BBC Brings People Together
Pastor Doug explores the theme of community as depicted in Acts 2:42-47, emphasizing the importance of fellowship, shared meals, prayer, and biblical teaching in cultivating a vibrant faith community. Drawing on contemporary societal challenges of isolation and loneliness, he underscores the transformative power of togetherness in fostering spiritual growth, joy, and generosity. The message invites us to learn from the early church’s model of devotion and encourages us to build deeper connections and unity within our congregation. Join us in discovering how BBC is committed to bringing people together for meaningful relationships and spiritual fulfillment
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This first video is the 8:30 service
This video is the 10:00 service
BBC Brings People Together
I recently read an article in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson titled, The Anti-Social Century which was sad and concerning. The column detailed how Americans are spending more time alone than ever and how that’s changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality.
The share of U.S. adults having dinner with friends on any night has declined by more than 30 percent in the past 20 years.
In the 1930s, video entertainment existed only in theaters, and the typical American went to the movies several times a month. Movies were necessarily a collective experience, something enjoyed with friends and in the company of strangers.
But technology has turned film into a home delivery system. Today, the typical American adult buys about three movie tickets a year—and watches almost 19 hours of television, the equivalent of roughly eight movies, on a weekly basis.
In entertainment, as in dining, a ritual of togetherness has transformed into an experience of homebound seclusion. From 2003 to 2023, in person socializing plunged by more than 20 percent. Among unmarried men and people younger than 25, the decline was more than 35 percent.
Men who watch television now spend seven hours in front of the TV for every hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside their home. The typical female pet owner spends more time actively engaged with her pet than she spends in face-to-face contact with friends of her own species.
Since the early 2000s, the amount of time that Americans say they spend helping or caring for people outside their nuclear family has declined by more than a third.
The impact of all this isolation, loneliness, and lack of social connection and engagement is profound and far reaching. Human beings are social creatures. As God states early in Genesis, it’s not good for us to be alone.
While some solitude is healthy and appropriate, our culture is moving way beyond that. We’re created to be in relationship with others and we’re emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and physically healthier when we’re appropriately connected with other people.
Research from Asia shows that happiness rises when people eat together in group settings, and pleasure is enhanced when memories of past meals are savored. The study showed a set of good social relationships, including relationships over a meal, is one of the indicators of an individual’s happiness[1].
One of the hallmarks of the early church was the amount of time and the variety of ways that people were together. This is described in Acts 2:42-47
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.
Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread from house to house and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”
Our theme for 2025 is BBC Brings People Together. This is one of the ways the church needs to be counter cultural. We bring people together and participate in a faith community so we may grow in Christlikeness, to express and receive love appropriately, and to carry out the ministry of the church.
Together we learn, share, encourage, support, laugh, cry, pray and provide accountability as we live out our commitment to Christ and to Christian community. We all have a part to play in making it happen.
Throughout the month of February in worship and at the Annual Meeting on February 9th, we’ll be sharing ways we’ll be seeking to provide opportunities for people to Love, Grow, and Share together which we believe will lead to more friendship, connection, contentment, meaning, joy, and peace.
In the brief verses from Acts 2 we receive perhaps the most compelling description of a biblically functioning faith community in the New Testament. They provide a Prescription for being a healthy follower of Jesus and a vital church as well as a Description of the impact God can make through a devoted, biblically functioning community of believers.
We’re told the first followers of Jesus devoted themselves to four things. Four things we’re also to do together if we’re to be spiritually mature Christ-followers and a biblically functioning community.
They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching, Fellowship, the Breaking of Bread… and the Prayers. To be devoted means to be dedicated. When we’re devoted, we give our time, attention, and self entirely to a particular activity, pursuit, cause or person.
The first thing Christ followers devoted themselves to was the Apostles’ teaching. The Apostles taught the actions of God as presented in the Hebrew Bible. They shared what God had done uniquely in Jesus’ life, teaching, death, and resurrection to break down the barriers that had separated people from God and from each other.
The new members of the church, 3,000 who joined on Pentecost, listened to messages concerning living as a believer. Those 3,000 people came from many different countries and regions and were diverse in the color of their skin, their native languages, cultures and customs, yet they were all called to be part of the new community being created in the name and example of Jesus.
The song we sang, Good Grace, begins with an invitation to do just that, “People, come together, strange as neighbors, our blood is one.”
Community begins with communion, with a relationship with God that transforms our relationships with others. We learn about this through faithful, biblical teaching. That’s why biblical teaching is the source of our preaching and teaching at BBC.
The early church also witnessed wonders and signs being done by the power of God through the apostles. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 4:20, “The kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.”
If God is making an impact in a faith community, things will be happening. There’s a saying in sports, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.” It’s one thing to talk, it is another to demonstrate power and ability.
As President Abraham Lincoln liked to say, “the hen is the wisest of all of the animal creation because she never cackles until the egg is laid.”
The apostles not only talked about the power of God, but God’s power was evident in their lives. We’ve been blessed to see God’s power at work in our church in a variety of ways.
Seeing the growth of individuals as they’re devoted to learning as they participate in small groups, Bible studies, and classes is inspiring. Seeing people develop a hunger for God’s word personally so they may live it out and experience God changing their life is exciting.
Devotion to biblical teaching, which is more than listening to sermon once a week, is important because of the long-term impact of what we put into our minds. Jeff Davidson, Executive Director of Breathing Space Institute of Chapel Hill said in a speech to the National Institutes of Health,
“Every bit of information we take in has impact.
This impact is ultimately cumulative, and the quality of your life will ultimately be influenced by the kinds of information you take in. If you listen to people who make millions of dollars by deriding society, telling off-color jokes, using foul language, or telling tales that are unsubstantiated, then it tells a lot about you.”
In the same way, if we devote our selves to learning and doing what the Bible teaches, that also tells a lot about us.
The second thing the first Christ-followers devoted themselves to was Fellowship or Community. After my service of ordination into Christian ministry, 35 years ago last month, a man came up to me and said, “I’m on board the largest ship in the world, the fellowship of the church.”
Acts 2 answers the question some people have, why should I be a part of a church rather than just doing my own thing? The Bible doesn’t say, “All who believed went their separate ways and did whatever they wanted and became faithful, mature, devoted followers of Jesus.”
No, they devoted themselves to community, to learning, fellowshipping, eating, and praying together. Floyd Roseberry wrote in his little book, Invitation to Relationship with Christ: A Seeker’s Guide to the Christian Faith (p.46),
“God expects us to be part of the Christian community, the church.
Faith in Christ brings us not only into relationship with God, but with God’s people. Nowhere does the Bible refer to persons who enter into relationship with God through Christ and do not become part of the Christian church.
Rather, individual Christians are likened to parts of a body, stones in a building, branches on a vine, citizens in a community. Faith in Christ is personal, but not private. Part of faith is joining the community of faith.”
The… first disciples dedicated themselves to the fellowship of the church. “All who believed were together,” they “had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
That is a wonder and a sign! In a time when there was no unemployment to collect, no aid to families with dependent children, no social security, no Medicare or Medicaid, what sort of impact do you think this kind of fellowship and sharing would make on folks outside the faith community?
There are many forces working against community and fellowship in our society, including Mobility – which provides freedom but leads to a lack of rootedness and a sense of place.
Privacy – We’re called to be our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers, but we can’t love our neighbors if we don’t know them or even their names and if we never initiate conversation or spend time with them.
Convenience & Affluence – We don’t need anyone or God because so much is readily available. Yet though we have more, the tendency is to keep more for ourselves rather than sharing it.
A Lack of Trust in government, business, religion and other large institutions is also hurting our sense of togetherness and cooperating for the common good.
Finally, Individualism – also works against community and fellowship and leads to loneliness. Mother Teresa wrote, “In the developed countries there is a poverty of intimacy of spirit, of loneliness, of lack of love. There is no greater sickness today than that one.
Loneliness and the feeling of being uncared for and unwanted is the most terrible poverty. One of the great diseases is to be nobody to anybody.” The Lord’s Supper that we celebrate today is the opposite of that because we’re reminded how much we matter to God.
With all these factors working against community and fellowship we shouldn’t be surprised community is so hard to find, create, and maintain. We can work to build community individually by doing several things here in church.
Striving to notice the absence of a person as well as their presence. Seeking to know people by name as well as by face. For those who are with us online, it can be sending a card, note, text or calling a neighbor or someone you know just to check in and ask how they’re doing.
Another aspect of Fellowship is Accepting each other in our weaknesses, we’re all sinners saved by grace. Learning to get along with people who think, act, or look differently than we do means there will often be a level of tension or conflict in our personal relationships in our family or church as we learn what it means to live and be in community together.
We see this repeatedly in the book of Acts so it shouldn’t surprise or discourage us if it happens to us. That’s why our forgiveness is connected to our ability and willingness to forgive others as we’ve prayed and sung today.
In addition to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the early disciples devoted themselves to the Breaking of Bread and the Prayers. They ate and prayed together.
There are few better ways of getting to know people than eating or praying with them. If you want to build community, invite some folks over or out for a meal. Read through Luke’s gospel and note how many times Jesus is eating at someone’s house.
For the early church, breaking bread was also a re-membering of Jesus in fellowship with one another in what we call the Lord’s Supper.
The early church worshiped, learned, fellowshipped, shared, ate, and prayed together – and transformational community resulted. Prayer is last but not least.
I remember seeing a Christian magazine that had two pictures on the cover. One was a paper airplane which had crashed and was bent up on the ground. Underneath was the caption, “This is your church without prayer.”
Next to the paper airplane was a glorious photo of a space shuttle taking off with the caption, “This is your church on prayer. Any questions?”
Prayer is the means for hearing from God and speaking to God, it’s something we need to grow in if we’re uncomfortable doing it, and sometimes what we hear in prayer may make us uncomfortable. But we need not fear, because God loves to hear from us as a parent delights in a child’s voice, even if the words aren’t perfect.
Acts 2 presents a holistic prescription for individual and communal spirituality and growth. Listen again to what the scripture says resulted from the early believers devoting themselves to these four key activities – the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers.
They had glad and generous hearts. What a great legacy. Wouldn’t you like to have, wouldn’t you like people to say of you: “You have a glad and generous heart.”
They were praising God and had the good will of all the people –wouldn’t it be great to be a part of a church that was respected in its community because of our devotion, love, faith, and generosity.
We participate in a faith community so we may grow in Christlikeness, to express and receive love appropriately, and to carry out the ministry of the church. Together we learn, share, encourage, support, laugh, cry, pray and provide accountability as we live out our commitment to Christ and to Christian community.
And we all have an important part to play in making it happen.
Questions for Discussion or Reflection
- Acts 2:42 mentions that the early believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers. In what ways can you strengthen your commitment to and participation in these core practices?
- How does experiencing awe and witnessing signs impact a faith community (Acts 2:43)? What have you seen or experienced in your time at BBC that has strengthened your faith?
- Acts 2:44-45 describes believers selling their possessions to meet each other’s needs. What does this level of generosity look like in our context, and how can we emulate this spirit today?
- Unity in Worship and Daily Life: Verses 46-47 highlight the believers’ daily unity in temple worship and sharing meals with glad and sincere hearts. How can regular communal activities enhance our spiritual growth and sense of community?
- The early church enjoyed the favor of all people, and the Lord added to their number daily (verse 47). What can we learn from this about the relationship between internal community health and external outreach?
- Reflecting on the early church’s example, what obstacles hinder deep community life today, and how can we overcome them to foster a more connected and supportive church environment?
- Considering the practices of the early church, which areas do you feel personally called to grow in, and what steps can you take to contribute to a thriving community?