And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Acts 2:46 KJV

"And daily in the temple...and in every house
And in every house
And in every house
And daily in the temple...and in every house
They ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ!"

Last week one of our elderly ushers had a fall and passed away not many days afterward. He and his wife Joyce have been members of our church for decades, and every Sunday as we made our way down the aisle, Hal would shake hands with us and anyone who was not too busy to pause for a moment. Though I remembered their names, I really did not know them and was amazed at how few of our friends even remembered them at all. Yet, week after week they stood out in the aisle, greeting folks and ushering late comers into open seats. Do we have a bad church? Well, yes and no. Though the preaching is quite biblically sound, we are far from a perfect church, because people like Joyce and Hal can slip through the cracks all the time. That is why our leadership emphasizes small groups. In China, they call them, “House churches”, while here in the U.S. they go by names like small groups, grow groups, life groups and many others. By early church standards, the leaders of these small meetings are pastors and the person we call our senior pastor would be the bishop. Today I wanted, not to focus on church structure, but on how we all need connection. Without connections, we are just hermits meeting together once a week, then returning to the comfort of our modern caves. We plunk away at our cell phones, laptops and iPads, but rarely have opportunities to love and be known as a part of God’s family. This week in our men’s study we finished Colossians and noted that before Paul closed, He greeted a long list of people by name. They all mattered to him and more importantly to God. One verse the stands out to me this morning is:

 Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house. Colossians 4:15 NIV

Does the church meet in your house, or do we meet in someone else’s place? Without a doubt, our brother Hal is now shaking hands with Jesus and though Joyce is left alone, she knows that one day they will be reunited. We all know this, but only people close enough to them to really know them will be there to comfort, encourage and listen. Being in such fellowship makes us uncomfortable, gives us responsibilities we may not want to have and opens us up to being hurt by others. These are all valid reasons to be careful of who and where we fellowship, but none of those is valid enough to keep us isolated from the life and the love of the body of Christ. Find people you can commit to, serve with and break bread with in your community, so you can have that gladness and singleness of heart that God intends for all of His children!