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I use the word "explosive" to define the fellowship I want to talk about, because life is too short and this age is too evil and the people outside are too broken and hopeless for us to settle for a notion of fellowship as a kind of comfortable togetherness that has no transforming, empowering, explosive effect when we meet.
Believe me, I love fellowship. I love to be with people of like mind and heart. I love my main support group, the pastoral staff of this church, and our hours together each week. But my life is so short, and my meeting with the Lord face to face is so imminent and so real, and my desires to make a 100% return on God's investment of grace in my life are so strong, that I am just not interested in any kind of fellowship that does not help people explode with more love, more compassion, more joy, more holiness, and more zeal for God, and more boldness in witness, more power in ministry, more vision for missions. And I do not believe that this disenchantment of mine with self-contained, unfruitful, ineffective fellowship is a personal quirk. I think it's an echo in my heart—and yours—of the explosive fellowship we hear about in the book of Acts.
O, I want us all to be in small groups! I want every person in this church to know the sweet taste of camaraderie and belonging and family at-homeness and unity of spirit and oneness of mind that is the heart in New Testament, Christian fellowship—and so precious and indispensable in my life. But I want everything we do in our groups—whether we are studying Scripture, reading a book, focusing on singles issues, marriage issues, supporting a missionary, targeting the inner-city, praying for children—whatever the focus is, I pray that everything that happens in the small groups will be explosive—will produce explosives or ignite the fuse of explosives or toss explosives. I hope that the mindset of every small group is to serve an explosion of love and compassion and truth and joy and worship and power and ministry.
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Now let's go back to Acts 12 for just a moment. I want to point out one main thing. James, one of the sons of thunder, had just been beheaded and Peter is in prison waiting his turn as soon as the feast is over. ...
Verse 5 says what the church is doing: "So Peter was kept in prison; but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church." Notice: it seems to be the whole church that is praying for Peter. We know from Acts 4:4 that by this time there were well over 5,000 men (not to mention women and children) who were part of the church in Jerusalem. So how was this prayer happening?
They may have called an all-church prayer meeting in the city. We don't know. But what we know for sure is that the house-group network in Jerusalem was on fire for Peter. Verses 6–11 describe the amazing answer to prayer as Peter is saved from prison by an angel. Then look at verse 12: "When Peter realized this [that he had been delivered], he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying."
Now, it says "many." But many is not 5,000, because they are all in one house. Maybe 40, 50, 60 according to what archeology shows us about the size of nice houses in Jerusalem in the first century. So when verse 5 told us that "the church" was praying, did that mean just these 50 or 60 people were praying? No. It meant that the church in Jerusalem was praying—all five or ten thousand of them probably; the loss of James AND Peter would have been devastating—all the church was praying, but it was praying in its house groups all over the city. And the power of those groups praying all over Jerusalem exploded the doors off the hinges of Herod's prison.
Can you feel why I read the book of Acts and become disenchanted with "fellowship-as-usual"? We are beyond all controversy here over whether signs and wonders are done only by apostles. We are talking here about ordinary Christians who meet together with such expectancy and fervency of prayer, and vision—or desperation—that the Spirit is poured out, and people are added to the church daily, and witness is bold, and missionaries are called and sent, and prison doors are opened. This is not apostolic vindication. This is just Christian fellowship—explosive Christian fellowship—the way it was happening in a context where leaders were being executed. My prayer is that we will not be so at home in the world—so content with business as usual—that God must bring persecution upon us in order to create in Bethlehem explosive fellowship.
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