TotD: 1st Century Christianity in the Third Millenium

It's about time for a new blog isn't it? I am also working on Love 3, Reasons Buffy is Shpiffing 4 and a possible new series. This particular blog entry is the very first one inspired by IBI, besides the one on IBI itself. As part of the Biblical Interpretation course online we are reading a book by Fee and Stuart called How to Read the Bible for All its Worth. Chapter 6 of this book is on how to correctly interpret the book of Acts. One of the main thrusts of this chapter on the interpretation of Acts is about whether the outlines of life in the Acts Church (specifically in Jerusalem) is normative for the Church around the world today. This question is a very important one these days as there are entire denominations, let alone individual church groups, that claim the church today should be more like the church found in the first number of chapters in Acts. The belief of these churches and groups is that the Church today should be one where people do not own possessions but sell all they have and give it to the community, that they should live together and spend a lot of time together, that they should eat together and break bread each time they do and they would insist that this is the model put forward in Acts. I have thought about whether I agree with them or not before reading this chapter and thinking about the correct interpretation of Acts. I came to the conclusion that, although the Jerusalem Church in the first century was a beautiful example of Christian community, it was not a set form of Christian community and instead of looking back (to a context we are no longer living in) we need to reinterpret the idea of Christian community for the third millenium, we need to become a Church 3.0 (I am aware this is the title of a book though I do not suggest that is the model the third millenium church should take either, I have not read it). It is wonderful to read that, even the first century church, did not agree that the first century church had to be based around the model we today know as the 'first century church.' Fee and Stuart point out "Luke neither says nor implies that Gentile Churches experienced a communal life similar to that in Jerusalem… Such diversity probably means that no specific example is being set forth as the model Christian experience or churn life." (113) They go on to say, “Unless Scripture explicitly tells us we must do something, what is only narrated or described does not function in a normative (i.e. obligatory) way – unless it can be demonstrated on other grounds that the author intended it to function in this way.” (pp.118-119, italics original). The book is a narrative telling about the Gentile expansion of the church as opposed to one outlining principles for running/ being part of a Christian community. God is doing a new thing (Isaiah 43:19) and He does not wish us to look back and copy what has come before us in hopes that He will be in it and move in it. He wants us to learn from the past, most certainly, but to keep looking for Him and what He is doing now. Church in this millenium could, and probably should, look quite different from the Church that came before it. God is doing a new thing, not the thing He did first. Acts in no way sets out that the Church should be like the 'First Century Church' but provides a narrative on what it was like. We need to seek God for, what will be, the narrative of the Church in our time.