The early church, especially the faith communities that Paul started, prioritized moral formation and community building, and employed practices of communal discernment that modern-day people of faith can learn from.
Last year, the Rev. Dr. John Lewis published “Discernment in the Early Church and Today: Reclaiming God’s Vision for Formation and Community Building.” Lewis, who founded St. Benedict’s Workshop and is the theologian in residence for the Iona Collaborative at Seminary of the Southwest, stopped by the “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” virtual studios to discuss the early church with podcast hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe. Listen to their 61-minute conversation here.
Worship in those early churches wasn’t anything modern worshipers would recognize, Lewis said. “The idea that every person needed to be formed in the image of Jesus was the centerpiece of what worship in the early church was about,” he said.
When a problem comes up for a person of faith today, “we look at it, make a decision and move forward. The early church was trying to break down those barriers by having that conversation be a community practice,” Lewis said. “The patience required to have a deliberative conversation with people who are very different from you was crucial to this process of formation that we see.”
“Being able to discuss those in my small Christian community was what allowed me to become a person of humility and a person of practical wisdom,” he said. “It informed the community as one of accountability, where we both encouraged and built-up others and, with humility, received critique from time to time of our practice.”
“That takes vulnerability and trust,” Catoe noted.
In those days, “how to live Jesus was highly contextual,” both in the life of the individual and the community. “Life in Corinth was very different from life in Ephesus or life in Philippi,” Lewis said. “Part of what’s happened over centuries is we try to move toward unification, which in some cases means standardization as opposed to what does it look life for me to live my life here in San Antonio, Texas, in a particular Episcopal Church setting? That differs even from some of the churches down the street.”
In our current political and social climate, “it feels like discernment and ongoing learning is not possible,” Doong said.
Coming to a place of knowledge and truth was far from what people in the early church thought being a Christian was about, Lewis replied. They’d descended from centuries of having the Torah, the Jewish law, “to help them shape how they lived holiness in daily life.”
They soon focused “on the person of Jesus for how to live and how to do things that are pleasing to God. In that way, we become conduits in the world for this life-giving power of God to encourage and build up other people. … That’s how they saw their life of living Jesus. Week in and week out, they would come together and share with one another actions and consequences, some that bore wonderful fruit in the lives of other people and some that clearly became problematic.”
“By sharing both the fruits and the challenges over time, the group was shaped to come to a practical wisdom, a wisdom of understanding how to live Jesus that brought life to the world,” Lewis said. “Today, when people can’t even talk to each other, we’re not sharing. We’re not deliberating on the practices of living Jesus that bear fruit, and some of the actions that we take trying to live Jesus create chaos.”
“There’s no discernment about that, because we don’t talk to people, except the people we agree with on fundamental issues,” Lewis said.
In Paul’s community, “while I’m looking to discern how Jesus comes alive in me, the point of Jesus coming alive in me is so I can reach out in love by giving myself to other people in particular ways,” Lewis said. “You become a conduit for that life-giving power of God that builds up the body of Christ and builds up your community.”
New installments of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Susan Jackson Dowd, Executive Director, Presbyterian Women
Christopher Drane, IT Specialist, Information Technology, The Presbyterian Foundation
Let us pray:
Dear God, help us to notice those folks who need us. Speak to us through them of your abundant grace. Give justice to all who live in our societies. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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