What are the characteristics of the Church? This was the question I asked at a Vestry retreat I was leading for a small church I served about 20 years ago. … At this particular retreat, the Vestry divided up into small discussion groups at first. Each group was given a passage from the Acts of the Apostles that described the behaviour of the very first Christians — those apostles who had been close disciples and friends of Jesus, and the people that they had baptised into the Christian faith at the very beginning of the Church.