NURTURING YO U R FA I T H : PA R T F O U R
A Belonging Place and a Launching Base into the Community
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elcome to this Nurturing Your Faith study on the Christian life together. With your Bible and journal at the ready, begin reading below. After reading the commentary and studying the Word, you’ll be prompted to watch a video online. May God bless your study!
INTRODUCTION If you have a gray hair or two, you know that church life has changed a lot in recent decades. The good news is, it doesn’t take a neuroscientist to understand what’s been happening. On the other hand, simply going along with people’s opinions, our own included, doesn’t help us contribute in an informed and helpful way to conversations about spiritual life. Many factors have contributed to the decline of Christian organizational life. Church-going and Bible-reading are no longer common or respected. Digital technology has transformed how we learn and interact with others, even within families. Growing individualism and reliance on centralized government also contribute to the decline of churches. Individualism tends to weaken mediating power centers that stand between the individual and the nation as a whole— from families to local communities (including local governments), [and] religious institutions…. In their place, it strengthens individuals, on the one hand, and a central government, on the other, since such a government is most able to treat individuals equally by treating them all impersonally. For this reason, a hyperindividualist culture is likely to be governed by a hyper-centralized government, and each is likely to exacerbate the worst inclinations of the other. (Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic, 99-100).
Individualism isn’t wrong in moderation, but today’s hyper-individualism often means believing I really don’t need others, such as the church. Government in itself is a gift from God, but it becomes a problem when people are looking to it rather than to God to make life right. The result of all these factors has been the weakening of what Levin calls “mediating power centers.” These are groups like local congregations that stand between an individual and life out in public—places that make a person feel welcome and show us how to go out, live, and work in impersonal society. And this brings us to our study of 1 Peter today. (Thank you to Bethany Lutheran Church of Austin, Texas, and Pastor William Knippa for the title of this Bible study, “A Belonging Place and a Launching Base into the Community.”)
WATC H Visit lhm.org/studies and watch the video from Rev. Dr. Dale Meyer, Speaker Emeritus of The Lutheran Hour, and then come back here to finish the study.
LEARNING FROM THE WORD Read 1 Peter 2:11-3:12 and 4:7-14. What comes to mind when you hear the word “church”? Of course, one of the best images is the “body of Christ,” but chances are the word “church” also brought to your mind a place, a building set aside for religious functions. News flash: There were no church buildings in the earliest history of the Christian church. The first believers met together in the private homes of individuals…. The gathering of Christian believers in private homes (or homes renovated for the purpose of Christian gatherings) continued to be the norm until the early decades of the fourth century when Constantine began erecting the first Christian basilicas. For almost three hundred years the believers met in homes, not in synagogues or edifices constructed for the sole purpose of religious assembly. (Bradley Blue, “Acts and the House Church,” in The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, II, 120-121) The New Testament frequently mentions households coming to faith. When the Lord told Peter to go to Cornelius, a Gentile, Peter balked because they were “not our kind of people.” Still, after some prompting from the Lord, he went and entered the home of Cornelius, who “had called together his relatives and close friends.” While Peter was witnessing to Jesus, “the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word” and all were baptized (Acts 10:24, 44). Paul also shared the Gospel with households. He reminded the Ephesian elders he had gone “from house to house” (Acts 20:20b). continued … The Lutheran Layman Spring 2022 | 9
