The Temple, The Church

I'm not at all sure where church as we understand it has its origins. It is possible that the "first church" that we read about, the gathering of Believers in Christ after his death and resurrection, is an archetype. Certainly they were followers of Jesus, and it is true that they gathered together to worship and encourage one another. In a sense they were very much representative of church as we experience it in 2017.

However, they didn't have a distinct building in town. There is repetitive mention of the temple in the book of Acts, and of disciples teaching there about the news of Jesus. But it's clear that the disciples aren't welcome in the temple courts; they are arrested, and the leaders of the Jews are hostile to them and their message. So they didn't have a church as we would recognize it.

They met together a lot, according to scripture, but usually in each other's houses. They also began to "plant" churches in other towns and cities, but these were typically groups that gathered in houses as well. This pattern likely continued for centuries. The first evidence of a purpose-made church is possibly a modified home near the Euphrates River from around 240 A.D. It took official government approval, by way of Constantine, before church buildings really took off in the fourth century.

There are some lessons here. The first is a lesson about holiness. Worshipping Jesus in your living room does not confer holiness, and neither does doing so in an elaborate, beautiful, expensive cathedral. Holiness is not place-specific. God doesn't avoid the humble churches or elaborate chapels, nor does He scoff at living rooms, bedrooms, or overpasses.

So God is not bound to our choice locations for worship and teaching. He could just as easily be at the park among friends as they enjoy one another's company as He might be at a communion service at the local Baptist church. Or He might not be at either place. (But really that isn't true; of course God is present at both places, just as surely as He is present everywhere; it's the peculiar closeness of His Spirit that may be missing.)

If it is possible then that God isn't especially active in our purpose-built places of worship, why then are we so dead set on believing that that's where He should be? It may have taken Christ's followers a few hundred years to set up this institution of church as we've come to understand and expect it, but it likely wasn't for a lack of desire. The earliest believers simply weren't physically able to construct churches for themselves. They were too busy dodging authorities to do so. Many of them died during this time.

What Christians really needed in order to establish the purpose-built church was the OK of the government. This is still true all over the world. The truest representations of the Kingdom of Jesus happen to be loathsome things to the Empires of Man. I don't expect for this truth to ever change in this life.

And yet the history of the church experience as we know it is representative of the opposite phenomenon. From Constantine on, the Empires of Man, particularly in the West, have allowed and in many cases encouraged the growth of the institution of the church. One might have to conclude that this institution as we've received it is maybe not the truest representation of the Kingdom of Jesus. I would go so far even as to make it a rule - if the authorities of men take no issue with your church gathering, then the Kingdom isn't very close at hand.

This is not to say that the constant threat of martyrdom is a blessing. Who among us wants to live life that way? I can assure you that the early church didn't welcome the persecution, even though they likely understood it as necessary. There is certainly something to be said for worshipping in safety.

Yet Jesus told us that we would suffer persecution, and that we should be glad when it came. Now martyrdom is certainly persecution, but death is not the only way we could be punished. How about being beaten for standing up for what is just? Or simply being ostracized because you stick to your convictions? Those sound like persecution to me. They also sound like the actions that officials have taken against Christians throughout history. Many times those officials were representatives of the state; many times representatives of the church. A lot of the time they were both.

The most damning indictment of the institution of the church as we experience it may very well be its institutional nature. On one hand we can praise God for Constantine; look what his empirical reign did for the growth of the Christian religion. On the other hand, what good did it actually do? If a false Gospel experience is spread more widely and quickly, is it a net positive or net negative? I for one believe that anything short of the Good News of Jesus is necessarily a loss.

The institutional experience of church life seems to be what we're stuck with. The average American experience is one peppered with institutional interactions. In a typical week we go to work, stop by the bank, visit some stores and restaurants, and once or twice go to church. The starkest differences among these experiences are the times of day, the mix of people at each location, and the expectation that I should be happy when I arrive.

The church is really just our modern temple, a place where the most studied believers among us stand stalwart as guardians of our faith practice. It's interesting that Jesus so often went first to the Synagogue (or temple) in each town he visited in order to preach. It would be tempting to believe that he went there because God's people were there, and God's word was being taught. It's more accurate though to assume he went there first because those were the people in town who most needed to hear his good news.

I suppose the same is true in our day; and just as in his day, Jesus isn't often welcome. You see, he's a disruptor. Whereas the Jews had a grudging peace with their Roman rulers, Jesus's very presence threatened to upend it. His teachings challenged all that was established and enforceable. His message threatened the institutional nature of the temple just as surely as it threatens the institution of the church.