Well, we're now into a week of readings in the book of Acts, giving us a snapshot of life in the early church. There is clearly a gap between the picture of church life presented in Acts and what most of us experience now. What I find fascinating is how different Christians define that gap.
For some, the gap is all about our experience of the supernatural, the work of the Holy Spirit. Linked to that (but not always), for others, the gap is all about evangelistic effectiveness and boldness in witness. Equally, for others it's all about the common life of the early church, their commitment to narrowing the gap between rich and poor. Or it's about their willingness to break out of their comfort zones and take the gospel cross-culturally.
The point is that we tend to read our own priorities back into the New Testament, here as in so many places. It seems to me that when we take the lenses of our own preferences off, it's about all these things and more besides. What we need more and more to learn to do is to let our reading of Scripture shape our preferences and not the other way round.
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