Yesterday’s post was obviously, like all my “What the Bible should have said” pieces, intended to show how easily we who claim to base our belief and practice on the Bible blithely ignore it in practice. The pattern shown in the primary NT passage on Christian assembly, 1 Corinthians 12-14, says that it is a meeting based entirely on mutual edification rather than “the worship experience”: “All of these [things] must be done for the strengthening of the church” (1 Corinthians 14:26). But this is also the pattern held up by Luke as paradigmatic of God’s new holy people in Acts 2. The ideal and the apostolically recommended practice agree.
And so in the real Acts 2, as opposed to my corruption yesterday, the 3,000+ believers devote themselves to the teaching of the apostles, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. These are all what Tom Wadsworth refers to as “horizontal” activities, or to explain it according to my biblical theology of worship they are ministries of the indwelling Spirit of God to each other, rather than activities to enable each individual person to encounter “God’s presence.”
So the “teaching of the apostles” would include Jesus’s teaching, teaching about Jesus, and the kind of exegesis of the Old Testament that either points to Jesus, or guides behaviour in the light of Jesus, as in Pater’s first sermon. In the later Corinthian context, it corresponds to the whole range of teaching by brethren who have learned, directly or indirectly, from the apostles (notably Paul, Apollos and Peter in this case) and from the Bible. This informs even what Paul calls “revelation” and “prophecy.” Ideally many voices, and not only those most gifted as teachers, will have something to contribute.
“Fellowship” is, according to other texts, fellowship in the Holy Spirit, and so we can subsume the whole mutual ministry of spiritual gifts of all sorts in this. Naturally it also includes the building of loving relationships, including the sharing of physical resources of v45. We can probably assume that it also includes sharing testimonies of how God has dealt with individuals both in coming to Christ, and in day to day providences.
“Breaking of bread” certainly includes the Lord’s supper mentioned in 1 Corinthians, but in Acts, as there, I’ve come to see the most likely expression of it in the early church as sharing a full fellowship meal at the start of which, with the words of institution, the bread is broken, and which ends with the cup of the covenant. But see again how Paul’s demonstration that the body of Christ must be identified with the body of believers makes this a sharing of the already indwelling life of Christ, and not an attempt to bring him down from heaven, let alone, of course, to sacrifice him over again, an idea that only began to take root (I believe) late in the second century. John Calvin was surely right to see the supper as intimately connected to the word that explains it, just as the significance of Passover was explained in Jewish families by the head of the household.
Prayer is, of course, always to God the Father and Son, and always inspired and aided by the indwelling Spirit – but as in 1 Corinthians what is in mind here is corporate prayer, “wherever two or three are gathered,” prayers to which the whole assembly can say “amen.” We see that exemplified in several places in Acts, such as in ch4 after the release of Peter and John by the Sanhedrin, and in ch12, where the church (minus the apostles, who are presumably in hiding) meet at the house of John Mark’s mother to plead for Peter. The definite article in “the prayers” is interesting, as it may signify that the Church used set prayers carried over from the synagogue worship of the time. However, this is impossible to say as, surprisingly, nobody knows how prayer was performed in the first century synagogues, if at all. But certainly there is no reason to exclude the use of set prayers, even if one restricts it to the Lord’s Prayer.
Now there is nothing in this ideal pattern that even hints at the Pentecostal theology of worship as described in my previous post (and it is intended as an ideal, as Luke contrasts the holy result of Pentecost with the Golden Calf disorder that followed the first Pentecost when Moses brought the tablets of law down from Mount Sinai). There seem to be no anointed worship leaders around, nor even any role for singing – though there’s no reason to say there was none at all. But music certainly wasn’t central – nor directed towards some climax of worship. Most significantly, praise is not said to be the the means to enjoy the fellowship of God, but the result of the glad and sincere hearts resulting from their existing faith and their assembly (Acts 2:46-47). Furthermore, even though they met in the public temple (probably in the Colonnade of Solomon along the eastern wall of the temple mount), they enjoyed the favour of all the people (contrast that with the population of Redding California getting fed up to the back teeth with the mad people coming out from what locals call “Hogwarts,” the School of Supernatural Ministry).
But the extremes of Bethel, etc, apart, where the Pentecostal model operates, it always seems to sit loose to the biblical pattern we see here. The ministry of the word, where it doesn’t become entirely abandoned as “bibliolatry,” will tend towards consisting of proof texts vaguely justifying teaching that doesn’t derive from it at all. For example, the fact that King David names the site of a successful battle Baal Perazim, because the Lord broke through his enemies, becomes the justification for a whole theology of persistent prayer in order to achieve “breakthrough” to new supernatural powers. Or the text “Do not be anxious in anything” becomes the platform for a pop-psychology lecture, ignoring its context of faithful prayer. And I’m sure many readers will be familiar with the “teaching” that largely consists of anecdotes about revivals and wonders far away.
Historically the same lack of apostolic teaching has presented in different ways. For example, where set liturgy is accorded the role of leading us to God, rather than Charismatic praise, preaching can also become superfluous. That has especially been so when nobody bothered to train clergy in the Bible – I have on my shelves a 1687 imprint of the Anglican Book of Homilies, produced because there were so few adequate preachers during the English Reformation. But I’ve also heard curates from liberal churches describing how the vicar preached from novels taken off the bookshelf, or the news headlines.
The most common failure in “fellowship” I’ve encountered is the worship leader who says, “Ignore the people around you – this time is just between you and God.” I’ve even come across the worship leader who has been given some cursory instruction on “meeting for edification” and says, “This is just between you and God – but we’re all involved.” The whole concept of “moving in the gifts” lends itself not just to seeking the gifts rather than the giver, but seeking the gifts rather than the giving for which they are intended. I remember, back in my teenage years, some Baptist on the bus (of all places) saying that he believed he now had all the gifts. I should have offered him a stamp album to stick them in, for all the use they were.
As for the Lord’s Supper, it appears that the inimitable Bethel Redding cult has even managed to hijack that this year as some new power tool for miracles. It is of course a means of grace – not power – but a communal one, as I’ve already suggested: one loaf, one cup, one body, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” It’s a shame that fear of disease (“one virus”?) leads us to use tiny squares of bread and tiny cups of non-alcoholic juice, but the key thing is that we discern the body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We could probably criticise virtually every Christian congregation for turning the fellowship meal of a shared loaf and cup into a purely symbolic, and often individual, experience. One can’t say it’s wrong, but it requires a lot of imagination to experience it as a shared meal: “all things are permitted, but not everything is helpful.”
It’s astonishing how many ways the simple exercise of communal prayer can be made complicated, but I think the reason is that because so many churches don’t model how easy it is, they try to make it more “interesting.” In so doing they nearly always put it at odds with its biblical purpose in the assembly, which is to unite the body in our dependence on God, in our joys and in our sorrows. Paul teaches very specifically on this, rejecting prayer in tongues without an interpreter because “the other is not edified.” So what do Charismatic churches do? They have everybody shouting out in glossolalia at once, and credit the disorder to the God of peace (1 Corinthians 14:33)! And where tongues is not a thing, some churches will do the same thing in English (as at one Spring Harvest I went to, where the cacophony was treated as doing something especially spiritual).
Now, I can see the possibility, in a large gathering, of getting smaller groups to pray, in which at least one’s prayer-partners can say “amen” to your prayer, over the hubbub. But we gather to edify each other – and nobody is built up when everybody shouts at once. Actually nobody can say “amen” to silent prayer, either: leaders may reassure us that “God hears the prayers of our heart,” but then we might as well be praying at home, which is what Paul actually recommends to tongues-speakers – to hear each other’s prayers, and agree with them, is why we are not praying alone.
This is all very obvious if one holds to the principle of edification (and, of course, approaching one’s heavenly Father in supplication), but if that perspective is lost then prayer tunnels, Mexican wave prayers and so on seem to make sense. But as my parents would say if I went through some confusing rigmarole of hints to get something from them, “Why don’t you just ask?”
I was somewhat surprised, reading the 1689 Baptist Confession, to see that prayer, when with others, should be in a known tongue. Did they have Charismatics back then? Well no – they had Catholics, and Latin prayer, among non-Latin speakers, is just as contrary to the spirit of Scripture. So are prayers (or any other communal activity) in any non-understood language, which increasingly has a bearing on the use of the old Book of Common Prayer or the KJV, by traditionalists. Or of Hebrew by Christian Zionists, for that matter. Or of Greek by theological boffs…
I’ll close with a few words on what “edification” actually means, though I recommend doing your own concordance study on that and “building up” (depending on your translation). It’s actually quite a serious kind of word, about the methodical work of creating something permanent. Emotional experience won’t do that on its own, and nor will entertainment. Weepy movies have their uses, but not in building character, unless the deep emotion is related to some significant moral lesson, when it can be very powerful. That’s why the Bible has so much poetry, and why psalms, hymns and spiritual songs are of value. Levity is frowned upon in Scripture (Ephesians 5:4), but actually humour can be deeply serious, and so edifying, in the right context (eg Matthew 7:5).
So the Bible does not have in mind dry prosiness or arid intellectualism. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s description of teaching as “logic on fire” captures the idea of the Spirit enlivening the mind, the heart and even the body when Christians meet. But in all cases, we ought to go to church, house-group or whatever with the mindset, “How can I build up my brethren’s faith and discipleship through this?” The spiritual paradox, of course, is that such an attitude profits us much more than the goal of receiving more and more of God.
