Where Did Current 'Church' Come From? What Constantine Changed and What Jesus Built

This is Part 6 of an 18-part series drawn from Kurt Olson's book, The Endgame of God. New posts publish every Wednesday at  GoMultiply.org/blog.

Most of us assume the building-based, clergy-led, Sunday-morning model comes straight from the Bible. The historical record tells a different — and freeing — story.

Ask most Christians where the Sunday-morning, building-centered, clergy-led model of church comes from, and they will tell you it comes from the Bible. But does it really? Understanding where it actually came from is one of the most freeing things I know, because it hands the ministry back to ordinary believers.

Dating back to the birth of Jesus, the wise men worshiped the child Jesus in a house (Matthew 2:11). The Holy Spirit was first poured out on the Jews, not in the temple or a synagogue, but in the upper room of a house where a hundred twenty believers were gathered (Acts 2:1–2). The Holy Spirit was poured out on the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius (Acts 10:25&44). The early believers "broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts" (Acts 2:46), and Paul said that he taught and proclaimed Christ "publicly and from house to house" (Acts 20:20).

Even the way they used the temple courts was not at all what we mean by "going to church" today. The early disciples did not own the temple or run it; it was a public place, full of people who were not yet followers of Jesus, where the apostles boldly proclaimed that the very leaders in charge of that temple had crucified the Messiah. That is why it was dangerous for the believers to meet there. So, the Temple was the first public gathering of the church. The private gatherings took place in homes. In fact, when persecution came, notice where the persecutors went to find the church: Saul went "from house to house" dragging believers off to prison (Acts 8:3). The church was gathering in their homes.

Here is a thought worth pondering. When you compare today's building-based church system to the practices of the New Testament church, today's church system doesn't resemble the early believers gathered in homes — it resembles the first-century synagogue system. A synagogue had a dedicated building, a ruler who presided, a set weekly service, Scripture readings, a sermon, prayers, an offering, and a benediction. Read that list again slowly. It is a remarkably close description of a typical Sunday morning in church today. The very form Jesus' first followers were raised in — the form He spent three years training out of them — is largely the form we have fallen back into. This doesn't make buildings sinful or Sunday gatherings wrong. But it should make us ask an honest question: are we operating more like the upper room disciples or like the synagogue system? 

So how did we get from where we started to where we are today? In the early fourth century, the emperor Constantine changed the spiritual landscape when he "invented Christianity." The faith moved, in a single generation, from persecuted to favored — and as it did, the outward forms of the surrounding pagan religion were gradually adopted and given Christian labels.

Here is the part that surprises many people. Centuries later, the Protestant Reformation gloriously recovered the Gospel of grace — salvation by faith in Christ alone. I thank God for it. But notice what it largely kept: the structure. The priest became the pastor. The Eucharist was replaced by the Sunday morning sermon. The building, the professional up front, and the passive seated, spectator congregation mostly remained unchanged. They reformed a great deal of our theology but very little of our operating system. The building-based old wineskin system survived the Reformation almost entirely intact. 

First, Jesus is the builder. He builds His ekklesia — His people gathered for His purposes — out of the disciples we make. The church is not a building He wants us to construct; it is His people that He assembles for His purposes. Second, look closely at "the gates of hell." Gates are defensive. A church cowering behind walls, hoping to survive, is not the picture of church Jesus painted. He described His ekklesia on the offensive, storming the gates of hell to rescue souls — and He promised those gates cannot hold.

None of this is meant to condemn anyone's church gathering, building, or any pastor. It is meant to free us. If the building-based system is a human (Constantinian) invention rather than a divine command, then we are free to recover the simple, reproducing, unstoppable life and practices of the early believers — meeting anywhere, at any time, and on any day, led by ordinary disciples, on the attack for the advancement of the Kingdom.

Read back through those New Testament examples — the worship, the healings, the Spirit poured out, the breaking of bread, all in homes. Does that change what the word "church" actually means to you, and where you believe the church of Jesus can gather?