Go to Church Within Yourself

“Well, we come to church to worship God.” Rolling on with the topic of our own bodies being the house of the Lord, why do we need a place to worship? If I wanted to worship God in the desert, do I have to first build a church? “I mean, come to worship God corporately.” This will be deconstructed later in the chapter, but for now, I have one little question I want you to think about until then: how many people does it take in order for that group to be said that they are “corporate worshipping?” The answer might surprise you.

I could now see that we were putting way too much emphasis on the church building; not only my church but almost every other church in the U.S. Nowhere in Scripture does God focus in about where believers in Christ are to gather. There are a few references that the church met in people’s homes, as well as other places (“First Century Church”). When the church is mentioned in other epistles, it’s speaking to broad areas like: Corinth, Rome, Galatia, Ephesus, etc. and not “in Judas’ house in Damascus on Straight Street, which is the second left after the synagogue and the first right after the House of Leroy” (in reference to Acts 9:11).

This made me start to wonder what believers did in the first century. They were called “the church” so did they have buildings to gather in? Did they meet in houses? Did they meet in fields? Did they meet in the synagogue when it wasn’t being used? After evangelizing and people being saved, did Paul intend on having them raise and save money to build a building where they could worship in? Did Paul think that meeting together in someone’s house or wherever they could meet was “un-evolved” and they should get a building of their own? Was his reasoning that supporting a family a...

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...ure halls in gymnasia to be found in every Gr. city where a philosopher, orator or poet could expound his views or give a recitation. Tyrannus may have been a Gr. rhetorician living in Ephesus at that time, having his own private lecture hall” (Hunter).

This was just awesome to see that the emphasis in this passage of Scripture wasn’t about the school and what it did, but that Paul was investing into the disciples in Ephesus for two years and that “all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (vs. 10) as a result of his ministry! The first church I remember going to, met in one of our town’s elementary schools. I remember that the service was held in the band room and we used one of the rooms near it for Sunday school and children’s church. We stayed there until we were able to rent out an old office building and convert it to our church.