I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of Ole Anthony before, but it sounds like he was quite the character. I read the article because the by-line caught my attention: ‘He dug through prosperity preachers’ trash and pushed a radical Christian community to be more like the first-century church.’

Well. I’ve never dug through anyone’s trash but I can’t stand prosperity preachers. I also think the church should be more like the first century-church. And I’m still attracted like a moth to a flame when people string words like ‘radical Christian community’ together. After all cautious respectability just won’t cut it.

Anthony, going back to those New Testament exhortations, became fixed on the idea that Christians today should be more like the first-century church. He and his followers committed to sharing all that they had with each other and with anyone else in need, following Acts 2:42–47. They bought housing on one street and called it “the Block,” meeting for daily Bible studies, shared meals, and day-to-day discipleship.

Having been part of a church in a city, I can tell you that a lack of proximity to one another rules a lot of things out. It’s hard to do a lot of the ‘one another’ stuff when you’re a 30 minute drive away or longer on public transport. But I’ve also been a part of a church on a council estate and proximity doesn’t always get you community either. Proximity helps but it’s not enough.

But, I think they’re on to something, at least in principle, if not as it turned out in practice. Discipleship is day-to-day stuff. Real fellowship is built around meals, shared regularly and the Bible is at the heart of it all. Not only that though, they committed themselves to be care for those in need.

Members agreed to take in homeless people, and Anthony devised a short-lived but much publicized plan to solve the homelessness problem, with every church in the country to take in one or two people in need. Few congregations signed on for the project, though some Dallas churches would send people to the Block with a note they weren’t set up to help but knew that Anthony was.

Well, good for them! Doesn’t it at least sound like the church we read in Acts? I think it does. A bit anyways. Read the last sentence of that last quote again.

They weren’t set up to help.

What does that mean? Is that a problem with their hearts or their structures or both? How about your church, my church, are we set up to help? Do we have people that will either open their homes or their wallets to help those in need? Or more likely, are we at such a distance from those in need that the thought of helping them (and inconveniencing us) is downright scary?

How can it be that our churches are not set up to help? In the discussion around how we place ourselves in this world, I wondered whether, one of the reasons why the church has struggled in much of the West is simply because we’re playing by their rules. Instead we should be trying to do something else entirely.

Ole Anthony tried to do something else entirely. Good for him.

He also sounded like a bit of a cult leader from time to time, so no ignoring that.