“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts…” (Acts 2:46)
Back in the really old days…like the late 50s and early 60s…my family’s Sunday routine was consistent: Sunday morning Sunday School and Worship, Sunday dinner (served instead of lunch), playing outside, and then getting in the car again for the drive to Sunday Night Worship. We were Southern Baptists, the lights aglow in the evening while the Methodists across the street stayed dark. Sunday nights at church were more relaxed. I didn’t have to wear my dorky bowtie or dress pants created to cause itching and torture. People seemed to be more engaged in light conversation and even laughed from time to time.
When we came home from church, my parents would turn on The Ed Sullivan Show, pop popcorn, and we’d gather in the living room. We’d laugh at Jonathan Winters, be amazed by some unique balancing act, and treat the performance of any vocalist as an opportunity to go to the bathroom.
It was family time, where we watched together, munched together, and talked together, Mom and Dad sitting on the only couch and the kids sprawled out on the floor.
Ed Sullivan has been gone for fifty years, passing away in 1974, while, in the meantime, “the family being together” has become a rare occurrence. Social networking, off as it sounds, has disconnected us; multiple streaming devices in the same household have separated us, and the disappearance of church gatherings has isolated us.
“Community” has been redefined as a chat room, a bowling league, and a gathering in a sports bar to watch the favorite sports team of a group of people who are all wearing team jerseys and/or hats.
“Community” in the first church in Jerusalem involved the weaving together of lives in sacrificial ways. They were a learning community, a sharing community, a prayerful community, and a serving community. Perhaps we can’t recover “community” to that point, but there’s got to be something more than a fellowship that rarely sees one another or a family that is staring into cell phones.
It’s disturbing that we, a nation of more than 350 million people, are more distant from one another than we’ve ever been.
Words from WW Blog 