Steps & Missteps
Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow ---- EPCOT.
Epcot was originally conceived by Walt Disney as an experimental planned community which would serve as a center for American enterprise & urban living. Disney intended EPCOT to be a real city, with commercial, residential, industrial, & recreation centers, and connected by it’s own mass-transportation-systems. Walt Disney had a vision. He died before the vision could be carried out, an no one really had his vision (or took it up), and so EPCOT never became what it was intended to be. Instead, it became an overpriced theme park in Orlando that people visit.
Jesus had a vision of a new community. He called it His church, which means: a group of people called out around the gospel and marked by the call to carry the gospel into the world. Jesus also died before the vision was realized, but He then rose from the dead to ensure it would become what He intended it to be. We must be committed to not letting the church become another EPCOT (an entertainment place that people visit occasionally).
As we return to our study of the book of Acts, we will learn from the STEPS & MISSTEPS of the early church, “what are we to become?” and “what should matter most to us as the church?”