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The Church and Change

I often hear Christians lament the changes to which the Church finds itself responding in our day. No doubt, this is a challenge. Yet, the Church has been adapting to change from the beginning of its formation in Acts 2. Keep in mind that the period covered by Luke’s historical account of apostolic activity lasted only thirty years or so. That’s a relatively brief period - typically less than one generation. When many changes occur in that span of time, stress is produced both in individual persons and in the societies of which they are a part.

In an attempt to demonstrate that the Church as always had to respond to changes and pressures from within and without, I have identified some of the principal challenges the Church faced in its infancy:

From Peace to Persecution
Acts 2:47 tells us that the early church enjoyed a brief period, perhaps only days, maybe weeks when it had “favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.” Chapter three records an event which resulted in Peter’s and John’s arrest in chapter four. By the time we get to chapter 7, Jewish animosity toward the Church resulted in its first martyr and the first major wave of persecution which began driving Christians to other places. From then until the book closes, and beyond, the Church found itself responding to surges in the intensity of persecution from the Jews first, but also from the Romans. These were but a foreshadow of things to come in subsequent years as the values of Christians and Roman culture reached ever-higher levels of incompatibility.

Signs and Wonders from frequent to rare
Acts 2:43 records that after Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, that “fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.” Acts has 28 chapters, the first 14 chapters record 18 references to signs, wonders, miracles, or healing. The latter 14 chapters contain the following:

As believers became established in the faith and churches were formed and began to mature, God’s agenda shifted from His spectacular supernatural public acts to His profound supernatural personal work in the lives of believers as He conformed them to the likeness of the Lord Jesus.

From Jewish to Gentile
Ethnic tension is a scourge in the world today, so it shouldn’t surprise us that the Church had to work hard to keep from “blowing up” as it shifted from being entirely Jewish to largely Gentile. The Church began in Jerusalem, but by the end of Acts, it had spread throughout most of the known world. Over the course of the book, the church shifted its attention from concerns about Christians keeping the law of Moses to remaining pure in the face of the sexual, cultural, religious, and political norms which prevailed in the Gentile world

From Oral to Written
At the beginning of the book of Acts, there was no Christian Scripture. While Jewish believers were familiar with either the original Hebrew Scriptures or the Septuagint, the bulk of new believers had no background information about Jehovah, His laws or His dealing with humanity. They were starting without knowledge of God revealed in writing and without access to it. Over the period of time covered by the book of the Acts, most of the New Testament was written and distribution was commenced. While we would have to say that the church of the time rested heavily on oral transmission of truth, the Christian Scriptures would have been beginning to play a role. By the end of the second century, the canon, as we know it, had become the foundation of faith. Although many were still illiterate, the teaching they received was based on the New Testament documents rather than oral tradition.

From Local to Global
At a time like ours which is very aware of the impact of globalization on individual cultures, societies and even on individual persons, we can’t ignore the impact that the globalization of the Church would have had both on the believers within it and on the world in which it was spreading. While the church remained in Jerusalem under the direct influence of the apostles, it had a character and style which could not be maintained once it burgeoned in the Gentile world.

From mono-cultural to multi-cultural
One of the big shifts associated with the move from local to global was that the church began in a mono-cultural environment. Everyone understood everyone else, their motivations, the circumstances of their lives, their cares, passions, and habits of daily life. Once the Church became more multi-cultural, concerns were raised. Different attitudes and understandings had to be accommodated one way or another. The account of the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 is evidence of this, but the writings of the apostles, especially Paul, as he dealt with Roman and Greek cultures throughout the world show that the Jewish influence on the Church waned rapidly after the first few years.

From central government to local autonomy
Another aspect of the shift from local to global was the form of government. In the beginning, the apostles “ruled” from Jerusalem. Once Paul came on the scene, things began to change. Then when he began to travel and the number of converts and churches grew, the influence of the apostles in Jerusalem gave way to the authority of local godly elders who made decisions independently.

From purity to pollution
At the birth of the Church, its doctrine was pure. With its leaders personally mentored by the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, and having developed out of the Jewish faith which had an accurate view of God, there was no error. While Christian doctrine had yet to grow, particularly regarding the nature of the Church itself, the understanding of God, Christ, man, sin, redemption and the like were complete and correct. By the end of the thirty year period recorded in the Acts, pagan distortion and false doctrine had made their appearance. Paul and the other apostles wrote letters of warning and correction to the churches which were subject to these influences. At the beginning, the challenges to the church all came from outside of the Church. Thirty years later challenges still came from outside, but there was a whole new category arising from within the Church itself.

Sometimes, in our longing for simplicity in our faith and righteousness in our Christian walk, we long for something resembling what we perceive to be a pure, rather static vision of “the early Church.” Unfortunately, we overlook the reality that the early church was not static at all. It was under significant pressures from persecution, the shift in the way God was manifesting Himself in individual believers, in the Christian community and in the world, the rise of the Gentile majority, multi-culturalism, rapid expansion, decentralization, and the emergence of false doctrine. The Church faced all these, responded to them and through many “labours, toils, and snares,” has survived and even sometimes thrived for two thousand years.

Let us not be overwhelmed by the challenges before the Church today, but push on in faith, persevering to the end for the glory of God.

Ron Hughes
© August 2007