For many of you, that opening scene is familiar and brings back memories of the 1980s and 90s.  It of course is the opening credits from the sitcom, Cheers.

A while back, Angela and I cut the cable and have been relying on streaming services, and because we are fairly selective in our viewing, avoiding shows with a lot of foul language, nudity, and violence, we’ve leaned back into some of the old shows. 

And even if we watched them before, there was a lot of episodes that we missed, and entire shows that we never watched.. If you are old then you can’t remember when you couldn’t easily record your favourite shows, and if you had to be out that evening, or if an American show got pre-empted by Canadian content, you were out of luck.

And because you could only watch one show at a time, you had to pick which show you’d watch.  There was no watching one and recording a different one.

 Then, because it was thirty years ago, there are episodes that we don’t remember.

And so, we are watching some old favourites and others that we didn’t watch when they were first on.

Over the past few years, we watched all five seasons of Taxi, 11 seasons of MASH, The Golden Girls, Love Boat, Wooster and Jeeves from the UK and a few others.  And some we started to watch, and went really?

This past year, we started to watch Cheers and its spinoff Fraizer.  They were shows that we occasionally caught when they were originally aired, but we weren’t faithful watchers. And when we watched the premier of Cheers, I was again caught by the lyrics in the theme song.

Interestingly the lyrics that we know, aren’t how the song was originally written.  The opening verse of the original went this way,    

Singin’ the blues when the Red Sox lose, it’s a crisis in your life.

On the run ’cause all your girlfriends wanna be your wife.

And the laundry ticket’s in the wash.

The producers sent it back to the writers telling them it was too Bostony and they wanted something with a more universal appeal. And so, we ended up with the lyrics that we are all familiar with,

Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

Wouldn’t you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they’re always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.

As I listened, I thought, wow, that sounds like what church should be like. And I’m sure that there are others who might feel the same way.

In 1992, when we were pastoring in Australia, we took a trip to the outback to a place called Carnarvon Gorge and on our way there I noticed all these little towns that we went through and the fact that the local tavern or pub was always a lot bigger and much better maintained than the local church. 

And I decided that success for a pastor in Australia was when their church was bigger than the pub next door.   But when I mentioned that to a colleague they said maybe the reason the pubs did so well is that people knew that they could always find their friends there.

But the more I thought about it the more I realized that while in a lot of people’s minds, that’s what the church is supposed to be like, that’s not how the church was described in the New Testament.

You see, the description of Cheers is a description of a bar. But it could be a sports team, a book club, a service organization or a witch’s coven. 

And while it might sound all warm and fuzzy, it’s not the church. 

So, if the church isn’t just a place where everybody knows your name, where everybody is glad you came and a place where you discover that your troubles are all the same, what is it? 

That’s a good question, one I hope we will be able to answer over the next few weeks.

The first time the word church is used in the bible is in Matthew 16:18 Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.

There is only one other time that Jesus uses the word, and that is in Matthew 18 when he’s laying down guidelines for how believers are supposed to resolve their differences.

However, the word church is used over 100 times throughout the remainder of the New Testament.

And the word that was used almost exclusively was the Greek word, Ecclesia. And that word is defined in Encyclopedia Britannica, this way: Ecclesia, from the Greek Ekklēsia, (“gathering of those summoned”), in ancient Greece, assembly of citizens in a city-state.

So, while the word church has a spiritual meaning today, when it was first used it simply meant a group of people who had been called together for a purpose.

So, what do we discover about the Ecclesia or the church in the New Testament?

Let’s go back to the scripture that was read earlier

Acts 2:47 . . .And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

The Church was Large and Growing There are some people who if they hear you talking about church growth assume that you’re shallow and that all you’re concerned about are numbers.

However, church growth seemed to be the norm for the early church.

Listen to what happened on the day the church was born, in Acts 2:41 Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all.

If we keep reading this chapter, we discover that the day of Pentecost wasn’t just a one-off event.

Acts 2: 47 . . . And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

And as we keep reading we discover in Acts 4:4 But many of the people who heard their message believed it, so the number of believers now totalled about 5,000 men, not counting women and children. And in Acts 5:14 Yet more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord—crowds of both men and women.

The early church wasn’t a plateaued church or a declining church, they were a growing church, and not just by a little bit. It was exponential growth. In Acts 1 they were a group of 120, but just days later their group numbered in the thousands.

It’s been thirty years since Angela and I and our kids moved back from Australia to start what is now Cornerstone.  And we’ve mentioned before that the day that  we arrived in Bedford was really the day our church began, and there was Angela and I, Stephen and Deborah the cat and the hamster.  And then the hamster died. Now hundreds of people across two campuses call Cornerstone home.

Twenty-five years after the day of Pentecost, there was a Christian presence in Israel of course and the surrounding countries. But the church had expanded and was present in what we now think of as Italy, Greece, Turkey, Macedonia, and Albania to the north. Spain to the west, and Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia to the south and India to the east.

Jesus’ promise in Acts 1:8 had become a reality. Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

It’s easy to think of Cornerstone as the church.

But the church exists in many different forms, in many different places. And there are things that we disagree about, but there is so much more that we agree on. That Jesus is the son of God, that he was born of a virgin, that he died on a cross and that he rose from the dead. That he offers us new life and forgiveness through his grace.

If we go back to the story, those thousands of people, who were saved in the early days of the church, didn’t just rent a big football stadium and worship together. Instead we read in Acts 2:42 All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.

So, not only was the church large and growing, The Church was a Small and Intimate Group

If we keep reading, cwe discover in Acts 2:46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—

The greatest asset of the early church was its community. So, while there was this large growing group there were also their small intimate groups that got together on a regular basis to discuss God’s word, to share food and to celebrate communion.

We are told that they worshipped at the temple which meant that they would have been a part of a huge crowd for that element of their worship. And then they would come together in smaller groups, for community.

Eventually, they started to worship on the first day of the week, Sunday, in order to recognize the day of the resurrection.

Later in the book of Acts we read in Acts 20:7 On the first day of the week, we gathered with the local believers to share in the Lord’s Supper. Paul was preaching to them, and since he was leaving the next day, he kept talking until midnight.

Now understand they worshipped the way they did in their homes because that was their reality at that time. They weren’t defining a template that would need to be followed forever. That was their reality.

And in their homes, they functioned much like churches do today. They worshipped together. And while we don’t have a detailed description of what that looked like, we are told in Ephesians 5:19-20 . . . singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves and making music to the Lord in your hearts. And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And before you get all excited, the hymns they were singing weren’t Victory in Jesus, Power in the Blood and How Great Thou Art. But whatever they were singing, they were apparently singing.

As well, through the New Testament the church is instructed on how to practice their spiritual gifts, they are taught by teachers and pastors. They prayed together, they ate together, and they reached out to their communities to help depopulate hell. And they did some things that we normally reserve for our large public worship. They took communion together, and they baptized new believers.

COVID was the first time most of us ever celebrated communion outside of the church building.  But, even when we couldn’t gather as a group, we broke bread and crackers together online

There are places around the globe today, where meeting in homes for church is a reality because of political and religious persecution.

In Canada, that’s not our reality.

There are groups that meet as house churches, and that’s fine, but for most churches, today in our reality, we meet in buildings and enjoy corporate worship.

But there still needs to be space for a more intimate setting. Jesus reminded his followers in Matthew 18:20 Jesus said “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”

At Cornerstone we call our small groups “Life Groups”, and we have a number of them that meet throughout the week, and if you are interested in starting, hosting or leading a Life Group, speak to one of the staff.

So, the church was large, and the church was small. But there was more than that.

I mentioned earlier the results of Peter’s message on the day of Pentecost, that thousands of people became Christ followers that day.

This is how the group that Peter was preaching to was described.

Acts 2:9-11 Here we are—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabs. And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!”

Now listen to the invitation that Peter extends in his message, Acts 2:21 “But everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.” Who would be saved? Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

The Church was Inclusive

The reason that Jesus came wasn’t to save some people, it was to save all people.

That’s why we are told in John 3:16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

And after the crucifixion and after the resurrection and just before Christ ascended, he told the Apostles that the church was to go to all the nations. And within a generation the church had spread across the known world.

Those who worshipped Christ spoke different languages, they came from different cultures, they had different skin colours, but they were all part of his church.

And they didn’t always get it right.

We sometime glorify the New Testament church as a perfect church, but it wasn’t a perfect church because it was made up of imperfect people.

And the wasn’t very long before we read in Acts 6:1 But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. The Greek-speaking believers complained about the Hebrew-speaking believers, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.

They had to figure this issue out because diversity was going to become the reality of the church. No longer would it simply be a group of similar people who had a similar back ground who shared a common skin colour and a common language. And if we keep reading, we discover that the church fixed it.

Later in the book of Acts, Peter had to deal with his own feelings about those who weren’t Jewish. He had been brought up being taught that gentiles weren’t the same as Jews, either in his eyes or God’s eyes. And yet as the church grew and expanded, and Peter met more and more gentiles, and ate in their homes, he made this amazing discovery,

Acts 10:34-35 Then Peter replied, “I see very clearly that God shows no favouritism. In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right.”

Jesus’ brother James goes on to tell the church in James 2:1My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favour some people over others? And that is the same question we need to ask ourselves today.

So the church was a gift from God for everyone.

Today, however, when a church says that they are inclusive it often means that they accept everyone regardless of what they believe or how they behave and that wasn’t what was taught about the church in the New Testament.

Most of the New Testament is made up of letters that were written to the believers in various churches. Listen to how Paul addresses those who received the letter of 1 Corinthians 1:2 I am writing to God’s church in Corinth, to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did for all people everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.

But not only was the church inclusive, The Church was Exclusive

I struggled for a word here, because exclusive has a bad feel about it. We think of exclusive clubs and organizations that bar people because of their gender, colour or finances. And we say, “That’s not right.”

I pondered a different word, but really couldn’t come up with something that spoke to the reality of the church. You see, the church may have been offered to everyone, but the church wasn’t for everyone, it was exclusive. Whether we like the word or not.

Lutheran Pastor Andrew Schroer wrote, “Christianity in many ways is an exclusive religion. It says that sin separates you from God. It teaches that no other god or religion can save you.”

And Jesus tells us in John 14:6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” He didn’t say he was “a way”, he said he was “the way”.

2000 years ago, being a part of the church was for those who were part of God’s family. It was for those who called on the name of Jesus, not those who called on the name of one of the plethora of Roman Gods, or Greek Gods or no God.

But that’s not what the church has become. It was C. S. Lewis who wrote, “I believe there are too many practitioners in the church who are not believers.”

But that wasn’t how it started.  2000 years ago, church wasn’t a social event, it wasn’t some place that you went to because that’s what you were expected to do, or because that’s how you were brought up.

Going to church 2000 years ago came with a price. Christians were often persecuted and ostracized. In some cases, they lost their friends, sometimes they lost their employment and there were times they lost their lives. All because they were Christians.

And that wasn’t a surprise, Paul reminded Timothy of that reality in 2 Timothy 3:12 Yes, and everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

And so if you were part of the church 2000 years ago you were expected to believe the same things and to behave a certain way. There were behaviours that were encouraged and there were behaviours that were condemned.

And you might be thinking, “Behaviours that were condemned? That sounds a little judgy. Aren’t we told not to judge people?”

Actually, what the bible tells us about the church and judging is spelled out by Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:12 It isn’t my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning.

And so, while the church is inclusive in that the offer of salvation and grace is open to everyone, that doesn’t mean that the church should embrace their sins. The bible is very clear that when we become Christ followers that we are given a new life, a different life and we’re expected to follow a new path.

 My Daddy once told me, “We may come just as we are, but we can’t stay just as we is.” That means the church can’t accept every belief or opinion as being equally valid. And it means that the church must speak out about sinful behaviour in the church.

At the end of the day, the church is exclusively inclusive.

During Covid, Pastor Craig Groeschel, wrote, “God is not calling us to go to church; He is calling us to be his church.”

And that might have been the reality during COVID, but throughout history, part of being the church is being in church.  The writer of the book of Hebrews reminds us in Hebrews 10:25 And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.