Meeting in Small Groups in Mutuality
Verses:
1 Cor. 14:26 What then, brothers? Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation…
Ministry Portion:
Before the day of Pentecost there were only one hundred twenty Christians meeting together. They had been with the Lord for as long as three and a half years. Probably most of them had followed Jesus from Galilee. They had traveled with the Lord and seen His human living. Some of them had seen how He was arrested and judged, and a number of them had seen how He was nailed on the cross and how He hung there for six hours. They saw how the Lord was buried, and eventually they saw how He was resurrected. They were with the Lord for forty days, from the day of the Lord’s resurrection to the day of His ascension, enjoying His appearing and His hidden presence. Finally, they saw the Lord Jesus ascend to the third heaven. The one hundred twenty had received an excellent view of the Lord. This made them bold and even beside themselves. After the Lord’s ascension they returned to Jerusalem and prayed in one accord for ten days to be clothed with power from on high. On the day of Pentecost they received the outpouring of the Spirit, and they began to preach and to propagate Christ.
Acts 2:46 says, “Day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they partook of their food with exultation and simplicity of heart.” Acts 5:42 says, “Every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and announcing the gospel of Jesus as the Christ.” These verses tell us that the Christians met in their homes, and the number of home meetings was according to the number of homes. They met in this way for preaching Christ, teaching, breaking bread, prayer, and fellowship. However, there is no indication of the way that they preached and taught. In principle, it must have been in the way of mutuality.
On the day of Pentecost three thousand people were saved and baptized. It is helpful to consider how three thousand people could have been baptized on the same day. The homes of that time had a pool that was used for bathing. Acts 16:31-34 tells us how Paul and Silas preached the gospel to the Philippian jailer and his household. Verses 33 and 34 say, “He was baptized immediately, he and all his household. And he brought them up into his house and set a table before them.” The phrase he brought them up indicates that the jailer and his household were baptized probably in the bathing pool in the lower part of the house. On the day of Pentecost the three thousand were probably baptized in the homes of the believers. Moreover, the baptisms were probably not carried out by a few persons only, such as Peter and John, but by many persons. In the Gospels, when the Lord Jesus fed the five thousand, He told the disciples to make the people sit down in groups (Mark 6:39-40; Luke 9:14). The disciples must have learned this way from the Lord. On the day of Pentecost, when three thousand people were to be baptized, the disciples probably divided them into groups. In this way the one hundred twenty could baptize three thousand persons in less than a day.
From that time the believers continued to meet in their homes by groups (Acts 2:42, 46)…We may ask how there could have been enough teachers for all the home meetings. According to the principle in the New Testament (1 Cor. 14:26), it is doubtful that only one person in each group taught and all the others listened. The newly saved and baptized ones, being full of the Lord, must have had something with which to bubble over. They all could have said something regarding their salvation. It is doubtful that all the many new believers were dumb, waiting for Peter or John to say something. Peter and John could not have been in every group meeting. The first meetings of the church must have been “bubbling” meetings. Everyone there must have been beside himself. (The Practice of the Group Meetings, ch. 2, sec. 1)
The church in Zamboanga 