Upper rooms
There is a similar growth, and a rather interesting one, apparent in the use of the buildings for Christian worship. The first meeting place seems to have been “the upper room” (Acts 1:13) — the definite article being used as you will find in the margin and in new versions, which would be the room in which the first breaking of bread took place, the Lord’s supper, when Jesus met with his disciples “in the upper room.” (Probably loaned to him by one of his sympathizers, almost certainly by Mary the mother of John Mark.) And this upper room, if it were the house of Mary the mother of Mark, is still in use in Acts 12.12. This is the occasion when Peter had been released from prison: “And when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered together praying.”
Now we have already seen previously that the numbers of the disciples in Jerusalem had grown marvelously in these early days, and though a number of the disciples were met in the house of Mary, clearly there would have been many other places where the Christians were meeting in Jerusalem at that time, though it is possible that this house still remained the headquarters of the Christian church. There are some indications in the New Testament, even in the Acts of the Apostles, of the establishment of regular meeting places other than people’s homes. We know that a great many of the Christian churches were able to meet in the homes of their wealthier brethren: “The church that is in thy house,” is a familiar phrase in the epistles.
In Ephesus, however, we find Paul either renting or being offered the use of the school of Tyrannus.
“And he went into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. But when divers were hardened, and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus. and this continued by the space of two years” (Acts 19:9-10).
So for two years Paul’s headquarters for his preaching was in the school of Tyrannus, which may not, of course, have been a building, it may have been a portico or grounds in which Tyrannus, probably some philosopher or teacher of the times, used to assemble his students, or disciples. But Paul by hook or by crook (by some of the means by which Christadelphians have acquired Odd fellows halls and all manner of strange places to hold their meetings) found himself holding his meetings in the school of Tyrannus, and he used it for two years.
There is an interesting verse in James where, you will remember, James is upbraiding the brethren because they had the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ with partiality. And he said: “For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come also a poor man in vile raiment; and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: are y not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?” (James 2:2-3). Now the interesting point for our study is that the word James uses here for assembly is “synagogue.” We have already seen how James, the leader of the church at Jerusalem, in New Testament times, certainly in the Acts of the Apostles, was very much influenced by his Jewish background. Now here is James using the word synagogue of the Christian meeting places, which suggests that the church by this time was meeting in halls or public places, or churches of some kind that were probably based upon the synagogue worship with which they were already so familiar.
Dr. Blunt makes an interesting point, which I would not attach too much importance to, but which I thought was very interesting in tracing out the development of the church in the first century. Paul says “What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not” (1Cor 11:22). Here he is upbraiding the brethren because of their disorderly conduct at the Lord’s Table. As we know they used to have a “love feast,” which they used to bring their food to, and in the course of the meal they remembered Jesus. But, of course, like all human things it got out of hand. As soon as men start touching the loveliest and holiest of things they seem as though they have to spoil it in some way; so that which began with the purest idea, that the brethren (and especially probably the poorer brethren) should be able once a week to have a good meal together and in the course of the meal to remember the Lord Jesus Christ, now degenerates, and we find rich men bringing, as we should say today, their cold chicken and bottles of champagne, and really living it up, while the poorer brethren had not enough to eat.
Blunt makes the point that there is a distinction being made here by the Apostle between the houses that they customarily eat and drink in and the house of God. This is holier than their houses. This is the place where they meet to worship God and remember him. As I say, I am not going to press the point, but I think it is interesting as a straw in the wind as to what was developing. Clearly, it seems to me, towards the end of the first century the church was meeting in buildings, which they had erected or taken over for that purpose. In some cases it would be the homes of wealthy brethren, and in other cases it would be buildings such as the school of Tyrannus, or other places such as the “synagogue” of James where their services would take place. Perhaps it is in this context that we should understand “Let your women keep silence in the church,” which you will find the New English Bible translates “keep silence in church,” taking the church here as meaning the place where the ecclesia met together.
Eusebius, when he wrote his history in the 4th century, relates rather interestingly that between 200-250 AD “the old edifices” were replaced by more splendid buildings. In other words, by this date the church had grown opulent, grown in organization, developed a hierarchy, become much more popular and numerous, and they were pulling down what Eusebius calls the old buildings and putting up more splendid edifices, probably more like the churches we are familiar with today (in England) which often date from Mediaeval times. It suggests that the church buildings’ originally were less ornate and more functional in these earlier days. It suggests, too, that if between 200-250 they were pulling down the old buildings, then those old buildings must have been up fairly early in the beginning of the second century. It is probably a similar story to our own.
Christadelphian Halls
Those of you who have read Wilson’s Sects and Society, in which he describes the growth and organization of the Christadelphian community, will remember that he is somewhat out of date, because he is talking about “the creaky little wooden stairs and the funny little buildings at the top”, that Christadelphians meet in, and little back alleys and Odd fellows Halls and things like that, which, of course, was true a generation or two ago. It is still true, of course, of some of the ecclesias, but we have grown, as the first century church had grown. We have replaced these in a great many cases.
As a community we now meet in very nice Christadelphian halls, functional buildings. Not ornate, but functional. Splendid little buildings in which we delight to worship God and to hold our meetings. And so in our own history the thing has changed quite rapidly. In my early days in the truth it was fairly unusual for a Christadelphian ecclesia to meet in their own hall. They might have a tin hut somewhere, a Scouts Hall that they had managed to buy up, but to have a splendid purpose-built Christadelphian Hall was almost unheard of. Now this is nearer the norm, and those ecclesias that have not got one look rather enviously on their better-off brethren1.
The lesson that we can draw from the history of the early church is that there should be a necessary balance between the one and the other. It was not very long before the functional buildings, perfectly adapted to the needs of the church towards the end of the first century, became the ornate churches, the cathedrals, the “livings” of the bishops and archbishops of the third and fourth centuries; and although I think the balance is generally well observed today, I do believe this needs watching. It gladdens my heart to see these lovely Christadelphian halls being built, perfectly suitable for what they are wanted for, yet we must never lose sight of the fact that the ecclesia is essentially the membership and not the buildings in which they meet. That is what happened, and it could happen again.
Church services
There are gleanings in the New Testament which give us some idea of the way in which they conducted their meetings and I want to look at this a little more closely. In many respects, as I think we saw earlier, they were not unlike our own meetings. They had a president, e.g. Acts 1, Peter was president; Acts 15, James was president. Probably later on, one of the elders would act as president, or some of the elders might have shared the duty, just as we ourselves elect some of our more able brethren to be presidents of the ecclesia and these often double-up as arranging brethren. They met for the breaking of bread, and as we have already seen, in primitive times they shared a meal together — the “love feast” — which quite clearly was dropped before the end of the first century, probably for the reasons we have already seen.
There was preaching and teaching of the word of God and reading of the Scriptures. “Give attendance to reading”. Here 1 Tim 4:13 seems to mean, and the new versions certainly take it to mean, the public reading of the word of God: for example the NET reads “give attention to the public reading of scripture”. The Roman Governor Pliny writing to the Emperor Trajan at the end of the first century refers specifically to the meeting of Christians in their churches in which he says they “sing hymns in honor of Christ.” And we have already seen that as part of their meeting they used to have a collection.
Breaking Of Bread
I would like to speak a little more about the breaking of bread. The fullest account we have is the one in 1Corinthians 11, and there is the implication that the church met regularly to remember the Lord’s death. But the New Testament does not seem to have institutionalized the communion as the later churches did. In a book called A History of the Corruptions of Christianity, Dr. Priestly enumerates, for example, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as one of the corruptions of Christianity; similarly, the doctrine of the Trinity, and many other things with which we would be quite familiar and in which we would agree with him.
But he also includes the breaking of bread, or the communion service, as one of the corruptions of Christianity, his reason being that the church in the second century at least, if not earlier, had “institutionalized” the Lord’s remembrance. The breaking of bread was not ever intended to be a kind of “sacrament” of the church. It was intended to be a simple remembrance of Jesus, and all the ornate paraphernalia which the church invented to go with this Dr. Priestly sees as a corruption of what was originally intended, and what was originally practiced, when in those delightful words of Acts. “they continued in the Apostles doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and prayers; and with gladness and joyfulness of heart did eat their meat and break bread from house to house” (Acts 2:42). The church came to regard it as some kind of magic rite, as though by attending at the communion service and taking the “sacraments” a man was magically transformed in some way.
Now I am not suggesting that we are doing anything of that kind, but I do think it is worth noting that this is what happened, and we must not “institutionalize” the remembrance of the Lord and the breaking of bread. It is an expression of our daily discipleship, not a substitute for it.
Hymn singing
I have already mentioned the way hymn singing developed and you will gather that I find it particularly interesting. There are several references to hymns in the New Testament. “And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives” (Matt 26:30). In Acts 16.25 when Paul and Silas were put in prison, what did they do? “And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.” According to Young’s Concordance, the word “praises” is “hymns”, and the same Greek word is used in Heb 2:12 “Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee”. They sang hymns at midnight. Col 3:16 and Eph 5:19 essentially say the same thing, so we will only look at one of them. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col 3:16).
Hymn singing clearly, therefore, was a familiar exercise to worship in the New Testament church. It would be part of their meetings, we may be sure of that. (As, in fact, Pliny writing to Trajan says it was.) And there are several interesting references in Paul’s letters to the popular Christian hymns that they were singing at that time. Some of these are rather interesting to follow out, because Paul quite often used in his letters such phrases as, “This is a true saying,” which are thought to be a reference to some of these hymns that they sang at this time. Who wrote them? I do not know. I wonder if Paul wrote any himself? I wonder who was the hymnologist of the early church? But certainly they used to sing hymns, and it seems quite reasonable to suppose that it is from these hymns that Paul is quoting in these passages that I have mentioned. In those early days I suppose it would have been simple congregational singing. (“Making joyful noise,” as we say when we cannot sing the parts!) Choir singing was developed much later, about the fourth century according to Dr. Lamson.2 And the congregation then took a back seat. I think we can learn a little from this, without making any special point. Of course, it is nice to sing the parts, and, of course, it is nice to have good singers among us, but there is a danger in making things too “professional.” That is what happened, you see, as the church grew and developed, when it became a little bit obscene to hear people croaking away with funny voices and not being able to sing properly. So they said scrub it, and let us have a choir! And the choir took over, and there was this breach again made between the ordinary congregation and the choir who could sing nicely. So let us not despise our vociferous singers, even if they do sing a bit out of key sometimes. I would rather have that, myself, than become so professional that we are ashamed to lift up our voices in praise to the Lord because we do not happen to be very good singers.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One