Imagine This
Elaine Poproski Download: Audio
Scripture: Acts 2:42-47
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Read more…
Looking to Sunday
by Elaine Poproski
As a church, we at Walmer are planning to participate in a three-year course facilitated by CBOQ that is called Revitalization for Small Churches. As part of the application to participate, I had to answer a number of questions about Walmer. One of the questions was this: What do you wish your church was like?
I wonder how you would answer that question? Would you remember back to a favourite church experience and describe that? Would you describe the opposite of the worst things you’ve experienced in a local church? Would you describe the kinds of feelings being part of your wished-for church would evoke? Would you describe its activities? Would you describe the demographics of its congregation? What do you wish your church was like?
On Sunday we’re going to read from Acts 2:42 – 47, which is a brief description of the earliest church. Wonders and signs were being done. People sold their possessions and distributed the proceeds to the poor. Every day they spent time together in worship and fellowship. And more and more people joined them. It sounds perfect, doesn’t it? And yet, we know from stories that are yet to come and from Paul’s letters, which constitute much of the New Testament, that the earliest churches were far from perfect. The people in those churches were not suddenly made perfect and holy but continued to be tempted and plagued by sin. What are we supposed to do with that contrast? What are we supposed to make of this seeming contradiction? Did the church start out gloriously perfect and go downhill from there? Or is Luke’s description more of an idealized version of the truth – a memory softened and utopianized as it retreated into history? What is the point of including this brief pericope so near the beginning of this book of Acts?
As you prepare for Sunday, perhaps consider for yourself how you would answer the question: What do you wish your church was like? How close does your wished-for church mirror that described in Acts 2:42 – 47? What responsibility do you have to bring your wish to reality? How might you participate in making your church even a little bit more like the Acts 2 church? What’s stopping you from helping your church become the church you wish it was?