How does the Book of Acts inform us on what a modern church should be like?
View 1: The Church in the Book of Acts is merely descriptive. Luke (the author of Acts) was not intending to record what other churches must do, or even should do, but just what the First Century Church did do. Clearly, there were incidents of bad behavior, confusion, mistakes, arguments, and changing structures. In fact, it's impossible to replicate the "First Century Church," because it was a moving target. This view is favored by a majority of the modern Church, especially highly institutionalized churches.
View 2: The Church in the book of Acts is prescriptive - Luke is informing us how we should do things. We must return to the ways of the First Century Church, because that's the way the Apostles did it. The modern Church has become too enamored with the methods of the world, too corporate, too institutionalized, too dedicated to its own infrastructure to be effective. And that failure is precisely because we have fallen away from the organic, grassroots example in the Book of Acts. We must replicate the First Century Church and her ways. This view is favored by the house church movement and the "emergent church" advocates.
In all fairness, these two views as described are oversimplified. Each view is far more nuanced and accommodating than described here, but the differences are clearly illustrated in this condensed form.
The question is an important one, because it affects how we position our church gatherings, priorities, and activities. It affects how leaders lead, how goals are set, how groups meet, where meetings happen, and how success is measured - virtually everything about church life can be defined by whether a local church favors one view of the other.
Let me introduce two more views, based on the first two:
View 3: This is more of a salad bar approach. Pick and choose which aspects of the First Century Church you think are applicable, and forget the rest. "We like the deacon idea, but not the house church location. We like the idea of feeding widows, but we really don't like the idea of everyone bringing their possessions in to be shared with the rest." This hybrid approach can be either justified through careful study, or it can be a lazy attachment of only those verses that appear to reinforce foregone conclusions.
View 4: Copy what the First Century Church focused on, but have freedom on how it should get done in a given context. Replicate their goals and priorities, and even take notice of their techniques and strategies, but be fixed on the former and flexible on the latter.
View 4 is where I want to spend my time. Having deacons or not, how money is collected and used, where you meet - those are all how questions, not what questions. The "what" of the First Century Church was to proclaim and demonstrate that the Kingdom of God is present and available through Christ. They were focused on making disciples and were seeing people's lives radically changed as they began to follow Christ, forsaking their loyalty to the world's system. This must be replicated, but the methods change with the context.
So much of the church literature is focused on the how question - how to grow a church, how to lead Bible studies, how to run a children's ministry. These are not bad things to consider. But there is a growing set of literature that focuses on the what question, sometimes even refusing to address the how (which can frustrate readers who just want a "how-to" manual). The first kind of literature compares your church to other modern churches. The second kind of literature compares your church to the First Century Church, but not in technique - just in priorities and commitments.
The question is really this: How well does your church stick to proclaiming and demonstrating the reign of Christ by focusing on personal disciplemaking? Are you seeing the kinds of activities (not necessarily methods) in your church that are written about in the Book of Acts? Are lives being radically changed, or are people merely being pleased with well-run programs?
It's those places where we see a disconnect between our church and the First Century Church's priorities that tell us where to put our energy. Rather than be discouraged by the differences and how we "come up short," be encouraged by seeing clearly how to best improve your church in the most important ways! It doesn't matter if your church is different than the bigger, slicker, better funded church that's serving a totally different context. It does matter if what happened in the First Century Church is rarely happening in your own.
If you're a church leader, it's a simple as "you really do already know what you should do" but as complex as "there's a ton of reading and dialoging you need to do with those further down the road than you."
If you're not a church leader and you don't have leadership pull in your church, the next step is actually pretty simple. Within the church structure you already have, work with likeminded folks to create a pocket of intentional disciplemaking. Start as yeast - you don't need to start a new program, get a logo, design a website, or have a slogan. Just clear your calendar and start making disciples in a small context. Don't worry about big - let big happen.
If you don't know where to start, I'd be happy to talk and suggest some ideas.
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