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| “They devoted themselves to… fellowship…” |
| —Acts 2:42b |
Over the course of the last two blog posts, I began to flesh out my suggestion that some people move from church to church trying to find a church that genuinely fits their ideal of what a church should be. The trouble is that most people have a hard time defining exactly what qualities the perfect church would display.
We must remember 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. So, if a group of believers want to form a genuine, Christ-honoring, life-supporting, question-answering church, how do they do that?
Scripture offers us a 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 blog post, 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. They do this by devoting themselves to the study of God’s written Word, both corporately and personally.
The next step is to work diligently to create a milieu in which heartfelt, soul-refreshing fellowship will occur. This fellowship will be more than a superficial “church-luncheon-after-the-morning-worship-service” type of gathering. It will exhibit a number of truly important characteristics. This fellowship will be:
- designed to extend open-hearted hospitality
- fully inclusive
- totally welcoming
- completely engaging
- clique-free
- focused on giving encouragement
- offering an open heart and a listening ear
- willing to allow another person to share their concerns
- able to maintain confidentiality when necessary
- foster compelling brotherly and sisterly love
- focused on acting as Jesus would act
The kind of connections that this type of fellowship affords is as deep as—or even deeper than—the kind of connection that a healthy family has among its members. Thus, we use the phrases: “brothers in Christ” or “sisters in Christ” quite appropriately.
In the next blog post, I will attempt to explore the third element of a genuine church.
Based on a blog originally posted on Thursday, July 30, 2015
