“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Acts 2:42
“Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The attrition of younger generations from church attendance has been a sad and common trait in church life for many years. But recent research has revealed an interesting fact about why there are those who remain: meaningful relationships. Not great church programs, connecting worship services, or great sermons, but relationships! Many of the younger generations who have remained report they have had a spiritually meaningful and helpful relationship with an adult inside the church, and some have even reported that they have had an adult mentor within the church. Relationships! Such findings certainly encourage us to value the influence of relationships within the church.
Influential relationships that grow within a healthy community of faith become the fertile soil from which true Biblical discipleship grows. And such influential relationships are most often formed from within smaller Bible study groups than from larger gatherings. This exposure to personal and meaningful spiritual influence in smaller gatherings remains extremely important for every follower of Jesus.
In the records of the early church, we have discovered how followers of Jesus were strengthened through meaningful relationships. The Book of Acts reports that within the church many lives were changed through relationships that were formed within smaller settings. Acts, Chapter 2, reports that 2,000 people were added to the church. Chapter four reports that the church had grown to 5,000. But, for a brief moment, look closer than simply the mass number. Within this massive surge, most scholarship agrees that this cumulative growth emerged from house churches that were likely not much larger that 15 to 20 participants each. In Acts 2:42, the Bible describes the emerging church of the first century: “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” This presents a clear acknowledgment of the importance of the smaller gatherings that foster meaningful relationships so important to our growth and encouragement in faith today.
One significant way the first century Christians encouraged one another was in their devotion to the apostles’ teachings. While no formalized doctrine nor systematic theology had converged with the church, there were present the Holy Spirit-led truths of Jesus’ teachings – teachings of His death and resurrection, and eternal life. When I consider that the apostles sat under the influence of Jesus for three years, I imagine their teaching to be fully in manner and in substance much like their Lord Jesus, who through the Holy Spirit continued to grow His followers. The unfolding of Gospel truths before these smaller gatherings reflected a hunger for the truth, and a relinquishment of the old way of thinking and believing.
Today, the church should be a place where relationships are influencing one another in a hunger for the truth of God’s Word, thus encouraging a freedom from former ways of thinking and believing that the world offers.
So, this offers us with two very clear questions influenced by the very first church: (1) Am I presently contributing to the church as a place of meaningful influence toward spiritual growth in small groups (do I look for opportunities in smaller gatherings to encourage someone in the truths of Christ)? (2) Am I growing spiritually through meaningful relationships?
If the reality of the Christian faith is to take the form of a lifestyle more than the form of religious activity, then the influence of meaningful relationships becomes a must! For, it is indeed true: Christianity without discipleship is Christianity without Christ. So today, lets champion meaningful relationships for spiritual growth. This is indeed the church.
Blessings.
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Read Acts 2:42-47 and be encouraged by the simplicity and profoundness of the emerging community of discipleship.
