Both Acts 2:42-47 and 4:31-37, along with my subsequent quest for the kind of community it describes, have had a lifelong impact on me. Here is my story.
My thirst for genuine Christian community began in high school
I was a geeky Christian high school student making his way through a very secular Los Angeles public school system when Dr. Francis Schaeffer and his book, “The God Who is There,” burst upon the evangelical scene in America. Dr. Schaeffer was a theologian, philosopher, pastor, and missionary to Switzerland. “The God Who is There” is a critique of western civilization as it turned away from a Christian worldview towards a secular and materialistic worldview. It was exactly what I needed.
I was impressed with Dr. Francis and Edith Schaeffer’s L’Abri community in Switzerland
Dr. Schaeffer, along with his wife, Edith, started their ministry in their home in Huémoz, Switzerland. They called it L’Abri, “The Shelter.” (The ministry still exists with eleven locations around the world.) They invited tourists, mostly young tourists who had questions about Christianity, to join them for a few nights and began talking to them about the Lord. Word spread and soon a multitude of people started showing up at their door.
Eventually, L’Abri grew into a Christian community consisting of about a dozen buildings where several dozen staff lived full-time. At any given time, 20-40 students might be staying for a short or extended stay. The setting in the Alpine village of Huemoz provided a picturesque, contemplative environment. The closeness of the chalets made it possible for visitors and permanent residents of L’Abri to interact spontaneously on a daily basis.
L’Abri developed into a fully mature Christian cultural experience
Students and guests were invited to enjoy reading in the ministry’s library, listening to recordings of Dr. Schaeffer’s lectures, as well as participate in one-on-one discussions with staff, enjoy live lectures, musical performances, and, on Sunday’s, listen to a sermon by Dr. Schaeffer or another staff person. They were also asked to help with chores, gardening, cooking, and maintenance. Sometimes visitors would help at the school for disabled children that Edith ran. And finally, they participated in mealtimes characterized by lively discussion on Christian and cultural topics.
This rich cultural life reflected Edith and Francis Schaeffer’s belief that truth must be lived out, not just intellectually affirmed. Simply put, L’Abri sought to model Christian love, beauty, and care in daily life.
Life at L’Abri seemed to mirror the kind of daily and spontaneous interactions believers had in the early church
As I read about the Christian community at L’Abri, I realized that they were living and interacting in a way that seemed similar to the kind of life Christians lived in the early Christian church. First century Christians generally lived near enough to each other that they had regular, daily, and spontaneous interaction as they walked around their communities. That kind of interaction with fellow believers was a foreign experience to me growing up in the concrete jungle that isLos Angeles.
But growing up, my Christian experience had been very different from what I saw happening at L’Abri
For the first twenty-one years of my life, I and my family attended a large commuter church in downtown Los Angeles. Our pastor, a renowned Bible expositor, drew people to the church from all over the LA basin. That church gave me a solid foundation in the Word of God and provided me with great fellowship in a fantastic youth group when I was there. But during the week, we almost never saw each other.
Learning about life in a small Christian community thousands of miles away awakened in me a realization that I was missing something in my Christian experience: genuine fellowship with other believers on a daily basis in our natural living situations.
I wasn’t the only one in my church that came to this conclusion. Other young adults in my church felt the same way and eventually they moved onto the same block In Pasadena, California, and began enjoying life together as a community.
My personal experience writing and teaching about the Christian community in Acts 2 and Acts 4
I, on the other hand, moved to Texas and began my studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. In my fourth year, my degree requirements included writing a thesis. I chose to study the Christian community in Pasadena and compare it to the descriptions of Christians living together in Acts 2 and 4. I knew it was an unusual topic for a thesis, but I had no idea the problems it would cause me.
I spent a summer living in a Christian community in Pasadena, California
For my project, I spent a summer living on the block with the believers in Pasadena. I observed their interactions and interviewed each participant as to how it influenced their spirituality and their lives in general. I also interviewed several of their non-Christian neighbors and asked them their thoughts on “those Christians” living on the block. In addition, for the first time, I got to experience Christian community myself. It was exhilarating. And finally, knowing that these passages in Acts 2 and 4 had been misused by several cults over the years, I drove up to Santa Barbara to interview Professor Ron Enroth at Westmont College. He had just written a book called “Youth, Brainwashing, and Extremist Cults.”
Then I wrote my thesis about it and compared it to the Christian community in Acts 2 and 4
By the end of the summer of ’77, I couldn’t wait to get back to Dallas and write my thesis. I was very excited by what I had seen and experienced. I threw myself into exegeting Acts 2:42-47 and 4:31-37 and developed several principles for Christian community based on those passages. Then I used them to evaluate the Christian community in Pasadena. (You can read the thesis here.)
My thesis advisor told me something that shocked me
I was pleased when my thesis advisor gave me an excellent grade on the thesis. But a few weeks later he caught up with me on campus and said something that blew me away.
“Herb, whatever you do, don’t teach this in your church. You will split your church.”
“How is it,” I thought, “that he agreed with my interpretation of the Christian community in Acts 2 and 4, as well as with my evaluation of the Christian community in Pasadena, California, but didn’t want me to teach or preach about it?” I was dumbfounded.
Sadly, my thesis advisor was right
I took my thesis advisor’s advice, though…at least for the first fifteen years of my ministry as a pastor. But eventually, I couldn’t contain myself and I timidly preached a sermon on the Christian community in Acts 2 and 4. I concluded by saying, “The next time you move, think about the possibility of moving closer to other Christians in the church.” I didn’t say they had to move closer together. I just told them to think about the benefits of living near each other.
The response to my sermon by my congregation was overwhelming negative. One would have thought I had just denied the deity of Jesus Christ. Individualism is so ingrained in American culture, anything that threatens it causes people deep consternation. Suggesting that my congregants move closer together to achieve some degree of Christian community certainly did. The idea had obviously never crossed their minds. Consequently, they thought I was trying to start some kind of cult.
Our present experience with something like Christian community
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4
I am old now, and it has been decades since I had that sad experience with my church. But over the years, the Lord has ever so slowly given my wife, Patti, and me our own little “mini-L’Abri.” This is how it happened.
Eight years ago, Patti’s eighty-six year old mother moved from Houston into our ranch home with us here in the Denver area. The ranch we lived in was cramped, but we managed. After two years, my mother-in-law’s health improved to the point where she thought she could return to her own home in Houston. So we packed her up and drove her back home.
However, after only a few months, it became clear that Patti’s mom would have to return. Knowing that the previous living situation with us was not ideal, Patti and I began to think about moving. Our perfect home, we thought, would be one with a walkout basement where we could install a mother-in-law suite with windows for sunshine and an exit door for her to go out and walk, which she was unable to do in our previous home.
One day, I was walking our dog around a small lake near our home. It had the “romantic” name of Pomona Lake Number Two. It has a paved pathway around it, which is perfect for walking dogs. It is also serenely beautiful; an oasis of peace in the heart of Arvada, Colorado. When the weather is good, scores of people walk, ride their bikes, and fish around the lake, which is only two blocks from where we lived. I loved walking our dog Dixie there. As I walked Dixie around the lake, I noticed that there were three ranches on the lake with walkout basements. I began to think that one of them might be perfect for us.
As I continued walking Dixie around the lake, I did something I normally did not do. I veered off the lake path and began walking on the sidewalk in front of the homes on the lake. As Dixie and I walked down the block, I came across a sign in the front yard of one of the ranches with a walkout basement. It said simply, “Coming Soon.”
Houses on Pomona Lake Number Two can sell in hours and I knew I had to act quickly. Immediately I called the number on the yard sign. Dee, the realtor, answered my call and told me she had put the sign up just ten minutes earlier. I asked her if
Patti and I could see the home and she scheduled us for that afternoon.
As we toured the house, it was obvious that the main floor was in “fixer upper” shape and the basement was in “demo” shape. But it also became clear that the bones of the house were good and the floor plan on the main floor and the space in the walkout basement was just what we needed. So we told Dee that we wanted to buy it.
After the sale was finalized, Lee sold her home in Houston and she used some of the proceeds to install a mother-in-law suite in the ranch’s walkout basement. It has been over five years since we moved into the ranch, and Patti’s mom moved into her suite, and it meets all our needs perfectly. Over the years, Patti and I have gradually made improvements to the first floor and to the backyard facing the lake.
Some of the improvements we made involved adding two benches and a Little Free Library outside the fence that borders the pathway and the lake. Then we put up a sign inviting people to “sit a spell” and and enjoy the view. We also thought it would be a great way to meet people. And it has. Patti and I have had numerous conversations with people sitting on those benches.
As it turns out, our deck is so close to our neighbors’ decks on either side that Patti an I can have entire conversations with them just by stepping out our back door. I got to know one of my neighbors so well while we talked regularly on our back decks that we began talking about the Lord and he eventually asked me to start a weekly men’s Bible study in his home. We’ve invited some of our neighbors and sometimes they even show up.
Patti and I love walking around the lake. Many times we run into someone we know and wind up talking more than walking. Some of our neighbors are Christians. Some are not. But we love them all. Our community is precisely the kind of environment that I dreamed of living in as a teenager: natural, spontaneous, loving, and observable, with regular interactions with other people — Christians and non-Christians — who can see what it is like for Christians to live their lives out in the open.
What do I mean by this? What I mean is that our neighbors see how Patti and I interact with each other and love each other. (Like walking around the lake and holding hands.) They see how we care for her now 94 year old mother, doing everything we can to keep her out of assisted living. They see how our adult children, with their own families, join us for a meal on our back deck to celebrate special events, talking and laughing as they do. They see the benches and the Little Free Library we have set up for them to enjoy. They see that we have worked hard to maintain our home so we don’t embarrass the neighborhood. They see me walking next door to my neighbor’s front door with my Bible in hand to join him for a Bible study and deep fellowship. They see how our faith in our Lord gives us strength when sickness and hardships come.
They see. They see. They see. They see.
That is what it means for Christians to live in community with each other while others watch.