Church ISN’T a building! We saw last Sunday morning from all over the New Testament that ‘church’ is the gathering of people who trust Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Of course, what we mean by ‘Church’ depends on how we use the word:
We may be referring to the Church throughout time, or we may be referring to God’s people in a region e.g. “the Church in Wiltshire”, but normally we mean the gathering of God’s people into a local church – like our church, Emmanuel Chippenham.
What ‘being a local church’ looks like in practice is a really key question, but it’s answered with patterns and models from the New Testament. Last Sunday morning we looked together at the first and foundational church recorded in the Bible, the church in Jerusalem formed on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.
What’s striking is what they prioritised: not primarily structures or programs or buildings as we might be tempted to do in the 21st Century for obvious reasons. What they prioritised was devotion to foundational relationship-shaping priorities:
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42)
The results of that devotion were life-changing for all of them: learning what God said about how to be Christians, remembering Jesus’ death for them on the cross, living in support of one another and coming before God together in prayer. Everything changed as the passage that follows describes.
Yet it didn’t stop there: The world around them noticed the wonderful difference:
“…the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved..” (Acts 2:47)
May the Lord make these things true of our church too!
Spencer Shaw