The rest of the world must surely marvel at the nature of religion in America. For example, you may have read in the newspapers sometime back about the newly formed Positive Impact Church in South Centre, Pa. According to Associated Press reports this church advertised a raffle. Two thousand people signed up. Apparently they didn't read the fine print. They had to attend Sunday services to be eligible to win the prize of $1,000. Only about 30 showed up.
"Where are all the people?" asked the minister, George Lane, after an hour of religious songs and a humor-filled sermon in a school cafeteria. "It's kind of embarrassing." Lane said he was hoping to get about $1,000 in contributions. He got about $100. A woman who was present won the $1,000 but told Lane to keep the money for his ministry. Despite the low turnout, Lane said he's going to keep trying to attract worshipers. He says his next drawing will be for a $1,100 shopping spree.
Or how about this one? Did you know that there is a church in San Francisco called the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church? John Coltrane was one of this country's most talented and respected jazz saxophonists. Sadly, he died in 1967 at the age of 40. But some people believe that his spirit is alive and well at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church. Franzo Wayne King, a huge fan of Coltrane's music, founded the church where weekly services feature a blend of worship and jazz music. Coltrane is immortalized in a mural on the church wall that depicts him as a haloed, white robed saint playing a blazing saxophone. The church is a popular tourist site in San Francisco, and Franzo King likes to claim that, "Sometimes folks come in here, and the music's so loud it scares the devil out of them." (1)
Did you know that in Columbia, S.C., there is a Richard M. Nixon Memorial Church, a congregation blending Baptist and Quaker doctrines? The pastor, Rev. Noel Vande Grift, said the inspiration to name the church after the former president came during a prayer. He told reporters the church would be the largest in the South by the year 2010. (2)
How do you go about building a church? Perhaps a raffle will work. Perhaps dedicating the church to a dead jazz idol or ex-president will work. But studying the book of Acts gives us a more profound plan.
Three outstanding characteristics marked the church of Jesus Christ after his resurrection and ascension. THE FIRST IS THAT HIS FOLLOWERS HAD A SHARED PURPOSE. There was an amazing unity in their fellowship.
In the Bible, there are 12 mentions of the Greek word "homothymadon." Eleven of those instances occur in the book of Acts. "Homothymadon" can be translated "harmony," but it means more than that. It connotes a shared spirit, a meeting of minds and hearts, a unity of purpose. These are the things that drew the believers together to pray in the upper room. They are still the most necessary elements of worship and fellowship in the church. There is no limit to what a group of people can do when they have a shared purpose.
David Bissell was pastoring a church in Indiana a few years ago. His oldest son was four years old at the time. David was puttering around in the garage and his son was busy pounding nails and pulling nails out of a board. A while later David told his son that he had to go to a church board meeting and he would have to stop pounding nails.
David said he noticed the wheels turning in his son's little head. Suddenly his son asked, "Daddy do you use that hammer on the church board?" "Needless to say," says David Bissell, "when I shared the story with the board members, we all had a good laugh." (3)
Well, I'm certain there are church boards and pastors who would like to drive nails in one another, but how much better it is when people share a common purpose.
Dr. Lloyd J. Ogilvie, in writing on the passage we read from the book of Acts, ponders how a spirit of unity could have come upon such a disparate group as was in the upper room at that time. There were rich people and poor people there. There were women. There were people who had been brought out of unclean lifestyles. One disciple, Thomas, had doubted the Lord. Peter had denied him. James and John had been angling to gain favor with Jesus over the other disciples. Maybe Nicodemus was there, the Pharisee who had asked Jesus about being born again. Under any normal circumstances, these people from all walks of life would never have met, much less hung out with one another. So how did they overlook all their obvious differences? What inspired them to come together and pray "in one accord"? It could have only been their shared love for Jesus, says Olgivie, that brought unity out of such disparity. (4)
It was their love for Jesus that gave them unity. We need that kind of love for Jesus and one another. We also need that kind of love for the world for which Christ died. The early church was made strong, first of all, by a shared purpose.
THE EARLY CHURCH WAS ALSO CENTERED IN PRAYER. We read in Acts 1, "Then they returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day's walk from the city. When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. THEY ALL JOINED TOGETHER CONSTANTLY IN PRAYER, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers." (NIV)
We simply cannot overstate the early church's commitment to prayer.
After a church service, a woman stormed up to the minister.
"Pastor Smith," she cried, "I pray every day and God never gives me what I ask for."
The minister patted her hand and said, "Perhaps you need to think beyond yourself. Start praying for other people instead."
"I'll try that," the woman agreed.
While she was driving home from church she prayed: "Lord, bless our closest neighbors, the Andersons. Give them a millionaire living next door,"
(5) Well, that's a kind of prayer, I guess. It reminds me of someone else's
prayer that goes like this: Lord help me to relax about insignificant details beginning tomorrow at
7:41:23 a. m. P.S.T. God help me to consider people's feelings, even if most of them ARE hypersensitive.
Lord keep me open to others' ideas, WRONG though they may be.
God help me to take responsibility for my own actions, even though they're usually NOT my fault.
God give me patience, and I mean right NOW! And my favorite:
God, help me to finish everything I sta . . .
The early church relied on prayer. They had a whole empire arrayed against them. Organized religion was against them. They were climbing a mountain that seemed impossible to ascend. If God did not help them, then who would? But God did help them and the rest, as we say, is history.
There was a devotional in the magazine, OUR DAILY BREAD, June 5, 1998. The author writes, "I needed to make a phone call to my insurance company. It's a good thing I started early! First came the busy signals--for an entire day! Next came a recorded message followed by music, occasionally interrupted by a voice that said, "Our lines are still busy. Please hold, or hang up and try again.
"Finally I got through! But this led to a complicated set of instructions: For policy information, press l. For new coverage, press 2. To make a claim, press 3. To talk to an agent, press 4. I chose the last option. A recording said he was out of the office and told me to press the pound (#) key. The same voice repeated the same options. I hung up.
"About the same time, I had an urgent need to talk with the Lord. I didn't get a busy signal, nor was I put on hold. I knew that God was listening and that he cared deeply for me. We don't always get immediate answers to our prayers, but because of the wonderful prayer promises in the Bible, we know that we are heard.
"In Psalm 34, David reviewed his prayers and the Lord's answers. Then he said, "˜The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry.' (v. l5). Thank God that there is no such thing as a prayer runaround."
We can thank God for that. The early church gained its strength from a shared purpose and from being centered in prayer. But there was one thing more: THEY ALSO GAINED THEIR STRENGTH FROM A SHARED PASSION.
We would not have the church today if they were only unified. There have been other organizations that were unified, but they did not turn the world upside down. There have been groups of people who have been faithful in their prayer life, but their impact on the world has been minimal. We need a shared purpose. We need to be centered in prayer. But there's one thing more we need if we are going to be the church Christ calls us to be--and that is a selfless passion.
During a tour of France, the German poet Heinrich Heine and his friend visited the cathedral of Amiens. As they stood in admiration before the church, the friend said, "Tell me, Heinrich, why can't people build like this anymore?" The poet replied, "Friend, in those days people had convictions. We moderns have opinions. It takes more than opinions to build Gothic cathedrals." (6)
Those early followers of our Lord were passionate about their service to him and to the world for which he died. Not many of us have that kind of passion. Oh, we might be passionate about our work. We might even be that passionate about a leisure activity or some sport, but it is rare when people today feel that way about their faith.
In 1947, Buddy Musgrove became a fan of the Wynewood High Savages, his local high school football team. And not just a fair-weather fan either. Over the past 51 years, Musgrove has attended every single Wynewood Savages game, 570 in all. He has braved ice storms to make it to the games. One year, Musgrove was in an accident while driving to the game. In spite of his injuries, he still hitched a ride to the stadium and made it there by kickoff time. He is determined to cheer on his team, come hell or high water. As he says, "Only death will keep me from a football game." (7)
We encounter people who are passionate about many things nowadays, but rarely are they passionate about their faith. That which should be at the center of their lives is now peripheral. How can we expect to build a church with people who are more excited about a job or a sport than they are about the Kingdom of God?
The single-minded dedication of those early followers of our Lord remind me of the ads that newspapers carried for Pony Express riders in 1860: "Wanted - young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred." (8)
No wonder they triumphed over the mighty Roman empire. That's how you build a mighty church of God--unified by a shared purpose, centered in constant prayer, and driven by a selfless passion. Who could stop such men and women? No one. They couldn't be stopped then and they can't be stopped now. Would you care to join their number?
1. "High on Coltrane," PEOPLE, October 19, 1998, p.178.
2. Richards, Lawrence O. THE 365-DAY DEVOTIONAL COMMENTARY (Colorado Springs, Colo.: ChariotVictor Publishing, 1990), p. 818.
3. WIT & WISDOM
4. Ogilvie, Lloyd J., THE COMMUNICATOR'S COMMENTARY, #5 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1985), pp. 47-48.
5. Jacqueline Schiff in SATURDAY EVENING POST, July/Aug. 1998, p. 37.
6. "Digital Living," by Dr. C. Thomas Hilton, THE CLERGY JOURNAL, January 1995, p. 39.
7. "Old Reliable," PEOPLE, Nov. 11, 1998.
8. Jeffrey McQuain, POWER LANGUAGE (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996).