The Early Church

What comes to mind when you think about the American church? 

As I have been overseas, I have often received questions from local believers about the American church. They ask about church culture, mega churches, and even the question of, “Isn’t everyone a Christian there?’. 

My friend Kirsten and I have recently made friends with a Christian woman who works at the only book store in Tirana that sells Christian material, including the Bible. Being in a predominantly Islamic country, she amazed me immediately. The bookstore is just a few blocks from our hostel so it has been sweet to spend time talking with her about the Lord and what He is doing in her life and in Albania. Becca will be moving to the United States with her husband and son soon to be with family. She often asks us questions about America about how she will adjust to the culture and people. She wonders if there will be people like us who bring her warm cappuccinos and just sit with her while she works. She worries that she will not find a welcoming and hospitable community, based upon what she has heard about the country. 

These questions have impressed on my heart because I want to promise Becca that she will find radical hospitality. I want to promise her that she will be welcomed with open arms into a body of believers- that she will be greeted immediately when she walks into her new church. 

But I can’t. Although Christians are looking to reflect more of Jesus’s heart everyday, we can still cause and experience suffering on earth. Our eyes get distracted, we lose sight of the Father’s heart, and our flesh falls short. When the body of Christ fails, there is still the hope of living in eternity one day where our hearts will be made whole, relationships restored, and amongst the most unified fellowship we will ever experience. Until then, we can be encouraged to create a church that is a little bit of heaven on earth. 

Here are a few beautiful things I have observed while being apart of local churches around the world: 

• • The church is small groups with a church, not a church with small groups. 
  • True discipleship is the most valuable part of welcoming non-believers and new believers into the church. 
  • Church hopping or church shopping doesn’t serve or glorify the Lord, it serves and glorifies ourselves. 
  • Spend time wisely doing outreach and pouring out into your community. 
  • Church can be you and your friends breaking bread together and worshiping in your home on a Sunday. The early church was the same way! “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” Mathew 18:20
  • Living a life with Jesus is freedom from religion and freedom in worship !! “It was freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a joke of slavery” Galatians 5:1 
  • Despite denominations, we are one church body. 
  • Radical and inclusive hospitality !! 
  • Follow the Holy Spirit & Lead with the Holy Spirit !!
  • Prayer and intercession are an invaluable tool, the Lord often asks us to wait and listen. “Pray without ceasing” 1 Thessalonians 5:17

My prayer is that my friend finds a church that embodies what the early church looked like. I hope she finds an Acts 10 church where strangers become friends through fellowship with one another, just like the Jewish believers that received and welcomed Gentiles into their homes and hearts. 

The teaching in the early church was based upon the message that “the kingdom of heaven is near”. 

How can we engage with the church with that same message in mind? How can we be members of the body that reflect the early church? 

Lord, we want to fix our eyes on you and only you. We thank you for the bodies of church all around the world. We regret the ways we have lost sight of you. We want the world to know you. Help us to recenter our hearts on you. We long for the day when we will hear ‘well done good and faithful servant’. Amen. 

Be well. Love well.

Mags