Church

When you hear the word “church,” what do you immediately think of? A building, an organisation or a group of people?

All of these are correct in one way or other, because we use this rather simple word to describe all this and more. People talk about “going to church,” often meaning the physical building where a congregation meets. Someone might also refer to a “friend from church,” meaning an individual within a group of people.

When the followers of Jesus first started meeting together, they didn’t have buildings—there were no places called “churches.” The first followers of Jesus were mostly Jews, who believed the Messiah had come and that his life, death and resurrection were a fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. They met together in Jewish places of worship, and then privately in homes to discuss Jesus and His ideas.

The good news of Jesus soon reached out into the non-Jewish world, and followers of Jesus Christ—or “Christians,” as they began to be called—met together to support one another, worship and pray together, celebrate communion and learn more about living the Christian life (read about these first Christians in Acts 2:42-47, Acts 11:22-26 and Acts 16:11-15).

These verses depict a vibrant, sharing, faith-filled community, excited about living “the Jesus way.” However, if you look through some of the letters in the New Testament, you soon discover that these groups of believers, these “churches,” found themselves in difficulty.

They became disorganised, fought among themselves, split into groups and factions, and lived lives plainly against the principles Jesus had talked about. Again and again, the New Testament writers encouraged them to get on with living the Jesus way, to keep each other accountable, to be lights to the world and leave their old lives behind them.

It’s easy to see many of these same problems in churches today. People don’t get on as they should, live like they should and seem to be doing all the things the first churches had difficulty with. It’s easy to get discouraged, to see the problems and decide that the Christian life should be lived outside a community of faith—or perhaps, not lived at all.

It’s easy to see the problems but it’s better to be part of the solution. In Hebrews 10:25, Paul encouraged the believers to “not give up meeting together” but to keep on encouraging each other. If church difficulties are getting you down, remember that it’s Jesus, not people, that we need to keep our eyes on.