What can we learn about early church practice from Acts 20? How was it different from today?
a.) Meeting on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, was a New Testament pattern. They did this in honor of the day Jesus rose from the day. b.) They met in the evening, after work, because Sunday was not seen as a Sabbath day. c.) The primary reason for meeting was to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. d.) They celebrated the Lord’s Supper as an actual meal. The cup and loaf looks back to Jesus’ death on the cross. The meal looks forward to the wedding banquet of the Lamb and Jesus’ promise to come back and eat it again with us. Weekly church meetings should have three components: worship, teaching and fellowship (the breaking of bread). e.) Paul’s teaching style was dialog, discussion, conversation and not merely preaching to people as if he were broadcasting over the radio. That they were willing to stay up all night to learn shows a strong commitment to Bible teaching. f.) They met in the upper room, which was probably someone’s home. Each of the New Testament epistles was written to a church that met in someone’s home. In the New Testament church, each person in a church knew everyone else. Each church was more like family than a loose association of strangers. g.) In our last lesson from Acts 19 we saw the secular usage of the Greek word that is usually translated “church” (ekklésia). From this we learned that a church is a decision-making body, as led by its elders. The democratic process should play a role in church polity.
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Stephen Atkerson helps church leaders discover simple growth strategies that Jesus gave the early church. For over 30 years, he has worked with evangelists, missionaries, church planters, and pastors in Asia, the Americas, Europe and Africa. He is one of the pastors of a Baptist...
