How 2017 Becomes AD 33

As I write this, we have been at our ministry site for five days. I say “as I write this” because where we are there is absolutely no access to wifi for us. None within 4 hours, actually. So, by the time you read this, some time will have passed since its writing. 

 

As we left the city and all of its busyness behind, I quickly began to feel something changing. The chaos of the Indian city was being replaced with the simplicity and tranquility of rural India. 

 

 

Every dirt road, every herd of water buffalo, every family of monkeys, every rice field seemed to being transporting us further and further from 2017; further and further back into the past. 

 

 

 

In the years that Jesus walked the earth, life was significantly different than our suburban lifestyle in America: rather than locking their doors and setting their alarm systems, people freely slept on the rooftops of their homes; instead of secluding themselves behind Netflix binges in their bedrooms, people openly invited neighbors into their houses to share meals with them; people prayed constantly for each other as opposed to limiting such interactions to Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights; church meetings were held in the backrooms of believers’ houses rather than being streamed onto a screen in a coffee shop. 

 

 

But, this week has caused me to ask this question: why shouldn’t that way of life still be achievable today?

 

Tonight, I will more than likely be staring up at the stars as I fall asleep on the rooftop of the house we’re staying in; tomorrow, I’ll probably be sitting on the floor of someone’s home as they serve me chai; in the next hour or so, there’s a good chance I will be praying for healing over someone who is experiencing some sort of physical pain; every night, we drive to some undisclosed location to worship Jesus and share the gospel on the back porch of some local’s home. 

 

I feel like we spend so much time trying to innovate things back home in the States. We constantly are coming up with new methods of worship, better preaching strategies, more efficient ways to bring people into the church.

 

Now—don’t get me wrong—I think that there is something to those things and their ability to advance the kingdom. I really do believe that God has equipped us to come up with better ways to reach the unreached and to bring people into community with each other and with him. 

 

But, what if we are focusing just a little too much on all of that? What if we are spending so much time and energy on innovating the way that we do “church” that we forget to do the most important task of all? Could it be that we forgotten that the point of all of this is to simply love God, love people, and share the gospel? 

 

In Acts 2:42, Luke paints us a picture of the church in the year AD 33; the church as it was right after Jesus had ascended: “and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” 

 

When I look at my life as it is right now—here in India, and look at the way the church is described in that verse, I can’t help but acknowledge the striking similarities. And, I can honestly say that I have never felt like I was living more biblically than I have over these past few days.

 

We are just loving God together and loving these people together as we strive to show them the real love of Jesus. 

 

 

You see, there comes a point when we have to wonder if the reason that we find it so hard to do the miraculous things that the early church was doing is because we aren’t doing things the way that the early church was doing them. 

 

I’m not saying that I have this thing figured out; I’m not saying we should all start sleeping on roofs and drinking chai. But, I do believe that we have made Christian life a lot more complex and difficult than it ever was intended to be.