What Acts 2:42 has to say about the importance of gathering together
Lord willing, the COVID-19 crisis that has gripped our country and our world will be winding down soon. Over the past few months, I've heard it said over and over that there will be a new normal for churches moving forward. I've even heard some say that in-person gatherings may be a thing of the past as people choose digital church attendance either for their safety or as a matter of convenience.
While I am sure there are some facets of how we do church that must and will change, I am not convinced that the gathering of the saints on the Lord's Day is one of them. Theologically we are not bound to a geographical location to worship God. That was Jesus' point when he spoke the Samaritan woman and said:
“...the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father... But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (John 4:22-24)
Can someone worship God while not gathered in a specific location with other believers? Yes. Should that be the norm? No. The new normal cannot be an un-gathered church. I am not saying that buildings are needed. What I am saying is that gathering together is.
I believe the core, essential elements of a New Testament church demand gathering in person. For months now we've heard about essential businesses and essential services. We need to ask, what are the essentials of the church and what do those essentials demand?
Many people have written on the essentials or elements of a healthy church. From Rick Warren's five purposes of the church to Mark Dever's nine marks of a healthy church, there is plenty already written to help us. I simply want to focus on one verse that Luke gives us to encapsulate what the early church did and see how the four essentials found in that verse should encourage us to gather together, face-to-face, in a location. That one verse is Acts 2:42:
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
So, what essentials of the church do we see in this one verse?
Teaching the Word of God was essential. The devotion they had to the Apostles’ teaching is the equivalent of devotion to God's Word in our day. What we have in our Bibles, the apostolic teaching of Jesus Christ, who is the focus of all of Scripture. The Word must be taught and preached with passion, precision, and power. This needs to happen primarily in a gathered setting. Preaching and teaching are not one-way communication, but rather should be an intimate and interactive experience where the shepherd lovingly feeds and exhorts his flock. If in-person teaching were not essential to the church, then Paul would not have appointed elders and trained pastors. Instead, he would have limited his ministry to letter writing.
Devotion to one another was essential. The word "fellowship" (koinonia in Greek) makes its first New Testament appearance in this text. It meant much more than getting together or eating together. It meant being devoted to one another. It encompasses all the 56 "one-another" passages in the New Testament. It is not something we can do in isolation. As a matter of fact, a couple of the "one anothers" are found in Colossians 3:16 where we are exhorted to teach and admonish one another through the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. We cannot do that if we are scattered. We must gather regularly in order to do life together and thereby live out the "one-anothers".
Observing the ordinances was essential. There is some debate as to whether or not the "breaking of bread" here is referring to the Lord's Supper or just other meals they had together. For a few reasons I can't go into now, I believe it is the former. The whole imagery and gravity of the Lord's Supper is not something that can be done in isolation or over a screen. A funny meme was created a few months back called "The Upper Zoom" where it showed Jesus having his last meal with the disciples over video-conferencing. It was obviously meant to be funny, and it was, but it highlighted the foolishness of thinking we can observe the Lord's Supper in isolation from one another. The other ordinance, baptism, of course, cannot be done remotely. We must gather in order to be devoted to the ordinances.
Finally, prayer was essential. Of course, prayer can be done by oneself, or over the phone, or in a Zoom call; prayer is not limited to a geographical location. But we are called to pray together and the most effective and powerful way to do that is to do it in each other's presence. The Bible speaks of laying hands on one another while blessing or praying for one another. We can not do that at a distance. And the Body of Christ is called to corporately lift prayers to our Father which implies that we are doing that in agreement with one another and obviously in the presence of one another.
The early church gathered. They gathered in small groups (house to house) and they gathered in large groups (Solomon's Portico). They understood that the failure to gather would be against God's will and God's design for the church (Hebrews 10:35).
The truth is that we were designed for face-to-face communication and fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Just because we have mediated forms of communication that allow us to see each other and talk to each other digitally, does not diminish the importance of the physical gathering of the church.
The oldest form of mediated communication is the written word, and so let us hear the Apostle John as he says, "I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink. I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face" (3 John 13-14). And so in our age, we should rather not zoom, or stream the service, but rather see each other and fellowship face to face.
Resource of the Week:
This week's resource is from 9Marks. Very few ministries have done more to help churches think about healthy ecclesiology than these guys. They have a lot of resources on their website, but today I want to highlight their Pastor's Talk Podcast. Always informative and entertaining, this podcast will help church leaders shepherd their congregations well.