Missio Dei: WK4 - WED
THE COMMUNITY THAT WITNESSES BY LIVING
Acts 2:42, 44-47 (NLT) “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals, and to prayer... And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had... They worshiped together, met in homes, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity , all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.”
No one told them to be attractive.
The early church in Acts 2 was not running a marketing campaign. They were not strategically positioning themselves as appealing to the surrounding culture. They were simply living , sharing meals, praying together, selling possessions to meet each other’s needs, learning together, worshiping with joy. And the result was that the surrounding community noticed, and people kept joining.
This is one of the most powerful missionary strategies in the New Testament: a community so genuinely shaped by the love of God that its common life becomes a form of witness. Not a program or an event. The life itself.
Jean Vanier founded L’Arche in 1964 with a conviction that sounds almost too simple: that people with intellectual disabilities were not just underserved, they were unwanted, pushed to the margins of a society that valued productivity and independence above everything else. His response was to invite two men with disabilities to come and live with him. Not in an institution. In a home. Around a table. The community that grew from that table became one of the most striking examples of Christian witness in the twentieth century, not because of its programs or its theology, but because of the quality of life it practiced. As Vanier put it: every meaningful movement of love begins when someone decides that the absence of love is no longer acceptable.
The theologian Lesslie Newbigin argued that the local congregation is the hermeneutic of the gospel , the key to its interpretation. The way a community of believers lives together either makes the gospel credible or incredible to the watching world. When the church is generous, joyful, genuinely united across lines that normally divide, and extravagantly present with the suffering, it communicates something else entirely.
The early church in Acts 2 had no buildings, no budget, no staff, and no social media following. What they had was each other, and the Holy Spirit, and a quality of life together that the world around them found irresistible. The influence the church exercises on the world around it is not primarily a function of its programs or its platform. It is a function of its life.
Acts 2:42, 44-47 (NLT) “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals, and to prayer... And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had... They worshiped together, met in homes, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity , all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.”
No one told them to be attractive.
The early church in Acts 2 was not running a marketing campaign. They were not strategically positioning themselves as appealing to the surrounding culture. They were simply living , sharing meals, praying together, selling possessions to meet each other’s needs, learning together, worshiping with joy. And the result was that the surrounding community noticed, and people kept joining.
This is one of the most powerful missionary strategies in the New Testament: a community so genuinely shaped by the love of God that its common life becomes a form of witness. Not a program or an event. The life itself.
Jean Vanier founded L’Arche in 1964 with a conviction that sounds almost too simple: that people with intellectual disabilities were not just underserved, they were unwanted, pushed to the margins of a society that valued productivity and independence above everything else. His response was to invite two men with disabilities to come and live with him. Not in an institution. In a home. Around a table. The community that grew from that table became one of the most striking examples of Christian witness in the twentieth century, not because of its programs or its theology, but because of the quality of life it practiced. As Vanier put it: every meaningful movement of love begins when someone decides that the absence of love is no longer acceptable.
The theologian Lesslie Newbigin argued that the local congregation is the hermeneutic of the gospel , the key to its interpretation. The way a community of believers lives together either makes the gospel credible or incredible to the watching world. When the church is generous, joyful, genuinely united across lines that normally divide, and extravagantly present with the suffering, it communicates something else entirely.
The early church in Acts 2 had no buildings, no budget, no staff, and no social media following. What they had was each other, and the Holy Spirit, and a quality of life together that the world around them found irresistible. The influence the church exercises on the world around it is not primarily a function of its programs or its platform. It is a function of its life.
- What qualities made the early church compelling to the people around them?
- How does shared life become a witness to the gospel?
- What kind of community are you helping create through your presence and relationships?
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