I understand the desire in churches to return to the pattern found in Acts, whatever that may be. One thing that is interesting to me is Acts 2:46-47 where it talks about the believers meeting to break bread in their homes, this follows vs 42 where they speak of devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 46 starts by saying "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts...". Every day. I wonder if this is the reasoning behind Catholic Mass every day of the week. These folks lived in community with one another. As the church we do not hold to having a true fellowship like this. I wonder what would happen if we began to devote ourselves to a more full living out of the early church's pattern?
If I had a time every day for my students to gather together, would they? Would adults? Should we? I'm not sure yet...
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I think this sort of lifestyle would have been more feasible before we all got married and had kids. Getting together with the church every night can make it difficult to maintain your marriage or relationship with your kids, I think. I think in Bible times, many more occupations were done out of the home, so that the family was in contact with each other, perhaps working side by side, all day. I know we are crazy about our privacy in modern, Western culture, and we tend to avoid sharing our lives too much with anyone outside our family. But at the same time, the Bible does advocate building strong marriage and family relationships, so I don't think the early Christians were neglecting these relationships in order to build community on a larger scale, either.
P.S.... Remember when we all first moved back to GC, and we'd all drop by Matt and Betsy's apartment after work and hang out for a while? Maybe you hadn't moved back yet, I can't remember. That's an example of the kind of every-day fellowship and community you're talking about. If only Matt and Betsy hadn't moved out to the country, and we all still lived within blocks of each other (except you never did want to live in the GC "ghetto" with the rest of us anyway)....
Sorry for taking over your blog. I'll be quiet now.
yeah, I was thinking more, morning time, for a short time, like less than 30 min. and not at a church...
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