The Primacy of Story: Acts

Having worked in churches for a number of years there was one thing that I became increasingly irritated by: the ritualistic abuse of the book of Acts by turning it into a manual for how to do church (not to be confused with how to be the church, which you could actually use Acts for). Our Western minds crave structure and order, so we take an Eastern book, written in symbol, metaphor, and image driven patterns, and we plumb its depths looking for strict patterns, blueprints and three point bulleted sermons. Though the Church has been guilty of this abuse for centuries, it has never been more pronounced than it is right now (or so it seems to me). 

Back a number of years ago, around the time I was in college, Rick Warren, the founding pastor of Saddleback Community Church in So-Cal, wrote a book called The Purpose Driven Church (followed a couple years later by The Purpose Driven Life). In that book he lays out five foundational principles that he found in the book of Acts that the early church “emphasized”: worship, fellowship, discipleship, service, and evangelism. What this did, besides cause every church in America to ape this plan and try to be a megachurch, was turn the book of Acts into a no-fail formula for how to do church here in America. 

News-flash! The book of Acts is about the disciples of the Way learning to be the Church. And they learned to be the Church by following the Way of Jesus, not by formulating a plan, strategy, or catchy vision statement. They simply lived.

Our missing of this point has lead churches to compartmentalize their programs, turning true discipleship into an assembly line process, where a person can move from point A to B to C and so on, finally reaching an imaginary finish line and being a true disciple. 

Horsecrap.

That would work if the church was full of robots. It isn’t. It’s full of messy, broken people who aren’t programmable. I the book of Acts teaches us anything it’s that the Body of Christ is human, prone to beautiful acts of grace and compassion and courage because of the Spirit of Christ moving in us. 

The story of Acts chronicles for us the journey and rise of a confused group of disciples from an upper room huddle to a world changing force for the Kingdom. It is the best of humanity overcoming the worst of humanity by living the Way. It is the enfleshment--an epilogue if you will--of all Jesus lived and taught. Yes, they worshipped, served, etc., but not as a means towards some supposed end. Everything they did was an overflow of who they were in Christ. 

Following Jesus is more than the sum of those five compartments. It’s about a new way of seeing the world; a new way of being human; a de-centering away from the world’s values and a re-centering in God’s values; a new way of seeing yourself; it’s learning to love, forgive, seek justice and mercy, and walk humbly with God. This what we find in Luke’s history of the early church. Let us move on then from formulas, vision statements, and programs to a way of life. 

shalom, matt