Spirituality Column #772

August 31, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Community Effort

By Bob Walters

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.  …  And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” – Acts 2:42, 47

Twenty years ago today I didn’t know Jesus. 

But 20 years ago this week, Sept. 2, 2001 – a Sunday – Jesus found a very surprised me sitting in church in Indianapolis.  It’s an old story I love to tell.

In August of 2001 my then-8^th grade son Eric asked, at the dinner table, “How come we don’t go to church?”  The kids on his junior high school bus in Carmel, Ind., had been talking about which churches they went to, and Eric simply wondered why we didn’t.  I hadn’t been to church on a Sunday by choice since I was an Episcopal altar boy about Eric’s age, fully 30 years earlier.

But … kid wants to go to church?  Let’s take him to church. 

Here I leave out a big chunk of the story, but Sunday, Sept. 2, 2001, we came through the door of East 91^st Street Christian Church, dropped Eric and his younger brother John off in what to me was a surprisingly and unexpectedly welcoming and nice youth area, and then headed to the service.

Let me be clear: I was not looking for Jesus.  I wasn’t looking for anything, except to fulfil my son’s desire to experience “church.”  And here we were; so, mission accomplished.  But when I got into the service, I found something else surprising and unexpected … and it was the people; it was the church. 

Jesus wasn’t sitting up front with a bait box, hooks, trout creel, and tissues  No … I saw hundreds of friendly, polite, happy people, obviously drawn together in a freedom, love, purpose, and joy that was both totally alien to me but strangely, unexpectedly, and immediately recognizable.  I wanted to know more, and the Spirit met me right there, with a peace and a promise in my heart that God would take my faith seriously. 

The Spirit sealed the deal with the gentle, happy tears on my cheeks; assuring deliverance of that holy promise.  It was my “Awake Date” – the day I awoke in the Spirit. I was baptized three months later.  It was the church, not sacrifice, that got me.

My point is that our communion we share as believers is one of love and joy in the purpose and service of glorifying God by sharing the truth of Jesus Christ, together, in fellowship.  The bread and cup of communion, to me, represent fellowship and life, moreso than a broken body of punishment and the shed blood of death.

Our sins are terrible, and Jesus’s sacrifice was terrible.  But Jesus instructed his disciples to break bread in fellowship with Him and each other, and Jesus called the cup “the blood of the New Covenant” … for Jesus is the Covenant of life, love, faith, sacrifice, joy, truth … and eternal hope.

I give thanks to the global body of believers for their fellowship, and thank the Lord for the life to which we are restored by his blood.  It’s a community effort.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) used this church fellowship story as a communion meditation at E91 this past Sunday.  We often meet His church before we meet Jesus. Btw, Sept. 2, 2001, just happened to be the day E91 celebrated the 50-year anniversary of the ministry of Russ Blowers, who became a dear friend as he was to everyone who knew him.  Russ had a way of helping people open up to the Spirit … together.