An Excellent Post on the Book of Acts and the Descriptive/Prescriptive Issue

Keeping with the theme of description and prescription, I'm linking to an excellent post that Guy Muse wrote a few years ago entitled simply Acts--description or prescription?

I highly encourage you to read it. Guy deals with the issue charitably, asking some good questions.

Below I've included the comment I left on Guy's piece:

Guy,

I've read your blog for a while but this is my first comment.

My belief is that the book of Acts is prescriptive for church life of all time. My reason for believing this is that the disciples were present at that time. They either gave approval to church practices or told the people to change what they were doing. They also wrote directly to churches.

If we follow the apostolic approved practices of church life, then we can know with certainty that how we are functioning is acceptable to God.

If we depart from the church model we see in Acts, then we have no certainty that what we are doing is God-honoring. If we leave Acts behind, we wander into the danger of postmodernistic, "almost anything-goes" territory.

If we follow what we read in Acts, church life becomes much simpler. Also, instead of spending money on buildings, programs, and pastoral salaries, we can give it to both the poor and needy and international missions work.