Text: Acts 2:42-47

The Jerusalem church had a problem. This congregation of 120 souls held a one-day revival and by nightfall, they had baptized 3,000 people. Talk about overwhelming the system! No church is set up for this kind of growth.

The challenge they faced was how to disciple these new believers, to get them established in the Christian life as quickly as possible.

The task was complicated by several factors. Many were foreigners in Jerusalem for the days of Pentecost, which had just ended. Their friends were ready to head home, but since Jesus Christ had just entered their lives and rearranged their priorities, they planned to remain in town for a while to learn all they could as quickly as possible before heading home.

Since the church had no meeting place, they crowded into homes and any available corner of the Temple for classes taught by the apostles. To further complicate matters, new believers were arriving all the time. By Acts 4:4, the number had risen to 5,000 believers. Clearly, this was not an orderly and well-organized process of discipleship. They were doing the best they could under unprecedented conditions. The image of “herding cats” comes to mind.

In building His fledgling church, the Lord was using three different kinds of stones, so to speak: the Word of God, the Work of God, and the Worship of God.

1. The Word of God. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ doctrine.”

Bear in mind, these believers did not have a New Testament. However, they had the apostles. So, as groups gathered across the city, the apostles took charge of each meeting. They spent hours telling about Jesus — who He was, what He did and said, how He interpreted the Old Testament Scriptures, what they saw Him do, what they felt, what Jesus promised, and what it meant. In short, they shared the contents of our four gospels. They gave the Word of God.

2. The Work of God. The disciples were teaching the Word and leading the worship, of course, but they were doing more. They were ministering to the needs of believers in the congregation. Signs and wonders are being done by the apostles, which we take to mean that miracles of healing were taking place with people inside and outside the congregation. Then, the work of evangelism is going on, for “daily the Lord was adding to their number those who were being saved.”

3. The Worship of God. Their worship involved much of the same things we do today — teaching the Word, praying, offerings, praise, and ministering.

In between and all around these great building blocks was the mortar, which was the Fellowship. The mortar ties the blocks together. Now, the fellowship of God’s people was of two types: formal and informal.

They fellowshipped in the Word. Perhaps you have sat in a great Sunday School class. People discussed, they laughed, they prayed, they learned and grew and had a wonderful time of fellowship.

They fellowshipped in the work. Perhaps you came with a group to the Gulf Coast to help gut out or rebuild homes and churches after the hurricane. You found it to be hot and hard and dirty, and wonderful. The fellowship was as good as it gets.

They fellowshipped in worship. Any worship leader will tell you the hardest thing is to get people to fellowship in the act of worship, to really sing with and pray with others, not just as a collection of individuals.

But their fellowship also took place in the cracks, when nothing else was going on. They “hung out” together. In fact, three times our text mentions how these believers ate together. Now, most of the commentaries I consulted say this means they observed the Lord’s Supper together. I say, “Give me a break.” Sure, they had the Lord’s Supper. But sometimes they just got together over at someone’s home and over a pot of spaghetti, they ate and visited and loved one another. One of the worst things we pastors do sometimes is to rebuke people in our church for having “eating meetings” when nothing spiritual is going on. We feel we have to do a Bible study for the meal to be sanctified. But we are dead wrong. Any time God’s people come together around the table and bless the food becomes a holy occasion.

Now, in the nearly five years since I became Director of Missions for the Baptists of Greater New Orleans, I’ve been in more churches than in the previous 42 years of ministry combined. And it’s my observation that most churches are doing a passable job in teaching the word, doing the work, and leading the worship.

The weakest point in our churches, I believe, is the fellowship.

By fellowship, we mean the inner life of the congregation, the way church members relate to one another. It’s the body life. The members love the Lord, love one another, and love the stranger, the outsider, the newcomer. That’s the heart of fellowship.

For many years Bob Anderson pastored the great Parkview Baptist Church in Baton Rouge. Not long ago, Bob told the students and faculty at our New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary something that had happened to him.

“A Sunday School class invited me to their Friday night backyard cookout. I told them I had something going on at church that night, but I’d come as soon as I could get away. On Friday night, I finished my business at church and drove across town. I found the street and was fairly certain I knew where the house was. Fairly certain.

“I parked my car and walked up to the door. Because I knew that in a backyard cookout, no one is in the house, I opened the door and walked in. I stepped across the living room and through the dining room and into the kitchen. That’s when I got two surprises. The woman standing at the sink was a complete stranger. And it was obvious I was a stranger to her, too. Furthermore, I could see through the window above the sink, there was no one in the back yard. I was in the wrong house.

“Now, nothing prepares you for a moment like this. She was staring at me and I’m staring back at her. Finally, I blurted out,