Four Essentials
They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. (Acts 2:42)
When the first body of believers gathered together, they devoted themselves to four essentials: teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. This verse is not only descriptive of what the early church did; it is also prescriptive of what all churches must do.
For a church to be the kind of church Jesus promised to build, there must be teaching, which, of course, includes preaching. Teaching is not the same as mere talking, or reading poetry, or motivational speaking, or delivering a positive-thinking-type devotional. We are told here what type of teaching it means: they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. Today the church has the apostles’ teaching represented in the complete Word of God—the Bible. A church must continually be devoted to the teaching of the sacred Scriptures. Teaching God’s truth gives a church deep roots that provide nourishment and stability.
For a church to be the kind of church Jesus promised to build, there has to be fellowship as well. If we had teaching without fellowship, the church would be a school—a place that simply dispenses information. The original term for fellowship is koinonia, which referred to close, mutual relationships where people share things in common and remain involved with one another. That doesn’t mean potluck suppers, dinners on the grounds, and Christmas concerts. Koinonia represents close relationships that involve sharing life with one another—the bad times as well as the good. Those in fellowship with one another cultivate an intimate harmony with others. In church, the Word of God is not only learned through teaching . . . it is lived through fellowship.
The breaking of bread is included along with teaching and fellowship. That refers to the Lord’s Table, which was observed when the church gathered. Because baptism was mentioned just before this verse, we understand that the early church devoted themselves to the two ordinances commanded by Jesus: baptism and the Lord’s Table. The first represents our conversion to Christ, and the second, our lifelong communion with Him. An acceptable, all-inclusive term would be worship. For a church to be the kind of church Jesus promised to build, there must be worship.
Finally, they devoted themselves to prayer. They spent time as a body of believers adoring their Lord, confessing their sins, interceding for others, petitioning God to provide, and thanking Him for His blessings—just as Jesus taught them to pray. For a church to be the kind of church Jesus promised to build, there must be prayer.
You can’t have a church if you take away any of the four essentials recorded in Acts 2:42. You can have more than these four, but you cannot have less and still be a church. And if you have more—and most churches do—those things added must never contradict or obscure the importance of the essentials. When they do, count on it, erosion occurs.
Taken from The Church Awakening by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2010 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Faith Words, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
