The 4 Marks of the Church: 1) The Apostles' Teaching

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42)

Whenever someone is baptized in an Episcopal church, and the rest of us renew our baptismal covenant, we vow to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and in the prayers.” When we do that, we are vowing to live together as the first followers of Jesus did. During Easter Week, we hear this verse on Tuesday. For the rest of this week, we will stay with this verse, in which we see the 4 marks of the Church by which the risen Jesus continues to be present with us.

When I look in the religion section of a major book store, I’m almost overwhelmed by the number of authors offering a “teaching” of some kind. They all look inviting. They all offer to help you in your life of faith. How do you sift the wheat from the chaff?

Start with the Apostles and their successors, the Bishops of the Church. When we Episcopalians say that we are an “apostolic” church, we mean that we seek to maintain a visible connection to the original 12 apostles. We believe that they chose successors, handed on to them what Jesus had done and taught, then laid hands on them. Those successors we now call bishops. It is their responsibility to “guard the faith, unity and discipline of the whole Church” (BCP, p.855).

Our bishop, Henry Parsley, and his suffragan bishop, Kee Sloan, exercise their teaching authority each month in the Diocesan newspaper, The Apostle. They also exercise it through the priests under their authority. At the celebration of my ministry, Bishop Parsley asked me what I had been reading lately, and then made a specific recommendation, Tokens of Trust, by our Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Being guided by my Bishop, I intend to take that book with me on my vacation to Camp McDowell next week.

That is how I intend to “continue in the apostles’ teaching.” Check out the Diocesan web site. Make a road trip to the Diocesan book store sometime. There’s good wheat there. Eat and enjoy.