It’s interesting to me that there are few descriptions of what early church worship was actually like. We have fragments, sure: they met in homes and broke bread with glad and generous hearts (Acts 2:46), sometimes discussion dragged on so long that someone fell asleep and fell out of a window (20:9). But the book of Acts doesn’t spend a lot of time detailing what the order of worship was.
Most of the action happens outside of worship. The apostles get dragged before religious and city officials (Acts 4 & 5) and they speak boldly and get killed for it (7). Philip proselytizes an Ethiopian eunuch (8), Peter extends the reach of the church to Gentiles (10), and so on. If Acts is the story of the early church, most of that story is not worship.
I want to be careful here: As Will Willimon has said, there is a tendency to downplay worship, as if the real activity of the church happens outside of worship, as if the important work of the church is whatever those outside of the church deem worthy. I happen to think worship orders the life of the church. Worship is central. When Paul sends greetings in his letters, he sends them to the church that meets in Nympha’s house or Prisca and Aquila’s house. Apparently meeting together for worship was a regular feature of life for the early church. We just don’t know much about what actually took place there.
The public life of the church, the stuff that Acts records, is about disciples doing the kinds of things that Jesus did: meeting with the wrong sorts of people, scandalizing religious and political leaders, getting in trouble, and seeing God do amazing things.
I am struck by the discrepancy in what Acts describes and what church professionals describe. For most of my ministry, I’ve listened to church professionals talk about how to get more people into a sanctuary and how to get more people involved with the stuff the church organization is doing. I just don’t see that emphasis in Acts. I don’t see mega-churches; I see micro-churches. I don’t see programs; I see practices. There are a few situations in which the apostles speak to large crowds, but those are usually tense situations where they are as likely to be killed as to be celebrated. Most of the situations that are recorded in Acts are meetings with just two or a handful of people. Most of the activity of the church is in the streets and around tables.
Dave Barnhart 