Thank you for the question on church practices, “Why are the practices of today’s churches different from that of the early church in the Bible?”
In Acts 2, the text states what the early church practiced following the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The text says this, “42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 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, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
For one’s consideration, here are the activities of the early church:
A. Devoted to the Apostles’ Teaching
B. Devoted to Fellowship of Believer
C. Devoted to Breaking of Bread being understood as celebrating Holy Communion
D. Devoted to Prayer and Thankfulness with songs
E. Devoted to Free Will Offerings and Gifts to feed the poor and hungry
F. Devoted to Share Meals
G. Devoted to Evangelism
As the Christians begin to grow and multiply, the gathering of believers in one place was no longer possible in the Temple. Jews and Gentiles who became Christians began to meet in homes and those homes were scattered throughout the city. It is likely that their meetings were not one hour since people would come and go depending on individual activities for the day.
In many ways churches do hold to some form of the early Christian practices. Churches have meetings through the week even as the early churches met at different times of the week. They would gather together on the first day of the week even as today Christians meet together on the first day of the week. Churches held biblical distinctiveness even as churches hold to various biblical and theological differences. The early church received tithes and gifts even as churches received tithes and gifts. The early church used personal evangelism and open forum while the modern churches use mass evangelism and mass media.
As a Christian, I wish on the Lord’s Day that we would be able to spend more time than just the one hour or two hours. The loss opportunities of fellowship, accountability, and even mentoring leaves believers feeling alone and lonely at times. We speak about fellowship with believers, but in reality that rarely happens in the gathering. It’s Bible study or sermons whereby believers listen but rarely have few opportunities to share life with others.
Summary: The modern church may have the appearance of life, but it may be nearly spiritually dead whereby transformation of lives is abnormal than normal.
-Kingston