A Brief History of the Church of Christ

The original church of Christ was founded on the Jewish feast-day called (in English) "Pentecost".

 

This church was exclusively Jewish, praised God daily in the Jewish temple with all its Jewish temple activities (including robed choirs, and musicians with loud instruments, and incense, and animal sacrifices, and face-to-the-ground ritual prayers three times a day), and lived communally, considering their possessions as belonging to the commune.

 

They had no deacons, but as time passed, the need arose for dedicated servers to distribute food, to "wait on tables". These servers eventually became known as "deacons", and were originally men-only. It is unclear if these deacons did the actual grunt-work of food distribution, or if they were administrators in the food-distribution side of things. At least one of them side-lined as a proclaimer of their group's message.

 

This church made other changes as time went on. One of the first big changes, besides the creation of the new office of "deacon", was a pulling-away from the communistic format; people, even Christians, just aren't wired to maintain such an economy for long; their communism soon showed itself impractical, and a less severe sharing lifestyle took its place.

 

At first this church got along well with the general populace of their fellow Jews, but got cross-ways with the political elite, who were blamed by this church for an illegal murder of God's chosen leader for the nation and the world. (It was God's resurrection of this chosen leader, Jesus, that motivated the early church to turn the world upside down with their message.)

 

This conflict with the Jewish elites led to a persecution of the church by the political leaders, which resulted in scattering the church members, disciples ("students", "learners", "followers"), out of the area of Jerusalem where the movement had begun, into surrounding cities, and even beyond.

 

As the church moved outward, away from the Jewish temple with its accouterments, they kept their lifelong traditions of studying each Sabbath day (Saturday) in the synagogues (Jewish houses of learning, particularly for learning their scriptures) of the various towns where they landed. There they made more converts to their new religion of "Jesus is Master", from among the Jews already in those synagogue groups.

 

Even further from the central beginning place, their message was heard by non-Jews in the synagogues, "Gentiles" who were drawn to the Jewish religion being taught in those synagogues. Many of these Gentile "God-fearers" were drawn to this message, and were initiated into the disciples' "Way" by being immersed in water in the name of Jesus The Chosen One (or “Christ”, from the Greek for “anointed one”).

 

As the Gentile population of the Way increased, some of the Jewish segment of the Way insisted they needed to convert to full Judaism before being considered as truly part of the Way. This was a subtle, but extremely important psychological alteration of the message of the Way. Originally the thought was that religious salvation was provided to believers in Jesus because of what Jesus had done to save them, and the believers were declaring their loyalty to him in their immersion. Now the subtle psychological shift was made that the believer had to meet certain criteria (ie, being fully Jewish) in order to be saved, that salvation was dependent on their right-ness rather than the right-ness of Jesus given to them as a free gift.

 

This led to another large morphing of the church of Christ, that non-Jewish believers did not have to become Jewish in order to be part of the new community of Christ. The decision was made by the early church leaders who were still in Jerusalem, that since neither Jew nor Gentile was saved by “being Jewish”, but by faith in Jesus, then the Gentiles did not need to “become Jewish” to be saved. This decree was disseminated to all the towns where disciples were meeting in synagogues. The only “Jewishness” required of them was a few basic restrictions common to all non-Jews living among Jews, as specified in the Jewish scriptures (Lev 17-18).

 

Whereas Jesus intended these two broad groupings within his church to be united in purpose and spirit, with Paul urging them to be eager to maintain the spirit of unity in the bond of peace, making One New Man out of the Two, regardless of outward differences, the differences proved to be overwhelming for many. After the Jewish capital, Jerusalem, and its central temple, were destroyed in war, fewer Jews were drawn to the religion of Jesus, and the community turned even further away from Jewishness. Many non-Jewish believers took the destruction of Jerusalem as a sign that God was finished with the Jews (despite being told point-blank that was not the case), and they themselves began to avoid any association with Judaism.

 

A result was yet another alteration to the nature of the church. They now wore the name “Christian” to distinguish themselves as something different from their Jewish roots, and they eschewed all things Jewish, such as the observance of the Sabbath, and the keeping of Jewish holy days, and the use of instruments in their praise activities. Whereas the first generation of believers understood that God had moved out of the Jewish temple into the hearts of the Jesus-followers, the later generations re-adopted the old idea that God needed a physical temple to dwell in. (This was a Jewish idea from of old, but not exclusively Jewish; it was a dominant belief among pagans also.) So it wasn’t terribly long before grand basilicas, church buildings, were being erected, and the believers were instructed to come into the churches (the word now referring to the physical structure “where God dwells” instead of the people in whom God dwells), where they could meet with God every Resurrection Day (Sunday). Sunday was already important to the Christians, having been the day when Jesus rose from the tomb, and the day of that first Pentecost, and the day of other significant events, but now it was firmly codified as the Christian day for meeting with God in the Christian “temples”.

 

Other changes began to show up in some branches of the church, while other branches stayed more with the older original ideas. Still other branches adopted even different ideas and forms. Eventually the dominant branch, at least as most of Today’s world is concerned, became the Roman Catholic Church.

 

Centuries later, particularly after the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s made copies of the Bible more readily available to more people, disciples began to see that their Roman Catholic religion had moved far from the original first-century religion, and many efforts were made to reform the Catholic system. This resulted in many new “churches”, often protesting so vehemently against the Catholic system that they became known corporately as “Protestants”.

 

Then some of these Protestants developed the idea of abandoning all modern religion, and “Restoring” the original first-century religion of Christianity. Thus was born, in the late 1700s, the Restoration Movement.

 

The believers in this movement also had their various divisions, among which is the modern-day American “Church of Christ”, which itself has various branches (some of whom deny the validity of the others).

 

Although the idea of restoring the first-century church is noble, in reality, these believers are far more still affected by their Catholic history than they realize. They have more in common with the other groups (“those Protestants”) than they do with the original church of Christ established on Pentecost. They go further than others on some issues, and are probably closer, at least in outward form, to the late-first-century church than other modern-day groups. And most significantly, many of them believe they have reached full “Restoration”, and therefore they *are* the original church, and that they are the only group who is that original church. Thus they do not see themselves as one of the many “denominations” (named groups) of the Protestants; they are the original, and the others have no real claim to be that church, or even descendants of it. But the truth of the matter is that all modern-day “Christian” groups, warts and all, are descendants of that original church.

 

That original church didn’t stay the same. It evolved, with God’s approval, over time. It did not stay static in form. There is no going back to the original. There are only close approximations to a general snapshot-in-time of that first-century church at its various stages. We should get as close as is practical, realizing that exactitude can’t be achieved, and should welcome as siblings all other believers who strive to be loyal to the Master, even if they “miss it” in details we are “certain” we have nailed.