Don't take me for granite!I’m sure that some people won’t agree with this series of posts. And that’s fine; everyone is entitled to their opinion. Speaking of everyone being entitled to their opinion, I can’t stand it when I hear people drone on and on about being a “First Century Church”. There, I said it. I don’t want the church to “return” to the first century. Everyone can ready their stones. But, before you decide to cut me off forever, why not hear me out? And why not put down those rocks while you read…

“Why”, you may ask, “did you turn away from the new year revelry to talk about such a non-revelous topic?” Well, yesterday Tony Morgan’s Blog sported a post about a new book called Pagan Christianity?. In his post, Tony talks about some of the authors’ claims and gives us various quotes from the book.

Here are a few:

  • “The one who plants a first-century-styled church leaves that church without a pastor, elders, a music leader, a Bible facilitator, or a Bible teacher… They will bring their own songs, they will write their own songs, they will minister out of what Christ has shown them–with no human leader present!”
  • “Almost everything that is done in our contemporary churches has no basis in the Bible.”
  • “There is not a single verse in the entire New Testament that supports the existence of the modern-day pastor!”

As you can probably tell from the quotes, the purpose of the book is to convince believers that they have been doing Christianity all wrong. Their pastors are wrong. Their praise and worship leaders are wrong. Their momma’s were probably wrong too. The book goes on to sing the praises of the “home church” model as the only right way of doing church. Needless to say, I have some problems with this book, and I haven’t even read it yet. :P

And that got me thinking about people’s desire to return to the “New Testament Church”.

I get the fact that when most people talk about a return to the “First Century Church” (also referred to as the “New Testament Church”) what they really mean is a return to the community and loving aspects that they perceive in it. The question is, why do people feel such a strong pull to return to the first century? I mean, the entire book quoted above, along with countless others, is devoted to regaining something the church was perceived to have lost after the first century. Head over to amazon.com and search for “First Century Church”, you’ll get nearly 8,000 results.

As an historian and student of Christianity in the 2nd through 4th centuries, there’s an instinctual negative reaction to people claiming that they really want a return to the “First Century Church”. Most of the time, I don’t think that these people fully understand the consequences of what they are asking for. Much like wishes in the short story The Monkey’s Paw, a return to the “First Century Church” would come at a high price. My suspicion is that most people view the earliest Christians through rose-coloured glasses. In this series, we’re going to try to remove those bejeweled spectacles and see both the good, and bad of the first century church.

Ok, if you still want to stone me, go ahead. But, if you do, you won’t get to hear anymore about the early church. Plus, at the end of this series, I’ll be giving everyone some cake! Srlsy!