Acts 2: Society Won't Build Community for You

Introduction

"We do not live in a time or a place where society will build relationships for us." Dan Kim preaches at St Aldates in Oxford, as part of the Vision 26 series. His text is Acts 2:42-47, the portrait of the first church.

He starts from an observation: everyone longs for community, but there is a wide gap between how much we value it and how we actually live. Governments and think tanks do not know what to do about loneliness. The preacher sees instead an opportunity and a deep calling for the church.

He rereads Acts 2 and the story of the first Christians in the Roman Empire, then offers three simple, almost ordinary practices for stitching the social fabric back together where you live.

Outline of the message

1. A society that pushes toward isolation

• In 2018, the British government created a post of Minister for Loneliness. According to the preacher, 9 million people in the UK suffer from it chronically, one person in six worldwide, and 800,000 people died between 2014 and 2019 of health problems linked to it. "Lonely people are now a national emergency."
• Life is busy, and the world's biggest companies are trying to capture every second of your time for advertising revenue. Asked about his biggest competitor, Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, answered: "My biggest competitor is human sleep."
• With the cost of living, eating and drinking together in public places has become a luxury. Shared meals have moved from spontaneous public spaces to planned private ones.
• Over the past century, the "middle layers" between the individual, the family and the state have emptied out: clubs, village halls, scouts. It is becoming hard even to imagine a full community life.
• There are thousands of books on productivity, self-development, sport, mental health, finances or raising children, but very few on living together. When life tightens, the temptation is to withdraw: "I have to protect myself and my family." Dan Kim admits he feels this some mornings when he wakes up.
• The gravitational pull of society leads toward isolation, individualism and fragmentation. This is not the life we long for, nor the one God desires for us.

2. Acts 2: the first response to the love of Jesus

• The first thing the three thousand first Christians did, after experiencing the living love of Jesus Christ, was to devote themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship (Acts 2:42).
• The immediate response to the inner transformation worked by the Holy Spirit was to turn to the people on their right and on their left, "as if love overflowed from within to spill out" onto those around them.
• Community is not just social support for an individual journey. It is essential to what it means to be a Christian: we are saved to belong to a family, brothers and sisters in Christ. God came to heal the vertical relationship with him and the horizontal relationships between us.
• Among the last words of Jesus to his disciples: "Just as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35).
• In Acts 2, they put this into practice: radical generosity, possessions sold for those in need, praying together, bread broken in homes, daily gatherings to pray and worship, with joy and simplicity of heart.

3. "See how they love one another": the church in the Roman Empire

• Around the year 112, about eighty years after Acts 2, Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia and Pontus (the northern coast of modern Turkey), wrote to the emperor asking for advice about this strange new religious group that met to worship a crucified man.
• The Romans were terrified. In their society, hierarchy was everything: men and women, masters and slaves, scholars and soldiers, citizens and subjects. Stability depended on the favor of the gods, Jupiter or Mars.
• And here were Christians, rich and poor, powerful and weak, owners and slaves, Romans, Jews, Syrians and Persians, singing together in homes and calling one another brothers and sisters. How can you call a slave "brother"?
• Over time, these communities won the hearts of their neighbors, even their opponents, who said: "See how they love one another."
• In the third century, during a great epidemic, Christians became known for going into the cities to care for the sick, both from their own community and from outside it. Later, Roman emperors urged their governors to care for the sick better, for fear that many would convert.
• The church did not grow only through the power of Jesus' words, but through the way Christians lived those teachings together. The preacher quotes Cyprian, one of the early Christian leaders: "We do not merely say great things, we live them." These first communities formed an alternative society, one that gave priority to the weak and the marginalized, to love of neighbor and to devotion to Jesus Christ.
• They overturned an unjust social order because they believed the blood of Christ was stronger than that of any race or family. Today, the church is called to be a stable presence in a time of uncertainty: "people who pick up the needle" and, with each friendship and each encounter, stitch the social fabric back together.

4. Plan your relational commitments

• Living like this goes against the current. It takes intention and must become a discipline. Dan Kim has gathered a few principles from church community leaders around the world, and keeps three.
• One of his best friends, a senior civil servant in London and extremely busy, sends him a message every week to check in. If they have not seen each other for a while, he insists on setting a coffee or a video call. He encourages him and helps hold him accountable.
• One day, the preacher discovered "something terrifying": this friend keeps a spreadsheet listing everyone in his life, sorted into tiers. Tier 1: a message every week. Tier 2: every month. Tier 3: a coffee if he can find an hour. The cells turn yellow or red depending on the time elapsed since the last meeting.
• Some will see genius in this, others the scariest thing they have ever heard. But this man takes his relationships seriously and knows his limits: without planning, old friendships fade and the current of life carries everything away.
• Dan Kim does not have a spreadsheet. But every year, his wife and he ask themselves these questions: who do we want to invest in this year? Which close friends do we really want to commit to? Which new friendships do we want to grow?
• A whiteboard, a messy notes app: plan in your own way, but plan.

5. Anchor yourself in time and in a place

• In time, this means regular commitments to specific communities: a sports team, volunteering at a local food bank, a pottery class. These are the middle layers of society that are missing today.
• For a Christian, the Christian community matters in a special way: it is where we grow. The disciple does not just learn more about God. He grows in love, patience, generosity and kindness, visits others in the hospital, and shows up even when tired.
• The preacher leads and hosts a small group of twelve people every Wednesday evening. Life has its seasons, and there are other forms: an early morning prayer meeting, prayer triplets. "We have lots of programs in this church, and they are all wonderful. But nothing replaces the refining fire of community. That is where we really grow."
• In space, he speaks of "monogamy of place": committing to a place, having a local base, putting down roots. In Acts 2:46, the Christians met every day in the temple. We are beings who live in space.
• Three years ago, he committed to a pub, the Lamb and Flag on St Giles, and a café in town. He lives "in a straight line": a pub, a café, his home and the church. Over time, the same faces come back, his friends know where to find him, and he becomes an anchor point himself.
• This is an ancient monastic practice, stabilitas loci. Our culture chases the new café, the new restaurant. But everything that bears fruit needs roots, and roots take time.

6. Be as generous as you can

• Be generous with your time, toward those beyond social boundaries, generous with interruptions, generous with all you have. "Community is, at its core, a function of generosity": the way we give ourselves for those around us, and they for us.
• A family from the church takes a group of teenagers out to lunch almost every Sunday. It builds community for these young people and blesses parents who could not afford the cost.
• If you have a spare room and you know someone going through a hard time, why not welcome them? Why not set aside a budget for hosting, or for offering a meal to someone in financial difficulty?
• It is easy to host people who are like us and can return the favor. Christian hospitality is more radical. His wife challenged him a few years ago: "Does your generosity, material and social, cross the boundaries of your social class?" A real challenge, because these class boundaries are a reality in the UK, and "it is good to call things by their name."
• None of this will happen unless we make it a priority. Some people get up at five in the morning three or four times a week to go to the gym. "Why not do it to meet someone, pray with them or have a coffee?"
• You can also ask for help. In a season of overload, Dan Kim told his friends: "I want to see you. Please come and get me, knock on my door. I need you to make the effort during this season."

7. God at work in the ordinary

• Spreadsheets, cafés, pubs: all of this can seem small, simple, unimpressive. What does it have to do with God, revival and the renewal of a nation? "Almost everything."
• Jesus did not come only to give us experiences inside the church. On earth, he frequented the markets, entered homes, sat at tables and walked the streets proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.
• The mystery of the Christian faith is that God's extraordinary power shows up in ordinary things. If you are a Christian, you carry the presence of God through the Holy Spirit. Being the body of Christ means being his hands, his feet and his heart, together and not as isolated individuals.
• Having a coffee regularly with someone, going to the pottery club, coming to a party when you are exhausted: this is not just politeness, it is kingdom work, stitch by stitch, to sew a social fabric able to welcome people.
• The first Christians were "having favor with all the people" (Acts 2:47) because of the way they lived. Dan Kim calls those who have the passion and the calling to become connectors, gatherers, hosts, pillars.
• "You cannot program community." No program, no course, no policy, no app can do it. It is born when enough people are filled with the love of Jesus Christ and devote themselves to him, to his mission, to prayer and to one another.

Key takeaways

• Society will not build relationships for you: its natural slope leads toward isolation, individualism and fragmentation.
• In Acts 2, the first response to the love of Jesus was to devote themselves to one another. Community is part of Christian identity.
• The first Christians left their mark on the Roman Empire not only by their words, but by the way they loved one another and cared for the weakest.
• Three concrete practices: plan your relational commitments, anchor yourself in time and in a place, be generous across social boundaries.
• God's power shows up in the ordinary: a coffee, a shared table, a faithful presence.

Personal application

1. Who do you want to invest in this year, among your close friends and among new relationships?
2. What regular commitment (small group, prayer, volunteering, local activity) could anchor you in time?
3. Is there a place you could return to faithfully to become an anchor point for others?
4. Do your generosity and hospitality cross the boundaries of your social circle?
5. Are you in a season without energy where you need to ask your friends to come to you?

Verses cited

• Acts 2:42-47
• John 13:34-35

Frequently asked questions

What does Acts 2 teach about Christian community?

Dan Kim notes that the first three thousand Christians, after experiencing the love of Jesus, devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship. The love received through the Holy Spirit immediately turned toward others. For him, community is not just support for an individual journey: it is part of what it means to be a Christian.

How do you build community when you are very busy?

The preacher proposes three practices: planning your relational commitments (asking each year who to invest in), anchoring yourself in time and in a place (a regular small group, places you visit faithfully) and being generous with your time, your possessions and your hospitality. He adds that you can also ask your friends for help in seasons without energy.

What is stabilitas loci?

It is an ancient Christian practice, monastic in origin, of remaining stable in one place. Dan Kim contrasts it with a culture obsessed with novelty: everything that bears fruit needs roots, and roots take time. By faithfully frequenting the same places, you become an anchor point for others.