The Path to True Community: How Love Shaped the Early Church

We have been discussing love, and today I want us to talk about how love is essential in forming true community. Love and community are existentially important for us as humans. Without them, none of us could survive or flourish. So I want us to look at how community actually forms and how love shapes that process.

I’ll begin by reviewing the stages of community that M. Scott Peck outlined in his book The Different Drum. We’ve explored these before in this class, but I’ll briefly repeat them. Then I would like to trace those same stages through the early Christian church to see how that community moved through them and what we can learn about forming our own communities.

The first stage is pseudo-community. You can think of it as the “let’s all just get along” stage. The group appears united, but only because differences are suppressed or ignored. Members prioritize politeness, harmony, and approval; conflict is avoided. People say what they think the group wants to hear, and authenticity is limited. This stage provides safety but prevents depth. It is a false peace maintained by avoiding what feels risky.

Most communities—maybe most of our own experiences—remain in this stage. Signs of pseudo-community include: a lot of agreement and minimal vulnerability, politeness over honesty, surface-level sharing, and difficult feelings being kept outside the room.

But if a group stays together, it naturally moves into the second stage: chaos.

Chaos arises when real differences begin to surface. Tension enters, and people start voicing conflicting needs, values, and styles. Members try to control or fix one another. Conversations become messy and loud. This stage can feel destabilizing, and many people interpret it as the failure of community.

One main insight for today is this: chaos signals growth, not failure. It is the moment the group stops pretending.

Signs of chaos include power struggles, advice-giving, rescuing, frustration, judgment, strong personalities dominating, and some people withdrawing or shutting down. Unfortunately, many groups disband here. They assume discomfort means something is wrong, when in truth, something real has finally begun.

If the group decides to stay together instead of disbanding, it can enter the third stage: emptiness.

Emptiness is when we let go of our defenses—and sometimes our ideals about how things should be. To move beyond chaos, members must confront what they cling to: the masks, rules, and defenses they use to stay comfortable or superior. Peck calls this the stage of emptiness because it requires releasing the illusion of control and the need to fix, impress, or dominate.

There is a lot of inner work here: releasing perfectionism, naming fear and insecurity, allowing vulnerability, and practicing deep listening rather than reacting. This stage creates the space where authentic connection can emerge.

If we move through emptiness, we finally can reach stage four: true community, where we can belong with honesty.

True community is marked by openness, humility, and shared leadership. Differences are not suppressed but welcomed. People listen to understand, not to fix or win. Trust replaces fear. Signs of true community include safety for honesty and imperfection, conflict handled with care instead of aggression, collective responsibility instead of control, and a sense of “us” that doesn’t require sameness of belief or personality.

Peck calls this a spiritual experience—showing up as our full selves without defending ourselves.

This stage matters deeply because most of us only experience pseudo-community in daily life: at work, at church, on teams, or even in families. Groups rarely reach true community because we bury our differences and avoid conflict. We crave control more than connection, and we mistake vulnerability for weakness.

So today I want us to see how the early Christian community moved through these stages.

We often imagine the early church as a flawlessly unified community where everyone loved one another without conflict. But the New Testament gives the opposite picture: a community that began with breathtaking unity, then descended into cultural conflict, struggled through fear and prejudice, and only through surrender, humility, and grace reached a mature, honest, Christ-centered fellowship.

Stage One: Pseudo-Community — Acts 2–4

Every authentic community begins with an early season of idealized unity. Everything seems harmonious; everyone gets along; differences remain unseen.

The early church had this moment after Pentecost. Acts 2 tells us that all believers were together and had all things in common, breaking bread with glad and generous hearts. Acts 4 says that the believers were of one heart and soul, sharing possessions freely so that no one was needy.

It is a beautiful picture—generosity, unity, shared meals, common purpose—but it is unity that has not yet been tested by difference. It is a shallow but necessary beginning. It is held together not by honesty but by sameness.

Stage Two: Chaos — Acts 5–6, 11; Galatians; 1 Corinthians

Chaos begins when the truth enters the room. The early church experienced this almost immediately.

Acts 5: trust collapses when Ananias and Sapphira secretly hold back money, lie about it, and fall dead at Peter’s rebuke. Fear replaces harmony.

Acts 6: ethnic tensions erupt when Greek-speaking widows complain that the Hebrew-speaking widows are receiving better treatment in the daily food distribution. Leadership must reorganize to restore fairness.

In Acts 10 and 11: Peter receives the vision of the unclean animals—“What God has made clean, do not call common”—and realizes God is calling Gentiles clean. But when he returns to Jerusalem, Jewish believers criticize him for eating with Gentiles. Division deepens.

In Antioch (Galatians 2): the mixed Jewish-Gentile fellowship collapses when conservative believers arrive. Peter withdraws from eating with Gentiles out of fear. Others follow—even Barnabas. Paul confronts Peter publicly because the gospel itself is at stake.

This is chaos at full intensity: fear, division, woundedness, prejudice, and public conflict.

Stage Three: Emptiness 

Let us return briefly to Peter’s vision in Acts 10. God gives Peter a vision that overturns his purity assumptions by commanding him to eat foods he has always considered unclean. Peter must release his long-held identity markers to accept Gentiles as equals. That is the personal emptiness he undergoes.

But emptiness becomes even more visible at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where the entire church enters this stage. It is a pivotal moment in Christian history—one that could easily have split the church and changed the course of Christianity.

The issue was simple but profound: Must Gentile believers become culturally Jewish in order to belong?  If the Council had said yes—if Gentiles needed circumcision and full Torah observance—Christianity would likely have remained a Jewish sect, culturally closed and largely inaccessible to the Gentile world. The universal church we know today might never have emerged.

Two groups clashed:

• Jewish believers convinced Torah obedience remained essential;
• Gentile believers who had received the Holy Spirit apart from the law.

Without Spirit-guided resolution, these would have become two incompatible Christianities.

After heated debate, Peter rises and says, “Why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?” James agrees: “We should not trouble the Gentiles who turn to God.”

The leadership empties itself of control. They release centuries of identity-defining laws and make space for the Spirit to enlarge the community.

Paul also frames emptiness in Philippians 2: “Do nothing from selfish ambition … but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” He points to Christ, who “emptied himself.” Paul speaks personally when he says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live.”

In Ephesians, Paul describes communal emptiness: Christ has “broken down the dividing wall of hostility” to create one new humanity. Without emptiness, there can be no true community.

Fortunately, the early church reaches Stage Four.

Stage Four: True Community

True community is the fruit of emptiness—the stage where people no longer hide behind masks and differences no longer divide but enrich.

In Antioch, after conflict, we see one of the most diverse leadership teams in the early church: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (from Herod’s court), and Saul. While they worship and fast, the Spirit speaks. Here we see shared discernment, humility, unity without uniformity.

We see true community again in Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. They weep, embrace, and kiss him, deeply grieved at the thought of losing him. This is vulnerable, honest love—not the politeness of pseudo-community or the fear of chaos.

Paul gives the theology of true community in 1 Corinthians 12: one body, many members; the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you.” Differences are gifts, not threats.

In Romans 12, he describes the texture of true community: “Let love be genuine… outdo one another in showing honor… rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep; live peaceably with all.”

In Galatians, he says, “Bear one another’s burdens.”
In 1 Thessalonians, he describes a love deepened by suffering together.

There is even evidence that Peter and Paul eventually reconciled after their public confrontation. True community is not sentimental harmony but Spirit-formed fellowship—people embracing one another as they are, carrying burdens, surrendering fear and superiority, honoring differences as Christ’s work.

Where do love and grace fit into this schema? Love becomes indispensable in Stage Three—emptiness—because only love gives a community the courage to let go of pride, fear, defensiveness, and the need to win. In emptiness, the church must surrender cultural superiority, boundary markers, and control. This surrender is impossible without love. Perfect love casts out fear.

Grace carries the church across the threshold from emptiness into true community. It was grace that softened Jewish believers to accept Gentiles as equals; grace that healed fear and prejudice; grace that transformed Peter’s failure in Antioch; grace that led the Council of Acts 15 to release power and tradition so others could belong.

The early church did not reach true community by moral effort alone. It was grace—God’s unearned reconciling presence—that healed wounds, dissolved hostility, and created one humanity in Christ.

So for today, let us discuss:

• What similarities do we see between the early church’s struggles and the challenges our own communities face? How do our tensions around belonging, conflict, culture, and leadership echo theirs?
• If the early church moved through these stages through love and grace—not their own strength—how might those same forces be working among us now?
• Where might we see love and grace inviting our community into a deeper, truer fellowship today?

Anonymous: Where can we find grace? I think it starts with us—with individual grace. When we receive the grace of God and can share it, we become channels of it. Then we begin to understand what it means to have true community, true love, and true Christianity in our communities. It starts with each one of us—with me. That’s what I’ve experienced in life. Unless you experience God’s love and grace yourself, you won’t be able to give it or live it out.

Don: I think the entire Christian church—and every denomination within it, including our own—faces the very conflict you’re talking about, and the very challenge of becoming a true community. 

My feeling is that if people would just believe the way I do, there wouldn’t be any problems. The problem is the people who are hard-headed, who don’t understand the “true” way of thinking! And Donald has seen this firsthand in his hometown over the past couple of years.

It’s easy to talk about the theoretical stages of community, but it’s very difficult to get through chaos and into emptiness. It’s only by grace that this can happen. I think you’re right about that.

Kiran: I also wonder about how these stages work. We talk about them as though they’re static—as if you move from one to the next. But community is very fluid. People come and go, people are born and people die. A community is constantly changing.

So even if, for a certain period of time, a critical portion of the group reaches stage four, eventually people die, new members come, others move away. How does that affect the process?

Are we talking about these stages as a way of showing how one grows in love? If that’s the case, then is it important for a person to go through these stages individually so that the community as a whole can reach that stage?

Donald: The community isn’t static; it constantly changes. I’m also thinking about structured churches versus community churches. Community churches, at least in principle, gather people who share similar perspectives and can move forward together for a time. A highly organized church, on the other hand, has doctrine, and the members look to that doctrine and say, “Wait—you’re off base.”

Should the whole church be in harmony with itself? In reality, we pass many different denominations on our way to church each week. So how do you build one community of faith when there are so many?

In North America at least, it seems the community-church model has become a strong force.

Robin: I think we have a lot of work to do in accepting other opinions, other people, and the cultures in which they grew up. Travel and resettling are much more common now than in the early Christian church. People move constantly, and it becomes easy to shut your mind because you’re accustomed to what you grew up with.

I often say we need to pray for discernment between “different” and “wrong.” Just because someone does something differently doesn’t make them wrong. We have to listen, compare with Scripture, and remember that no political party or group always gets it right.

In modern times we still have many prejudices to overcome. Education is another trap—we delude ourselves into thinking we know more than we do. Only God knows everything. So there’s still a lot of work for us to do, both personally and as a denomination.

Donald: I agree. But the Adventist Church is under great pressure to navigate issues like LGBTQ inclusion. There are boundaries the church has set, especially around behavior, even while affirming the person. But the person often doesn’t feel that distinction.

So yes, there are some limits our structured church upholds, even for people who may want to be part of the community.

C-J: I think the core issue is that anything organic wants to survive. Chaos is simply the process of sorting out how to survive—regardless of the time, place, or issue. Chaos is an essential part of growth. It’s through chaos that we’re asked, as individuals, to question our own sense of identity and authenticity.

Without others, we cannot survive optimally. So the question becomes: how comfortable are we when we must surrender parts of what we consider essential to our sense of self?

It isn’t really about doctrine. It’s about survival. It isn’t about politics. It’s about wanting a little peace in the room. I don’t care if you do this or that—you’re not living in my house. What I care about is my children, or the coffers, or the resources that sustain us.

We negotiate these things all the time, but when you add a belief system, everything shifts toward a supreme authority. We forget that we are God’s creation and that there has to be balance. Living in constant chaos prevents balance.

What we want instead is new information—like in a scientific experiment—information we didn’t have before. That means reaching out to communities that seem outside our circle of “acceptable,” leaning in, and asking: Tell me your story. What is it like to be you? And then honoring that story.

We ask: is this a choice, or is it biology? Is it culture? When we lean in, we realize we don’t have as many big differences as we think. We all want to survive. We want our communities to thrive. We want our children to experience multiple generations in a household. That spectrum of experience cannot be replicated secondhand. If I don’t hear my parents’ or grandparents’ stories, I can only get them from others—and that doesn’t belong to me.

Humans need to be part of a pack. Nature shows this everywhere—creatures survive because they know where food, shelter, and safety are, and how to preserve the next generation.

This is at the root of what we’re seeing in the Book of Acts. Rome came in and disrupted an entire culture—politically, economically, socially. Free markets brought new subsets and influences. It was no longer a pure society. Everyone knew the “rules of the road,” but everything was shifting.

I think America is going through something similar—a kind of second revolution. We don’t have tanks rolling down the streets, but we are trying to find a new identity through inclusiveness, and we’re not doing well with it. One group says, “This is who we were.” Another, larger group says, “This is who we are.”

When you come to the table, no one wants to take off their armor. No one wants to lay down their weapons or share what they have because the future is uncertain. I’ll give you this much, but not that.

If we don’t learn how to do this in our smallest units—our families—then we won’t learn to do it in our churches, in our communities, in our states, or globally. Without mutual surrender, without vulnerability, we will not survive.

Carolyn: What is the great commandment? What are we trying to achieve? We know we have many differences, but where do we come together at the foot of the cross?

And what if people aren’t ready to come to the foot of the cross because of their culture or background? We may come together there, but what about those who are still deciding what culture, denomination, or doctrine they belong to? It’s a lot to take in. What do we share?

C-J: It’s not our job—it’s God’s job. We think that as humans, as the so-called “apex predator,” someone has to lead: the strongest, the most powerful, the wealthiest, the most influential. But the leader is God. When you lay things at the foot of the cross, you’re doing what Peter and Paul and the early believers had to do. They had to come together and say, We need to find what we have in common, not, We’re right and you’re wrong.

Sometimes we want to put the Christian faith at the apex and say, “You need to believe exactly as we do.” But imagine someone coming to you and saying, “We want you in our community, but your faith is too much for us. It’s not your rules—it’s your attitude.”

God changes the heart. To sit at the table, you must be authentic. You must say, “I don’t have a problem with you—I’m like you.” The problem comes when we say we will share, but don’t demonstrate it.

Don: I think at its root, the problem is that we don’t understand grace. We believe that, in order to be saved, we must be correct—that salvation comes from being right, embracing “the truth,” however we define it. But grace teaches us that salvation is God’s responsibility, not ours.

If we could truly grasp that and operationalize it in our lives, we would see the transformation of community that Michael is talking about. Instead, we cling to the idea that we must determine the actual truth—from our study, our piety, our prayers, our readings, our discussions.

Understanding truth is helpful and important, but it is not salvific. What saves us is God’s eternal grace. But we keep losing sight of that as we build defenses around what we believe to be true.

Even as Adventists, we hold a doctrine that claims truth is progressive—always unfolding. That means we acknowledge that we don’t have perfect knowledge. So how can we claim to be perfectly right 100% of the time?

Again: what’s at the root here is a misunderstanding of grace.

Sharon: When I teach research, I give my students this example: if there’s a car accident on the highway and you have an attorney looking at it, a mother looking at it, and an insurance agent looking at it, all three are observing the same truth—but each sees it through a different lens.

I think the key to building community is our willingness to be vulnerable. And that is extremely difficult. It brings us back to what you’ve been telling us, Michael—about self-love and recognizing that even though we are flawed and broken humans, we are still daughters and sons of the King of the universe. Because of that, His grace must be transmitted through me to anyone I encounter—whether or not they are like me or see life through my lens.

Community building depends on whether I am willing to be emptied and vulnerable. When I am, it allows others to play the role they need to play, just as 1 Corinthians 12 describes. We become whole only when we come together: one person picks up one piece, another picks up another, and together God makes something beautiful out of what would otherwise be our individual attempts to cling to our own ways.

If the whole world were like Donald Weaver, I think the world would be amazingly boring! We each have to be who we are—genuinely, vulnerably, caring for one another in a Christ-centered way. Then the world becomes a remarkably wonderful place.

But it’s uncomfortable. We squirm because we’re not willing to give up our worldview, our perspective. Because of course—we’re the ones who are right.

Carolyn: Do you think it’s fear that keeps us from doing this—that we don’t want to relinquish our views because we worry we’ll be wrong, or fear we’re not following the dogma we were taught? But we still love everyone—that’s the base, and grace comes with that, maybe even before that.

But there is an element of fear—fear of judgment. Fear that others will judge us if we think or act differently.

Sharon: There is certainly an element of fear. But I also think that the cognitive reframing that comes from understanding grace—really understanding what we have in the protection of grace—allows us to relinquish that fear. It surrounds us with the love we receive in community when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

Sometimes I think there are communities we simply don’t belong in. If you constantly feel afraid in a community, you might need to find another one. A healthy community should offer some sense of safety, security, and social reward.

But we also have a responsibility to cultivate that safety within the communities where we have influence.

Carolyn: It often feels like my fear comes more from within our own church rather than from my immediate surrounding community. I experience acceptance and love elsewhere, and I can give love freely. But sometimes within our own denomination, it feels like there’s always a standard to meet—almost a barrier.

I believe the church should be a hospital for those who are hurting—a place of acceptance where we show love and don’t focus on differences. But sometimes it feels like the church requires us to meet certain standards or we’re “not quite there.” And yet, when I’m with other Christians—even in community churches or younger congregations—I feel accepted, I feel love, I feel free to give love.

I love our church, don’t get me wrong. But that one barrier is always there for me. And grace has been such a rewarding thing in my life—something I want to share with others, even if they’re not ready for it.

Reinhard: Maybe our church needs to express more love and more support—spiritually and emotionally—to its members. When we talk about community, we often limit it to our denomination or our immediate surroundings. But community exists on small and large scales.

In any community—especially a religious one—we need participation in order to grow. The early church grew because its members participated, supported one another, and shared a sense of purpose. After Jesus gave the commandment to love one another, that love became their bond as they spread the gospel.

In the Old Testament, when the Israelites came out of Egypt, Moses was essentially responsible for a community of two million people. Everyone had a duty—the Levites carried the tabernacle, other tribes had their own responsibilities. Community required participation.

I think the same applies to us. In our denomination, we need a sense of ownership, a sense of destiny and belonging. When we feel that, the characteristics of a true church community—support, unity, purpose—grow naturally.

Maybe our congregation isn’t as large as some others. Maybe we don’t have a parking lot full of cars like the church down the street. But we are united by doctrine and hope. We hold onto our belief in future life—eternity. We want to protect that hope and help it grow.

God wants us to love one another. With love, we attach to each other, support each other, and see the value in our community. Love unites us; grace comes from God; and together we move forward.

Donald: We often equate numbers with success. But a small community of faith that supports one another, is grace-filled, and loves each other is just as valid—maybe just as successful—as a large congregation, even if others don’t see it that way.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I’ve made many phone calls this week, reaching back to the church community I came from in Rochester. That congregation was built for about 300 people. It’s down to about 40 now.

And then I think about Willow Creek in Chicago. I’m not talking about their church services, but their leadership summits. Becky and I had the privilege of attending those for years. You didn’t have to be part of Willow Creek to participate—you could indicate whatever faith community you were from. There were three or four thousand people in the room. And even though we didn’t all align on doctrine or specifics, what mattered was that we aligned on the essentials: God’s love and being Christian. Participating together on that basis was powerful.

That looked “successful” from the outside. My old home church—with 40 members left—doesn’t look successful. But numbers don’t tell the spiritual truth.

As for our own denomination, we often talk about “the church splitting” or things that “divide the church.” Something happened—someone was harmed, a pastor left, an event took place—and the community was disrupted. Can it be rebuilt? Does size matter?

Carolyn: When we talk about the Great Commission—“Go and tell”—what exactly are we supposed to tell? For me, the Great Commission is important, but aren’t we really just supposed to tell people about Jesus? Would that be the core of it?

David: I understand it is that way for mainstream Christians. I believe in Jesus Christ, but I don’t consider myself a member of the church. But I’m very drawn to this group—partly because of who you all are individually, and partly because there are things about the Adventist faith that resonate with me. For example, Don just reiterated something I’ve always appreciated: that the Adventist Church recognizes that it does not possess the capital-T Truth. It acknowledges that Truth unfolds, that our understanding of it evolves. That’s a tacit admission that the Church does not know everything. I think that’s a wonderful and rare admission.

Michael: I see many parallels between the early church’s struggle between Jews and Gentiles and what Donald is describing—the struggle of the SDA Church around including the LGBTQ community. In both cases, something new emerges that the community doesn’t know how to handle.

But I also think that somehow God worked within the early church—inside its disagreements, its fears, its prejudices. I keep wondering: is this a human effort or a God effort? Because even if we think we know the answer—and I do have an answer—without a genuine conversion, a genuine revelation, I don’t know how reconciliation truly happens.

David: Do you mean a conversion to a religion? Or a conversion to belief in God?

Michael: A conversion to faith in grace.

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