Biblical Community and the Great Commission

Introduction

A biblical understanding of community rightly begins where we first encounter a vibrant community of faith. In Acts 2:42-47, we see the practices that defined the life of a newly constituted body of Jesus’ followers. While they are not named as such, these practices essentially became pillars of how Christ-following communities were established in the early centuries and demonstrate how mission minded communities might take shape today. 

The author of Acts (in fact, all the apostles), takes for granted that a good Christian community is formed through these key components: careful teaching, that is, doctrine (didache), intentional fellowship (koinonia), compassionate service (diakonia), devout prayer and worship (liturgia), passionate proclamation (kerygma and marturia). In fact, we see these elements demonstrated throughout the book of Acts and variously elaborated in the Pauline and pastoral epistles. 

In seeking to understand a biblical community for contemporary times, these are the key practices or pillars that can be contextualized while simultaneously being faithful to biblical Christianity.  

Didache: the Teaching of the Apostles

The first of these practices is didache, or, the “the teaching of the apostles.” This pillar of a biblical community concerns setting forth the guiding spiritual teachings of God, which in turn give the Christian community its identity and authenticity. 

The twelve apostles do not assume that after coming to faith new converts know the substance of their belief. They form believers by carefully instructing them on the teachings of Jesus. As the church grows, we see the skill of doctrinal instruction as exemplified by the Apostle Paul. 

Paul has a deeply integrated understanding of how the Old Testament Jewish story and its messianic hopes are fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He builds theological bridges between the Old Testament, culturally exclusivist Jewish faith,  to emergent church communities in first century cosmopolitan worlds of the Roman Empire. Paul also carefully coaches selected leaders, like Timothy, Titus, and the Ephesian elders, on how they are to pass on this good doctrine as faithful shepherds, forming new communities. 

The work of theological formation in Christian communities must be carried out with each generation, since following Jesus does not come naturally. The basic inclination of human affections and habits tilts away from God. 

The mantle of crafting a theologically-shaped community identity is picked up by the earliest church fathers. Early in the second generation of church leaders, a document known as the didache was introduced as a foundational manual that outlined the teachings of the twelve apostles. Thus, for Paul and these early church fathers, it was not enough to simply believe and confess Jesus as Lord; believing communities had to be patiently trained in the way of Jesus since deceptive and apostate teachings are ever near.  

One of the present-day challenges for Christian witness is the low view of doctrinal matters and its resulting rootlessness and fluidity that cannot sustain a long-term vision for the transmission of the gospel. There is an emphasis in entrepreneurial pioneering in what is perceived to be new frontiers, be it in evangelism, church planting, humanitarian aid, or education. Mission-minded evangelicals function more like individualist mavericks who may be involved in conversion and broad outreach to the unreached, but are less engaged in activities that foster the deepening of spiritual roots.  

This is understandable, since by its very nature evangelical faith is a nonconformist protest against the lukewarm spirituality of long-established communities. Yet this activist and pioneering ethos needs reinforcing through theological foundations, rooted not merely in the New Testament narrative, but in a full embrace of the entire biblical narrative. Here we see a full-orbed salvific narrative through the actions of the Triune God in a dynamic relationship with the people of Israel.

It is the calling of Israel, and the ebb and flow of its covenantal obligations that give us clarity on what cruci-centric Christology is. We see in the Old Testament cycles of decline and renewal the significance of pneumatological presence in the New Testament church. So, the apostolic instruction to new converts drinks deeply from the Old Testament, which was Jesus’ Bible. Jesus himself, meeting a pair of perplexed disciples on the road to Emmaus, explained the events around his crucifixion through the interpretive lens of the Old Testament story. This brings us to the second practice that becomes a pillar of community: worship.      

Liturgia: the Worship Life of the Community

Liturgia, or worship, is what the community does when it gets together on a regular basis. It is what orients the community towards God and towards a kingdom consciousness. They meet and praise God together (Acts 2:46- 47).  

Numerous New Testament passages subsequently elaborate on the worship life of the community. In Ephesians 5, after Paul teaches (didache) the church about its identity in Christ, he instructs them on how they ought to live as Christians. After setting forth a long list of habit forming practices, he sums up with the invitation to sing psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, with thanksgiving (5:19-20). 

In 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, Paul elaborates on the liturgical ethos of communal life and pastoral practice. Liturgical practice includes the judicious understanding and use of the gifts of the Spirit to build the life of the community and act as an attractional fragrance to the watching world. Liturgical practice also includes wise patterns of relationships within and outside the church. 

Amidst the possibility that there will be fractures in this community, he also circumscribes leadership jurisdictions and champions love as the ultimate value, along with faith and hope. And in chapter 14, the worship life of the community is to be exercised within reasonable boundaries of order and in the unity of the Spirit. Thus, liturgia itself is not divorced from didache, and in turn is deeply rooted in Israel’s God-honoring rituals, celebratory practices and resources to be found in the wisdom of the psalms and poetic literature. 

To many, the word liturgy is reminiscent of formalized worship in Orthodox, Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and other similar congregations. Yet all congregations utilize ritual habits, even when they are composed of simple elements, such as the call to worship, announcements, collection, the sermon, and a dismissal. Even more noticeable is how those that take a low view of liturgy gravitate towards the use of technology for worship. This appears to be a trajectory towards a ritualized routine, albeit one that is dependent on charisma and electronic production. 

The initial attractional impulse is commendable, even vital for periodic renewal. But when regular liturgical life is bereft of the richness and depth of Christian history and tradition, popularized charismatic liturgy is inadequate to sustain the great commission.  It is not enough for a community to have an emotionally passionate and well-intentioned pious attitudes; community-forming dispositions must be built around sound doctrine. Worship or liturgical practice is key to community-forming dispositions. The next one is koinonia, or fellowship.  

Koinonia: the Fellowship of the Community

Koinonia, usually translated as “fellowship, “ plays many functions in establishing the norms and habits of Christ-following community life. When one considers the diverse urban and cosmopolitan identities from which early Christian converts emerged, the sense communicated by the pillar of koinonia takes on deeper significance than a selectively convenient corporate assembly on a Sunday or a weekly small group gathering. We see this in three ways. 

First, throughout the book of Acts, we see the community intentionally making room for all who would believe in Jesus Christ’s salvific work on the cross to belong in the new family of faith. But in Acts 6 tensions come to a head as one part of the group feels discriminated against, especially in the distribution of food. The apostles engage in prayerful discernment. This in turn created a new order of service. We see the creation of the diaconate (diakonia) to help facilitate the material support to those in the community, especially those who were being marginalized and neglected. This then freed up the apostles to focus on their apostolic kerygmatic call, which thus enabled the fledgling community to grow and deepen. 

Second, conversion led to a break with former religious practices. This often meant sharp ostracization, especially by one’s closest family members. This is the context of Paul’s epistles to the Ephesians, Galatians, and Colossians. Renouncing one’s former lifestyle or way of worship before Christ often became a matter of forswearing one’s family and kinship relationships who didn’t follow Christ. Effectively, the Christian community became the new family for these new believers. And in these new kinship relationships, hospitality, mutual aid, and practices of care and fairness needed to be thoughtfully fostered. 

Paul does not take for granted the possibility that the church is one’s new family. In the latter part of every one of his epistles, after explaining specific doctrines and exhorting them to pray and worship, he goes to great pains to explain how new converts are to treat one another and behave as members of one body, that is, one family in Christ. In this way, community means family.   

Third, the constitution of the community must account for existing divisions, be they cultural or social, such as the disdain we see between Jewish and Gentile converts in the book of Acts. As these two cultures clash, the church formally convenes the Great Council in Jerusalem to resolve the issues. The ensuing discernment process provides much wisdom on how the church in future centuries would resolve challenges that could potentially harm the growth of community. We see this dialogical impulse applied to great effect in the great ecumenical councils of the early few centuries. 

There are other differences that would break fellowship, such as matters of class, dress, food, gender, and conduct. Thankfully, Paul, in many of his epistles, effectively deals with these on a case-by-case basis. One of the values we take away from this is the central role played by those who have been appointed as leaders in any given context. Paul is not expecting perfect communities, but he does encourage believers to be reconciled to one another, to bear with one another’s weaknesses, to forgive, and finally to discipline the wayward among them. 

Diakonia, Kerygma, and Marturia: Service, Proclamation, and Witness

Diakonia (service), kerygma (proclamation), and marturia (witness) are pillars that are oriented towards those outside the community. These critical components of community are part and parcel of the previously mentioned values of community formation, and are also well elaborated upon in the epistles and pastoral letters.  Diakonia responds to the physical needs of the people. This value is rooted and modeled by Christ in his teaching and life, especially in his attention to the “least of these.” As seen in Acts 6 story, this service, in concert with proclamation, has always been a great source of witness by the church. The practice of kerygma, initially drawn from Mark’s account of what Jesus went about doing (Mark 1:14-15), announces that the kingdom of God has arrived in Jesus, and is thus an invitation to turn their lives away from sin in repentance and towards Jesus in faith. In the gospel context, the announcement is not just evangelism but more. It is a full-scale demonstration, as Jesus did, by bringing sight to the blind, healing, feeding, and restoring those who were on the margins of society. In some cases, this led to the ultimate witness in the early church—marturia, or witness through martyrdom, as was the case with the persecution and death of Stephen in Acts 7 and subsequent apostles. 

Significance of these Pillars for the Great Commission 

In order to discern the significance of these pillars from the perspective of the transmission of the Christian faith, we have to look at the immediate centuries after the apostolic era: the early church fathers. 

In the first few centuries, the growth of the church was tested by a plurality of sources, especially on the issues of apostolic authority and Christological identity. Many of these evolved because of the geographic and cultural distance between church communities that were far from one another. In addition, the world around them presented powerful and competing worldviews that tempted young believers to depart their Christian faith. So, in order to hold back the tide of emerging heresies and promote more unity, successive generations of early Christian communities gathered together to consult the theological pillars and values that held them together as a global community of Jesus worshipers. Consensus was built for this fledgling global church community as they returned to the basic values found in Acts 2. 

For didache, or instruction, the early church established itself on the doctrines found in the apostolic tradition. It was not the most intellectual arguments or the most powerful people who prevailed. Otherwise Marcionism and Arianism could have endured.  Consensus was built around the layers of the basic Christian story found only in Scriptures, fully rooted in the faith of Israel. Thus, the adoption of the full Old Testament canon of scripture and the layer of apostolic tradition, which included the 27 books that made up the New Testament, were the critical components of Christian doctrine. 

Consensus also centered around the layer of the rule of faith, which was the witness of the moral example of the Christians before them. This involved the norms of liturgia and koinonia, as well as the witness of marturia. Altogether what had been community-forming norms and pillars became the tools that became essential to the transmission of the faith over the longue-durée, for centuries to come. 

Conclusion

The reflections in this paper may not constitute the conventional view of biblical community, at least not to evangelicals. Further, what is written here may only be scratching the surface of how evangelicals might need to rethink community in the face of overwhelming tides of social change. But part of the challenge being addressed here is that the word “community” has become encumbered by simplified undertones of small group activities, or similar heuristic uses in church contexts where alienated individuals are searching for more spiritualized norms of bonding, belonging, and behaving. 

In other words, “community” as a heuristic word is so clichéd that usage in wide-ranging circumstances suffers unhelpful flattening generalizations. For mission-minded evangelicals, however, whose story has often been whittled down to the barest essentials of communicating the gospel and quick pragmatic fixes, there is a case to be made of the recovery of the thick, multi-layered story that comes to us out of a deep theological dive into Scripture and Christian history, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. Though the task awaits full treatment, this essay is presented as a beginning.