Primitive Church

In an earlier article, we began looking at the description of the early church and compared that early view of the church to what we see today. We found the early church summarized in Acts 2:42: “…they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

Now, let’s go on an imaginary mission trip. We are traveling to the outer limits of civilization, to a tribe of people who haven’t communicated with the outside world in well over 2,000 years. Fortunately for us, though, they do speak a known language. In fact, we carry with us a copy of the Bible written in their language. We don’t have much time to spend with these people, but we are successful on this missionary journey. Many of the tribe repent of their sinful lives and now are on a journey of following Christ as Lord and Savior. We leave the tribe, but they have the Bible in their language. They are solid in their faith and in basic Christian doctrine, but we didn’t explain anything at all about how to “do church” before we left.

If we were to return to that tribe a year or two later, do you think their church would look anything at all like the organization we call church? Given only the Bible and no traditions, what do you think it would be like? I’m sure they would gather together regularly, but would they have a Sunday morning “worship service?” They would have elders and deacons, but would they have a single leader they called pastor? No doubt they would be compelled to go and spread the Good News of Jesus, but would they do that by inviting outsiders to attend their meetings? Would they erect a huge building dedicated to their meetings, which also costs them a small fortune to maintain? Would most of their activities primarily focus on making sure their members had a fun time? Would they think every bad thing that happened to them was the work of the devil, and every good thing a blessing from God?

I could go on, but you get the point.

You might be surprised at the number of things we do as a church which has no biblical basis. We bring a lot of baggage with us when we think about the church, gather as the church, and act as the church. Some of that baggage may be harmless. A lot of it just weighs us down, keeping us from being all God wants us to be. During your Bible-reading time, I encourage you to try to leave off that baggage. That’s difficult, given where most of us come from (whether good or bad). But try to read and understand Scripture as it is written—given who wrote it and the audience to whom it was originally written—and leave off any preconceived notions. Then, you might just start seeing things in a little different light and, in turn, begin leaving behind the baggage when you go out to “be the church.”