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| “They devoted themselves to… the breaking of bread…” |
| —Acts 2:42c |
For three previous posts, I have explored the phenomenon of some people who move from church to church trying to find a church that genuinely fits their ideal of what a church should be.
Sadly, when you try to inquire what these folks wish to experience in a church, you find that most people have a hard time defining exactly what qualities the perfect church would display.
Of course, it goes almost without saying that a “genuine church” is not a building, nor an institution. It is a group of like-minded believers who gather together in unity and focus.
In trying to answer the question: “How does a group of believers form a genuine, Christ-honoring, life-supporting, question-answering church?”—we need to turn to Scripture for a biblical definition of a genuine church. Dr. Luke records four elements that comprised the early church in Acts 2:42:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
In the last two posts, I suggested that the believers striving to create a genuine church need to start their quest by laying a super-strong foundation of the apostles’ teaching and then need to work diligently to create a milieu in which heartfelt, soul-refreshing fellowship will occur.
The third element is to become devoted to the breaking of bread. Most of the time, the phrase “breaking of bread” refers to the Lord’s Supper—the Sacrament of Holy Communion, or the Celebration of the Eucharist.
Sadly, in many Protestant churches this critically important Feast of Remembrance is relegated to an occasional event tacked on to the end of a normal worship service. In other traditions, Communion is offered at every worship service. To outsiders from other traditions or no tradition at all, this may seem like “overkill” and they may feel that such frequent repetition must decrease the value of the sacrament.
No matter what you personally may feel about sharing at the Lord’s Table, apparently it was important enough to be one of the four key elements of the early church.
By now you’ve probably noticed that I have withheld any specific recommendations or “How-Tos.” Those will come in a later post.
In the next post, I will examine the fourth and final element of a genuine church.
