09/02/2026
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Acts 2:42
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
This short little verse from the book of Acts and the surrounding context have animated the imagination of believers for generations. The idea of a small community devoted to the fundamentals of the Christian faith while sharing everything they own and practicing communion in a daily meal sounds like utopia to so many of us, myself included.
My own family history was not immune to this idealism. In Sweden, there was a man named Eric Jansson who was a layman and leader of a pietist sect, meaning he did not follow the Church of Sweden. He fled persecution from the government and the state-sanctioned church, sailing to America. 1500 Swedes sold everything they had, donated to the cause, and followed him, including my ancestors. Eventually Jansson and 400 of these followers founded Bishop Hill Colony, a Swedish immigrant faith commune, in Illinois. Three generations of my family, including my grandfather, were born there. However, this utopia did not end well. Eric Jansson was shot and killed by his cousin-in-law less than four years later and the Christian commune aspect of Bishop Hill came to an end.
Because my husband and I love this kind of history, we have visited Bishop Hill. There we saw (and smelled) an old musty structure that made up the commune and visited the gravesites of all of my relatives who lived there well beyond Jansson’s death. We also traveled to the tiny village in Sweden from which they emigrated. While there, we visited the town church and told the staff there about my family. They laughed. The town had a theatrical performance about the foolish people who left Sweden to follow crazy Eric Jansson to America!
I am both inspired and humbled by the passion of my ancestors. I share their faith and idealism, but I hope that I have some better discernment about who to follow. When I consider today’s passage, I wonder how we can connect to the beautiful simplicity of the practices of the early church without using it as an ideal that leads to our demise.
First, we can observe that breaking of bread, commonly seen as their expression of the Lord’s Supper, was a regular practice of the early church. They took Jesus’ word seriously and partook together in remembrance of him. They fellowshipped with dedication and were able to maintain some sense of financial equality and social inclusion for a time (though the latter stories of Acts show us the complexities that developed for the young church).
Second, it shows us that communion, as we now call it, was just as fundamental to the believers as studying the apostle’s teaching and prayer.
For a God who made so many rules and regulations around cleanliness and food, it is interesting that a fundamental expression of the new covenant is diverse peoples eating a meal together. It’s no wonder things get complicated later.
When I read this verse, on the one hand, I have to temper my idealism. These days a little church in my house where we just eat and pray and study scripture sounds like a welcome relief after years of ministry in the more institutional aspects of church. On the other hand, we have to understand that this is a new and small beginning for the Church and we are living in a different stage, complicated by more than 2000 years of history behind us and evolving challenges ahead of us.
We can respond, however, by recommitting ourselves to these fundamentals that were practiced by the early church. And perhaps, in so doing, we can demote some of the other activities that take up a lot of our church time to a lesser status. We can study the gospels, gather together, pray, and take the Lord’s supper together. These are the building blocks that strengthen the Church for our witness to the world.
What do you think the believers in Bishop Hill did the day after their leader was killed? I imagine it could have been tempting to start blaming one another, divide into factions, and let a leadership struggle emerge. These are human habits in times of upheaval. A better roadmap would have been to go back to the basics of Acts 2:42 to pray, read scripture, and have communion again and again.
What about you? What are you doing in response to arguments and disputes among believers? What activities have become the most essential in your expressions of church and faith?
