I have a question for you this morning…If you were not right here, right now, sitting in worship at North Broadway United Methodist Church, what would you be doing? Or, put more generally, what alternative thing could you do on Sunday morning if you gave up coming to worship.

At the risk of tempting you to miss worship next week, I offer a brief list of alternative possibilities.

• Sleep
• Go out for breakfast and linger over coffee with your significant other or friends
• Stay home in and read the paper and drink coffee
• Shop
• Work out, golf, play ball, jog or ride your bicycle
• Work at your job
• Get an early start on your “to do” list for the week
• You could be at the mall, at Wal Mart, at Krogers, at Starbucks, at Barnes and Noble, at any of the other number of places where people got to meet others and chat with them.

About a month ago, we had a taste of what it means to have a free Sunday morning when an unusual late winter snow storm caused us to cancel worship, and I got to try out my own personal alternative Sunday morning fantasy. I stayed in my pajamas for hours, checked out the Sunday morning news shows, read the paper the actual day it was published, drank coffee, and ate a leisurely breakfast.

In the absence of a worship experience, I gave extra time to my daily devotions; I spent time in prayer; I even watched a little church on television. But all in all, it was less than wonderful. I discovered that what I dreamed of doing on an occasional Sunday morning excluded a critical, life giving component.

And that component is called Christian community. Put simply, my worship life and my relationship with the holy depends on shared experience with all of you.

What we do here and call church is rich, vibrant, necessary, and sacred. We have inherited the life of this community, and its continuation into the future for generations to come rests in our hands. Christian community is therefore both generous gift and sacred responsibility.

Acts 2 describes the Christian community that emerged as a wholly new concept in human culture and society after the days of Jesus life, death and resurrection. The power and presence of the Holy Spirit enabled this community – and in that sense Christian community is generous gift, born of the Spirit of God.

The first followers of Jesus sought to understand how they should live and behave together in order to become the transformative presence of Christ in the world. They took up the sacred responsibility.

In August of 2006, Our Bishop, Bishop Ough, invited West Ohio congregations to become “Acts 2 Congregations.” Focusing on these verses, Bishop Ough noted that,

“The apostles and earliest disciples of Jesus bore much kingdom fruit. They were able to do so because God, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, was in them, and they were responsive and obedient to the Spirit’s leading. The Book of Acts is a lively record of both the means and the ends (fruits) of God’s activity in and through God’s people.”

Here is what the text tells us about the fruitfulness of that first Christian community.

• persons of all nations and races being added to and included in the faith community;
• persons receiving the Good News and being saved;
• persons being cared for as they had need; and
• persons demonstrating wonders and signs of God’s kingdom-reversing and kingdom-multiplying power.

And here is what the text tells us about the means of God’s activity.

• hospitality that welcomes persons of all nations and races into the community;
• glad and passionate worship that praises and magnifies God’s presence;
• devotion to the apostles’ teachings, fellowship and prayer that grows disciples; and
• justice and mercy ministries that serve the community.

Put another way – the first list is a list of the generous gifts that God gave to the community. The second list is a list of how the early church exercised the sacred responsibility of Christian community.

It is not a difficult formula for faithfulness. The text lifts up for us teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayers. Teach the faith, nurture fellowship, emphasize the importance of Holy Communion, and be devoted to prayer.

But then there is this other thing that we kind of dance around in this text. The Bishop’s list only obliquely refers to it – and that is this business about “All who believed had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

The early Jerusalem Christian community shared in a rather radical way; and the growth rate of that early community is nothing short of remarkable. This didn’t last of course. It wouldn’t be long before the apostle Paul would be begging the Thessalonians for offerings for the Jerusalem community.

I think it is not as easy to distinguish between fruits and means in this text as it might at first seem. I do not know if the radical egalitarian sharing is a means to fruitful Christian community – or if it is a sign and wonder that comes as gift of God when the community is faithful first to teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers.

Being faithful as a church is not difficult. It is not highly technical. It does not require special skill. It does require commitment and focus. It requires, in short, that each individual person devote themselves to the communal practices that are outlined in Acts 2.

I submit that we have these practices in place at North Broadway – and that they are often hidden in plain sight. At the same time, I think we have need to strengthen our commitment of time and resources to some of these practices in order to fully express the nature of Christian community as it is described in Acts 2. So let us spend a few moments considering each of these practices as they exist in our Christian community.

Teaching: In Acts, teaching refers to teaching the content of the faith. At first, with mostly Jewish Christians, there was a need to teach the Jesus tradition as it related to the Hebrew Scriptures. The gospel of Matthew is an effort at this kind of teaching. As Gentile converts began to be added, there was a need to also teach the Old Testament scriptures. The apostle Paul devoted much of his writing to establishing how much of this tradition Gentile converts were required to fulfill. In our day, the following ought to be foundational for everyone who joins the community: basic introduction to the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; basic Christian beliefs; the theology of John Wesley; United Methodist history, doctrine and tradition.

Excellent curriculum resources for this teaching are available to the church. To strengthen our teaching ministry at North Broadway, we need a systematic way of delivering these resources to the whole community and a basic expectation of both foundational and life-long learning. In the second half of Bishop Sprague’s year with us, he will be helping us strengthen both program design and commitment to the teaching ministry of the church.

Fellowship: In the early church, fellowship meant significant time spent in sharing one’s faith journey and life challenges with other Christians. Teaching, the breaking of bread, and prayer are all components of fellowship. But authentic Christian community is best built in small groups of persons who develop the trust that enables deep sharing of one’s spiritual journey. Recently, Jim Bingman has begun nurturing a ministry of Home Fellowship groups. Jim has information about how you can begin one of these groups – it’s a six week commitment and promises to bear great fruit for North Broadway. I encourage you to gather a group together and let Jim and others who have participated in this process help you experience it. To strengthen our fellowship at North Broadway, we need commitment to small group participation on a regular and ongoing basis.

Breaking of Bread: In the early church, people worshipped and studied at the temple, but the remembrance of Jesus that occurred in the breaking of the bread was done in homes, likely in the context of a shared meal. Now, we break bread together in worship in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Our practice of communion is strengthened when we share meals together. Table fellowship is central in the building of Christian community. This is why we share a meal on Wednesday nights when we come together to “Eat, Learn and Live.” When we incorporate Communion into worship, it is critically important that we devote ourselves to the liturgy, which teaches our faith story, and in the actions of taking, eating and giving thanks. The breaking of bread together requires that we set aside time for this sacred act, and give our attention to those with whom we share the bread. It is a fellowship event; a learning event; a prayerful event. Our life could be strengthened by weekly participation in the Eucharist – the staff is now practicing weekly prayer and communion together.

Prayer: North Broadway is blessed with a faithful group of persons who take up the ministry of prayer on behalf of the whole community. This intercessory prayer team prays for all of the prayer requests that are received on our Sunday morning registration cards, for all of those who place requests in the prayer box in the hallway. To strengthen our prayer ministry at North Broadway, we need to teach prayer in small fellowship groups. There are wonderful curriculum resources for teaching prayer and spiritual disciplines in community together. Our basic expectation for participation in prayer should be strengthened, and we need to find a way to devote additional time in worship to the prayers of the community.

Recent studies have suggested that mainline protestant church members are losing their passion and commitment for working within the life of the local church; they describe themselves as “burned out.” At the same time, these persons describe a higher desire than ever for overseas and distant mission experiences. It has been suggested that this may be because people have lost the sense that working in the life of the local church is transformative. But if we are not experiencing transformation at that level, we will only be doing the mission ministries out of our own resources. We need to attend to the life of the local Christian community for the power of the Spirit to be unleashed in all of our ministries

When we commit ourselves individually to the breaking of bread, learning, and praying together in fellowship with other Christians – then it isn’t long before we find that we cannot bear for anyone among our number to be in need; then it isn’t long before we long to bring the justice and mercy that characterized Jesus’ ministry to the whole world; then it isn’t long before signs and wonders and miracles are happening among us. I invite us to recommit to a focus on the basics of Christian community in order to strengthen our mission and witness.

The world was changed by this wholly new kind of community in the First Century. And the world can be changed in the 21^st century. In 2000 years, no technology and human achievement have contributed much to teaching, fellowship, prayer and breaking of bread. But nothing has replaced their transformative power when they are done in the name of Jesus Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Thank you for not sleeping in today. Thanks you for skipping breakfast, and passing up the morning paper. Thank you for being here today – your presence is life-saving community for me.