Cynical Christians everywhere will tell you, “There is no perfect church.” They are like the person who wakes up after tossing and turning all night, looks in the mirror, and proclaims, “This is going to be a bad hair day.” Reality does not match up with the ideal.

What is this ideal? Well, I'm here to tell you that there is a perfect church. I found it in Atlanta on Ralph Abernathy Drive. It is actually called that: “The Perfect Church!” Maybe we should just use it as a model.

Or maybe a better place to look would be in the Bible. Acts 2:42-47 gives us a picture of what the body of Christ should look like. The first thing to note is that it has nothing to do with a building or with a denomination. It is a group of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Specifically, we see this first church engaged in seven corporate activities:

7 Corporate Activities

1. Teaching

2. Fellowship

3. Prayer

4. Power ministries

5. Sharing

6. Worship

7. Outreach

There are six individual responses I see - I'll save 'em for a later blog.