Anatomy of a Church: Community

Acts 2:42-47

Introduction

Amanda and I have been part of a wide variety of churches, both in pastoral ministry and as laypeople. One of the things that we have been able to experience is different sizes of churches. The church where both Amanda and I were baptized and where we were married, probably today has as many people attending as there are people in the village of Brookfield. Another church that I pastored was a very small church. So small that when they expanded to highway, the men of the church picked up the building and moved it to a side street.

Different people prefer different sizes of churches. When Amanda and I began looking for a new church to pastor, the size of the congregation was a part of the discussion. The truth is that we prefer smaller congregations to larger congregations, although that does not mean that we don’t want this congregation to grow.

I recently wrote my thesis for my Doctor of Ministry degree at Acadia Divinity College. It was on disability ministry for small churches. While large churches may have the financial, physical and people resources to create formal disability programs, I saw smaller congregations as being strategically positioned to be a welcoming family for those with disabilities and their families. I believe that community always trumps programs.

Despite this, people tend to measure the health of a church by numerical growth. A congregation of 500 must be healthier than a congregation of 50. But that is not necessarily the case. Nor is it healthier to be a smaller church than to be a larger church.

The aspect of church health that we are going to look at is community. Community can happen in larger churches, although in some ways they have to duplicate the principles of a smaller church. While smaller churches are ideally set up for community building, it is also possible for them to stumble. We are going to take a look at what this looked like in the early church and what it can look like today.

An Acts Community

What was the early church like? They did not gather together to build a new building or to draft a constitution. They did not set up a charitable status or register with the Roman government. They began and remained as a community of believers. It is not as if a local congregation already existed that advertised that they were looking for new members. Rather a bunch of people recognized each other as followers of Jesus and they understood that they could not do this alone. This was not as much of a challenge as it is for us. Community was central to everything in the ancient world. You could not survive without community.

This is one of the reasons that we can be confident that the Apostle Paul actually encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Think about what happened as he became a follower of Jesus. As a Pharisee, he had a very specific community that would not be open to him accepting Jesus as the Messiah. So he was closing the door on one community. But at the same time, as a persecutor of the church, there were no guarantees that the Christians were going to accept him into their category. For a period of time, Paul was putting himself outside of community, making himself incredibly vulnerable. He would not have done this unless he really had encountered Jesus and was convinced of the truth of the gospel.

Going back to Acts 2, these people gathered as a community. This was more than just being physically proximate to each other as they worshiped God. We have already seen their radical generosity. But it was more than just their money.

There was bond between them that went far beyond belonging to the same organization. They saw themselves as belong to the family of God, adopted as God’s children, with each other as brothers and sisters. Paul also described them as a body. All members of a body are interconnected and nothing can happen to one without affecting others.

The community spent time together. It is unlikely that this was for just one hour a week. Their time in the temple courts may have been on a schedule but there was also regular gathering in homes. They gathered to break bread together. Was that for a meal or for communion? The answer is “yes.” They most likely gathered together for actual meals, but as they had the bread and the cup, it was natural for them to also celebrate communion. Our separation of a meal with others and a meal with God would have been unknown to them. The early church lived and existed in the context of community.

A Modern Community

A lot has changed since that first church almost two thousand years ago. We now have church buildings, paid clergy and organizational structures. But one thing that has not changed is the need for community.

I cannot speak for the experience of Nova Scotia but in Ontario, we saw a great longing for community during the pandemic. At first there was a bit of a novelty to staying at home and doing physical distancing. But it began to take a toll. As an army chaplain, I saw the change. At the beginning, the needs were mostly financial as people lost their day jobs. But over time, it became more about mental health as people struggled with the isolation. People needed community.

Churches did their best to maintain community. I was full supportive of going online during parts of the pandemic. I would rather keep people safe than to risk serious health issues. We tried to build community online, while praying that the churches could open and we could physically be together. In the church we were in, we saw people phoning each other and praying for each other. People dropped off meals. It was about doing our best in a difficult situation.

A time is coming when covid restrictions will be minimal if anything. We will enter a new stage of building community. The church community already exists and has been living out its faith throughout the pandemic. But we are also coming to an appropriate time for us to regain our vision for our faith community. What does it mean for this congregation with the people we have in this village and the surrounding areas to be the people of God? What have been the things that have drawn you together? What are the things that have torn you apart? 

The pattern we see in Acts is of people interconnected with each other rather than just fellow Christians. We also see people who eat together. There are many jokes about Baptists and food. I have been accused of promoting gluttony. But what I really want to promote is the gathering at the table as a place of community. There is something that happens when people share a meal. One of the accusations against Jesus was that he ate and drank with sinners. He didn’t just tolerate them or preach to them, he shared table fellowship with them, he was building community with them. Sadly communal meals were some of the first victims of covid. I hope that we will find more times in the near future to share meals, coffees, desserts, not just to grow the church physically, but to deepen our community.

Conclusion

We are looking at what it means to be a healthy church. We may lack some of the resources of a church fo 500 or 1000 but we have just as much, if not more, potential for deep community. We are much more than people who gather physically on a Sunday to sing songs and hear a sermon. We are brothers and sisters, we are children of God. We are arms, legs, elbows and knees of the body of Christ. We are a community. We live in a world and a time that is longing for true community. We have what the world needs, not just community with us but community with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As we seek to move forward, let us keep the building of community at the forefront of all our efforts.