Going to Church in the First Century

Today, I want to try and give you a picture of what going to church in the first century was like — what it looked and felt like, and how it embodied everything we’ve been talking about. But we have to start with a word or two about the phrase “going to church” and a few of the other phrases we use to talk about gathering together with other Christians — like “attending church” or referring to our gatherings as “services.” I find those terms inadequate and unhelpful, BECAUSE those terms fail to capture the intent of Christian assemblies AND what I think the earliest Christians experienced when they met.

Ideas of attendance, ceremony, and even assembly just don’t capture the spirit or purpose of early Christian gatherings. Early Christian gatherings were humble gatherings that edified Christians. They were small in scale, domestic in setting, rhetorically unpolished, ritually unimpressive, and mostly restricted to Christians. Their aim was not to impress the masses but rather to equip the Christians as individuals and communities to live their faith attractively. To this end, their gatherings fed them with spiritual food from the Word and reminded them of their Lord and King in the Lord’s Supper. Those were things necessary to sustain them as they followed Jesus in a dangerous world.

Join me today as we discuss:

1. House churches and households in the first century

2. What a typical household looked like in early Christianity and how the household functioned in society

3. The importance of hospitality in the world of the early church

4. How church structures encourage or discourage community and intimacy

5. The five kinds of gatherings in the ministry of Jesus

6. The five church models we see in 21st Century America

7. Why I am a fan of house churches

8. Practical reasons why I think house churches will become more common in the United States

9. How discipleship and ideology transfer happens best

10.The best book I've ever found that describes what it felt like to be part of a first century church

11.My three non-negotiables for what church has to look like to embody everything we’ve been talking about in this podcast

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Thanks for listening! And remember, you are greatly loved.

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Resources for Today’s Show:

1. Christine Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (1999).
2. Rosaria Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World (2018).
3. Robert Banks, Going to Church in the First Century (1990).
4. Robert J. Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community: Spirit and Culture in Early House Churches (3rd ed., 2020).