We can’t reduce the problem to, well, if everyone joined a group, no one would be lonely.
It’s not that simple. Right? We need to look at what’s actually happening in groups. And if people have a hard time joining a life group, then they have a hard time being added to our number.
Okay, lastly, let’s look at breaking bread. There’s a small debate whether breaking bread refers to communion or if it’s just sharing a meal together, small debate about that for people who want to pay attention to it, but the good news is you don’t really have to choose between is it communion or is it a shared meal because as best as we can tell, in the early church, communion was a shared meal. Communion was a fellowship meal. It was the new Passover. It replaced Passover, actually, and Passover was a meal.
The early church stopped celebrating Passover as the Israelites had celebrated it for centuries. Even among Jewish Christians, they didn’t celebrate it the same way. Anymore, just like they didn’t take sacrifices to the temple anymore, right? Because the fulfillment of the sacrifices and the fulfillment of the Passover lamb had come. So instead of the promise, instead of celebrating the promise of what would one day arrive, they celebrated the fulfillment of what had come.
The references to celebrating Passover in the 2nd century, if you’re one of the types of people who would look those up, If you read those closely, they celebrated the Passover of the Lord, which means they were no longer celebrating the liberation from Egyptian slavery. They were celebrating the real Passover, and they did it through communion. Not only once a year, although sometimes they did it on the same date, not only once a year as the first Passover had been celebrated, but they did it as often as they did it. As Jesus instructed them, right? Jesus instituted communion at the Passover meal.
Passover was the Last Supper that Jesus had with his disciples. You know the painting by da Vinci? You’ve probably seen that, got the picture. It was a meal, right? They all sat on one side of the table so they get the photograph.
Um, at, uh, at the Passover meal Jesus takes the bread and says, this is my body. He takes the cup at the Passover meal and says, this is my blood. The blood of the Passover lamb in the Old Testament that was spread out over the doorframe pointed forward to my blood that will be spread for you. That lamb liberated people from Egyptian slavery and they entered the promised lamb— excuse me, land. This lamb, Jesus, he says, my body, my blood liberates you from sin and ushers you into the kingdom of God.
Jesus says, I’m the real thing. That lamb was the promise, I’m the fulfillment. So from then on, they celebrated the fulfillment, no longer the promise. Why would they celebrate the shadow of what was yet to come when it had already come. They celebrated the real thing, the better thing, and they did it at a shared meal, just as the first Passover had been a shared meal, a time of togetherness, rich fellowship, unity, remembering what God had done for them.
I’m not saying we’re gonna change the way we practice communion, But it’s possible the little cup and the little piece of bread, how we take communion, it’s possible that we get the idea that that’s only an individual experience between us and God. And if it’s only an individual experience, we’re missing something. Of course, it’s good to understand Christ’s sacrifice removed the penalty of our sin, praise God. But if that’s it, we probably miss that Christ’s sacrifice also adopted us into a new family. Church should feel like being home for the holidays with relatives you like.
It should feel like being surrounded by those you love and they love you. It should feel like a time of festival and warmth and welcome. And if we aren’t getting that sense from communion, Okay, but then we need to make sure that we get that from— in some other way, which is probably in a life group. So in the month ahead, I’m going to be working with our life group leaders, making sure these practices are part of our normal rhythms, weekly or monthly activities, someone assigned to being in charge of them, time for sharing life and prayer together, time for living with one another in community, time for festival-type meals together, which I know a number of our life groups are already rocking that. Awesome.
We’re going to look at how we include new people, how we get them into the group instead of feeling like they’re outside of the group. We’re going to be working on that. So there’s no better time than right now for you to check out a life group. Let’s pray together.
Father, thank you that you have given us each other.
Thank you that you have instructed us how to be together in a group. Lord, I pray where we are in error that we will repent like we talked about last week and align to how you would want us to prioritize, Lord. I pray we would be devoted to fellowship, um, to the same extent, with the same amount of energy that we are devoted to teaching. I pray we’d be devoted to prayer, to carrying one another’s burdens, Lord. Where these are not our devotions, I pray that they would increase them.
Increase in us, Lord. We thank you for Jesus who binds us together, and it’s in his name that we pray. Amen.
