There was genuine communication. For the first time since the confusion of the Tower of Babel, the ways people expressed themselves was no longer a problem. People could actually understand what one another said. I am not sure. In over 50 years of watching church people operate, the impression I get is that too many folks get some of their greatest religious enjoyment by insuring that NO communication, no give and take, no back and forth, should ever be evidenced.
Communication is only possible if one side absolutely buys into the jargon of the other.
That is the problem right now in that continuing battle over the role of gays and lesbians in the church. Those who believe that homosexual activity is a particularly horrible sin and those who think it is not have been going at one another tooth and nail. And the meanness of the rhetoric makes us want to say a plague on BOTH your houses. It is no wonder that those outside the church are not particularly attracted to us, much less at a rate of 3,000 in a day. Something else was evident in that post-Pentecost Jerusalem church, a real concern for growing in the faith.