1. The Crisis of Individualism
Alliance Witness, 1980-01-23, P.23-24.

IN MY study of the book of Acts, I have discovered twelve crises in the history of the apostolic church. It seemed almost too good to be true that every crisis was, under the grace of God, turned into a blessing for the people of God.

The study of history always makes us wiser if we really understand it. Ours is an age of great crises. As we go through various crises today we too may be guided by the same basic principles that helped the early church. I pray that the Holy Spirit will illuminate our hearts and minds so that we shall truly benefit from our study of this book.

Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added lo their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:41-47 NIV).

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was with them ail. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need (4:32-35 NIV).

To a large degree the success of the apostolic church hung on a vital issue: whether it came into being in the form of redeemed individuals loosely joined together very much the same as the average church today, or whether it emerged as a community of Christians strongly knit together, lovingly committed one to another, witnessing in a united front, living in close fellowship, eating from a common kitchen and absolutely dedicated to the same Christ. It was of colossal consequence that, when faced with choosing between these two possibilities, the leaders of the early church under divine guidance made the decision to follow the latter.

Do you think that it was merely incidental that the Christians in the apostolic church sold all their possessions and pooled their funds and lived a communal life? By no means! It was in fact their lifeline! 1 am convinced that they could not have survived the many pressures on them but for their strong united front produced by thousands of lives inseparably banded together by their sharing everything as an expression of utmost dedication to a common purpose. This high concentration of strength, under divine guidance, was absolutely necessary for creating the visibility and power needed for growth and expansion.

I believe we have a great need today for “community theology” or, to be more Biblical, a “Kingdom theology.” The Christian church has on the whole developed along individualistic lines, sadly lacking an adequate concept of community life, community witness and community dynamics. This has resulted in the impoverishment and weakening of the church. It is time for us to come back to the Biblical pattern of church life.

In the Old Testament the glorious ideal life that the prophets, under divine inspiration, projected into the future is a Kingdom life, or community life, in which the will of God is fulfilled and the glory of God is manifested through the corporate life of the Chosen People. God did not select simply individuals but a community of people to be His representatives in the world.

In the New Testament the Lord Himself preached the gospel of the Kingdom of God, not a gospel of redeemed individuals. There is a vast difference between a gospel of redeemed individuals and the gospel of the Kingdom of redeemed people. The fact that the Lord’s teaching on the Kingdom constitutes two-thirds of the content of the Gospel of Matthew shows how much emphasis the Lord placed on the corporate life of the redeemed people rather than on individuals. This emphasis is most significant and we should never change it.

The apostle Paul teaches that the church is the Body of Christ, and Christians, as members of the Body, have a “body life” that is a community life. The church is a “called-out community,” one called out from the world.

Paul also tells us that individually every Christian is a new man (Ephesians 4:24) and collectively the whole church is a new man (2:15). It is important for us to remember that it is difficult for the individual new man to live a new life in the world without the fellowship of the collective new man.

The Christian life is basically a fellowship life-fellowship with God vertically and fellowship with other Christians horizontally. The strong expression that one Christian is no Christian probably is an overstatement, but certainly there is truth in it. When the Christian life is devoid of fellowship it is substantially lacking in reality. A basic philosophy of the church is that it exists for a fivefold purpose: worship, teaching, service, witness and fellowship.

God may be called a collective God of the Holy Trinity. He is singularly plural and plurally singular. And this collective God has a collective church, which is the collective Body of the collective Christ who has both the nature of God and the nature

of man as represented by His resurrected body, which remains with Him forever. This Body of Christ has a destiny which is beautifully depicted by the collective bride of the Lamb (Revelation 21:2). Paul tells us that the whole church is the bride of

Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:32). God’s plan is never merely a plan of individual salvation, although personal salvation is a necessary step for collective salvation, which is the final objective of divine activities in redemption.

Evidently there has not been adequate teaching in our churches on the collective nature of God’s plan of salvation for man. And as a result of this lack our churches have on the whole deserted the Biblical pattern and have followed the line of emphasis on the value of the individual. Consequently churches are so individually

oriented and fragmented that they have lost the power they were meant to have.

Ironically, it is heretical groups such as the Mormons, the Children of God and Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church that have made the best use of community dynamics. But fortunately there are also more orthodox groups that have exercised power through collective channels, for example, the Little Flock movement in the Chinese church, the Jesus Family on mainland China, the “Jesus people” in North America, the Bakht Singh movement in India.

In all these groups, cell fellowship or group dynamics (group interaction) has always played an important role. The Communists have made the widest and best use of community dynamics in modern history. This is the basic factor in the success of their indoctrination and mobilization program in China. But historically the apostolic church was the first to apply this great strategy with amazing success.

Recently there has been good teaching on “body life” as a means of church growth. But there is still a great need for a resurgence of understanding and an application of this Biblical concept of collectivism in our churches today. The spreading of this concept and the heightening of fellowship life in our churches will be a great service to the cause of Christ.