Everything in common

Luke describes what the first church looked like in four compressed verses, and it is unlike anything that existed before it and unlike most things that have existed since.

They devoted themselves to four things: the apostles' teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. They met every day — not once a week, not twice a month, but every single day — in the temple courts and in each other's homes. They ate together. They prayed together. They shared everything they had.

When someone had a need, people sold property and possessions to meet it. Not because a law required it. Not because a leader demanded it. Because the presence of God among them had dissolved the normal human calculus of mine and yours.

The text says they had everything in common. It says not a single person among them was in need. It says they ate together with glad and sincere hearts.

The word Luke uses for their joy — agalliasis — means exultant, leaping gladness. This is not the polite contentment of people who are doing a nice thing. This is something that has broken loose in them.

And every day the Lord added to their number.

No outreach campaign. No visitor follow-up system. Just a community of people who were so visibly, inexplicably, extravagantly alive that their neighbors wanted whatever they had.

The first church didn't grow because it had a good strategy for growth. It grew because it had become the kind of community that people on the outside genuinely wanted to be part of.

Their generosity was not a program. Their joy was not performed. Their unity was not managed. These were the natural overflow of people who had been undone by the resurrection and were still figuring out what that meant together.

The hard question isn't how to replicate their methods. It's whether we believe what they believed with the same weight they believed it.