The "Church"?

Do you dare imagine a time when there were no church buildings, no Sunday morning worship and in the biggest cities you knew, all the believers in that city could fit in a large room? When you heard the word "church" it simply meant "get together". And "life" was synonymous with the six to six and a half days you worked. Oh, and the only Bible you had were the books of Moses, Poets and Prophets (what we call today, the Old Testament).

Now, the guy who told you about Christ sent you an email, oh, he was in prison, and it sounded like this...

Therefore I, a prisoner for working for Christ, beg you to work your work week worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.

However, he has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. That is why David said,

“When he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people.”

Notice that it says “he ascended.” This clearly means that Christ also descended to our lowly world. And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself.

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to us as we get together: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build us up, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, which is us. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

After reading this, when you got together with other believers from your city, what would you do? 

• Would you decide to build buildings to continue to facilitate your get togethers?
• Would you decide to split up into many little get togethers, each set deciding that somehow your set gave you more options or was better than the other get togethers?
• What would you do at your get togethers?
• What would you do differently in your six and a half days of work?

What happened to us?