We won’t change or have we

As we read the passage in Acts 2: 42-47 we find the model for the churches behavior. We find that the early believers had certain things that they were consistent in doing. They studied the teaching of the apostles, enjoyed the fellowship of the saints, participated in corporate prayer and ate meals together including the Lord’s Supper. God established His welfare system through them as they were moved to sell their assets and divide it among all of those in need. In today’s church I often hear people say comments like we don’t like change or we want to do it the way it has always been done. Statements like that are made but the church doesn’t really believe them it seems. Most congregations might do part of what the early church did, such as study the apostles teachings. After that the change sets in because the rest of it makes us feel very uncomfortable. The modern believer only wants to fellowship with those people that they have something in common with. The modern day version of corporate prayer mostly consists of a prayer service over a prayer list. We don’t really pray expecting God to really do anything. When we eat together it is usually only on special occasions and our idea of taking the Lord’s Supper together is to just be in the same room together. We have no interaction while we are observing the sacrament. Then you come to what I call God’s Welfare System for the modern church. There is not much helping others and certainly no selling of our stuff to help others. We often think that others can take care of themselves and we will just talk about them. When all is done we like to say that we don’t want to change and yet we have gone so far from what the Bible says. Change is something that we can’t avoid; yet we should not change how the Bible described the earlier believers behavior. If we are to obey the Bible we must try to replicate everything the earlier believers did. I am not saying that we have to sell everything we own to be like them; but we must at the very least be willing to sell it all to take care of members of the church if needed. Changing in methods are ok as long as we don’t change what the methods were meant to do.