I recently attended one of the evening meetings at a large local church. I don’t often attend such meetings, but this time it was worth it. A Brazilian preacher spoke on our need for the Holy Spirit. Even though this has often been one of my main themes, the message challenged me. It’s good to be in a state of brokenness before the Lord and know our need for his grace! Dozens of children were also baptized in the Holy Spirit.

After the meeting, I found a young friend from some of the mission groups. He gave me and another friend a ride home. His friend asked where I “go to church,” and I explained that I’m a member of the church of Goiânia. I fellowship mostly in homes, outdoor meetings, recovery houses, and missions. The people I walk with are from several different congregations.

He had a lot of questions. I began to explain how many of the strongest churches in the world today meet in homes and follow a simple, low-overhead model. This enables me to care for the poor and participate as a member of the body of Christ. But for over an hour, both young men kept protesting and interrupting before I could finish answering the previous question. They believed I was missing something essential, and at the same time seemed to think the current state of the institutional church in Brazil was nearly perfect. They seemed to think the church in our city was the best in the world.

Of course, I thank God for the church in my city. However, there are obvious weaknesses in the church in Brazil, and it still has a long way to go to reach the full measure of the stature of Christ. I shared some areas in which I have different priorities than the institutional church, including the small percentage of giving that goes to helping the poor and those who have never heard the gospel. I explained that the church services are spectator events that usually don’t edify me or allow me to edify others. They don’t provide a context that allows us to obey the Bible’s instructions for Christian meetings.

We talked for about an hour and a half, but they barely let me finish a sentence. I realized their view of church history was quite distorted. They were convinced that the few references in the book of Acts to first-century Christians in the temple or synagogues corresponded to modern church buildings and that dedicated church buildings are essential to following Jesus!

The conversation reminded me that I tend to assume other people know facts I take for granted. I’m a voracious reader. I forget that it took years for my thinking to be formed in these areas, and not everybody reads as much as I do or about the same topics!

I made a YouTube video in English and Portuguese to review the history of Christian meeting places. I’ll send it to my friend soon! In Spanish and Portuguese, people regularly call the building a “temple” and their word for church services is “cultos,” coming from the Latin term “cultivation of the gods.” This is so built into the culture that tradition concerning “temples” and religious meetings carries more weight for many Christians than the Bible’s instructions for Christian fellowship do!

If you’re interested in this topic, you can watch the video or read the article below it.

Where have Christians met throughout history?

Where did early Christians meet? Can the Bible’s references to meeting in the temple and synagogues be equated to our modern church buildings? Are church buildings essential? Join us as we review the history of Christian meeting places and discuss why some Christians prefer to meet in homes.

The Role of Jewish Synagogues and Temple

Christianity was first a sect of Judaism, and the first Christians were Jews, so the first Christians initially met where the Jews met, including in synagogues and the temple. However, Christians today often erroneously assume that the first-century temple was like their church buildings and synagogue meetings were like their church services! The temple area where Christians met was a large courtyard and was more like a public square than a modern church building. Gentiles were not permitted in the temple, and there was also only one Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Only the first Jewish Christians in Jerusalem met in the temple.

Many cities had synagogues. The synagogue meetings involved robust debate and discussion of scripture, as well as question and answer sessions. That is far different than a modern church service with a monologue in which nobody dares to express disagreement with the preacher!

The Bible’s references to meeting in synagogues and in the temple show us that these meetings were highly evangelistic, and the believers who met there also met from house to house. Most of the people in the temple and synagogues were not Christ followers.

Christians Expelled from the Jewish Synagogues and Temple

Jesus prophesied that his followers would be expelled from the synagogues and the temple destroyed in judgement, and he would raise up another temple, his body. Christianity would soon be separated from Judaism. That happened within a few decades. Many Christians were expelled from synagogues around 40 to 50 AD, Christianity began to separate from Judaism, and the temple was destroyed in 70 AD. Being warned by Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24, Christians fled to Pella before the destruction of the temple and escaped death.

The book of Hebrews, written soon before the temples’ destruction, teaches that the Old Covenant and its temple were shadows of better, spiritual realities, and were about to disappear because the New Covenant made them obsolete. (Hebrews 8:13)

The church is the body of Christ and is God’s temple in the New Covenant. Both the Martyr Stephen and the Apostle Paul stated in the book of Acts that God does not live in temples made by human hands. That statement was likely a primary reason that Stephen was stoned by the Jews and Paul was persecuted.

The Primary Meeting Place Was In Homes!

The New Testament refers to meeting in the temple 7 times, in synagogues 11 times, and in houses about 40 times. Of the references to meeting in the temple, 2 are of Jesus teaching in the temple and the other five are in the beginning of the book of Acts, before the persecution that scattered the Jerusalem church, which happened in Acts chapter 8. We see no more references to meeting in the temple after that.

References to meeting in synagogues continue for a longer time, because there were synagogues all over the Roman world. Of the 11 New Testament references to meeting in synagogues, only 5 are of the church after Christ. All five of these references to the apostles speaking in the synagogues are evangelistic. The apostles were proclaiming that Christ is the Messiah in the synagogues, not teaching an exclusively Christian group for discipleship!

Being Jewish, the first Christians continued not only to meet in the temple and in synagogues but also to follow Jewish law and make temple sacrifices. Jewish Christians continued to tithe, but they tithed to Levites in the Jewish system and not to their church leaders! Paul himself made a Nazarite vow in Acts Chapter 21, which includes animal sacrifices and grain offerings as described in Numbers chapter 6.

Acts chapter 11 describes how the early church received God’s revelation that the gospel was for the Gentiles, and Acts 15 tells us of their decision that they should not compel gentile Christians to follow Jewish practices. Gentiles were permitted in synagogues, but many Gentile Christians may not have gone to the synagogue. All Christians were soon expelled from the synagogues.

The primary meeting place for the New Testament church was houses. The New Testament has more than twice as many references to meeting in houses as there are to meetings in the synagogues and temple combined. Paul spoke in Acts 20:20 of how he taught in public forums and from house to house. Paul’s words in passages such as Romans 16:5, “Greet the church that meets at their house” denoted the house as their primary meeting place. All of the churches Paul wrote to were house churches.

Christians Were Persecuted For Having No Temples, Altars, Or Sacrifices

Judaism was a legal religion, tolerated by the Romans. However, persecution by the Romans increased as Christianity separated from Judaism. 

Historical references, including from Roman Emperors Trajan and Marcus Aurelius and the Greek philosopher Celsus in the late 2^nd century, reveal that one of the primary accusations against Christians was that they were atheists. Christians didn’t have temples, altars, sacrifices, or idols as the Roman gods did. Pliny the Younger described them as atheists and a “degenerate sort of cult” without temples or idols.

Early Christian leaders defended themselves against these accusations of atheism. They explained that Christians worship in spirit and truth, that our bodies are God’s temple, and Jesus is the sacrifice for sins. Temples, altars, and sacrifices are spiritual realities in Christianity. These defenses include Justin Martyr’s “Apology,” Tertullians’ “Apologeticum,” and Origen’s “Contra Celsum.”

There Were No Christian Synagogues Or Temples!

In the late second century, A Christian named Octavius responded to the accusations of Caecilius that Christians met before sunrise because they engaged in incestuous orgies. He said, “We meet before sunrise because we are working people. We have jobs to go to. We do not always meet in secret, but we have no temples or synagogues, so we use somebody’s home which has enough room. We call one another brother and sister and pledge to love one another because that is what our Lord commanded us to do. And we greet one another and bless one another with a holy kiss, not out of lust but out of genuine love and concern for one another. Come and you will see that we demand the highest standards of morality among all who join us.”

Octavius’ words confirm that there were no Christian temples or synagogues. Early Christians sometimes attended Jewish synagogues before they were expelled, yet even then, they primarily met in homes. Synagogue meetings were not exclusively or even primarily Christian. Only their home meetings were.

The word “church” in the New Testament always refers to God’s people and never to a building. Bible Scholar Alex Portillo explains that the first person known to use the word “church” to refer to Christian gathering places was Clement of Alexandria around 190 AD. He was the first to use the phrase “go to church,” and this would have sounded strange to the early church, because you cannot go to something that you are. Even so, Clement’s words did not refer to a temple but to a person’s home or a public meeting place.

The First Purpose-Built Church Buildings

Alex explains, as several other scholars have, that First-century Judaism centered around the temple, the priesthood, and the sacrifice. Greco-Roman pagan religion also centered around temples, priests, and sacrifices, but Christians did away with all three after Jesus’ death. Jesus was the temple, the high priest, and the perfect sacrifice. Christianity was the first religion to have no temple, priests, or sacrifices. But the church began to adapt pagan practices in the fourth to sixth century by establishing a professional priesthood and sacred buildings, and considering the Lord’s supper to be a mysterious sacrifice.

Some people today say early Christians met in homes due to persecution. To the contrary, meeting in homes and not temples was a cause of persecution. They would have avoided persecution by having temples, altars, and sacrifices like the Jews and the Roman gods did. In times of persecution, they fled to the catacombs.  

We know of no buildings originally constructed as Christian meeting places for the first two hundred years after Christ’s death. As time went on, many early church leaders brought the influence of their previous pagan backgrounds and Greek philosophy into the church. The first structure known to have been originally built for Christian meetings is the Megiddo church, built approximately between 230 and 240 AD. After it, the Aqaba church and Etchmiadzin Cathedral were built around 300 AD. Then the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312. Christianity became a state-sponsored religion, and Constantine began building churches just as the Romans had erected temples for their pagan deities. Christians now had priests and altars like the Roman deities did.

Church Services-Cultivation of the gods!

We get our concept of a “worship service” from the Latin phrase, “cultus deorum” meaning “care/cultivation of the gods,” describing Roman religious practices. Christians had been accused of atheism for not engaging in these practices, but Constantine made them a part of government-sponsored Christianity.

The contrast between Christianity and Roman paganism is highlighted in Paul’s sermon in Acts 17. In verses 24 to 25, Paul contrasted the Creator of the World with pagan deities, saying, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” The Christian God does not need to be cultivated or cared for. Rather, the Christian God cares for us!

House Churches In The Modern Missionary Movement

Some Christians have continued to meet in houses throughout history, often being persecuted by the institutional church. The protestant reformers did away with the idea of the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice that we make to God, but most still maintained church buildings that they treated as temples.

The modern missionary movement began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1912, Roland Allen wrote the classic book, “Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?” It removed the pagan additions to Christianity, emphasizing indigenous church growth, simplicity, and decentralization. This book is now required reading for many missionaries!

The concepts in Roland Allen’s writing and some other more recent books promoting simple church have generated some of the greatest missionary movements in the world today! Today there are an estimated 10 million house churches in China, 2 million in India, 2 million in Egypt and the Middle East, and 20,000 in Uganda.

Many Western Christians assume that those Christians in India and Asia only meet in houses because of persecution. But if you ask the leaders of these church-planting movements why they meet in houses, many give a different answer that shocks some Western Christians. They say having dedicated church buildings hinders church multiplication and discipleship.

Don’t Add Human Commands and Traditions To God’s Word!

Why am I sharing this history? What ideas do I mean to challenge? Certainly, many of my brothers and sisters in Christ meet in modern, dedicated church buildings and spend a significant portion of their income on paying for and maintaining those buildings. I receive them in Christ. I don’t reject their faith. The Bible does not forbid Christians from constructing a building dedicated to their Christian meetings.

But while I don’t reject the faith of Christians who meet in those buildings, many of them reject my faith! They believe I “don’t belong to a church” because I have fellowship in small groups, meeting in public and in houses, but only rarely attending events in dedicated church buildings. Some tell me that their young converts would fall away from Christ without their building and that people who are seeking God need a place to go to.

The Pharisees added many of their own commands and regulations to God’s commands. Speaking to them, Jesus said in Matthew 15:9, “They worship me in vain, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.” The Bible simply tells us to not neglect gathering together as Christians. It doesn’t say where we must gather. Don’t be like the Pharisees, adding your own regulations to God’s commands and judging other Christians’ faith by whether they meet in houses, in parks, or in big buildings.

Furthermore, I regularly hear Christians refer to a building as, “God’s house,” or “the temple.” This language is completely contrary to the New Testament’s clear teaching that God does not live in temples built by human hands, but people are his temple. If we have a building dedicated to Christian meetings, its only significance is that it serves people, who are God’s true temple. To think any building is a house of God is to think like a pagan.

I believe church buildings are not forbidden and we should maintain Christian unity with all who love Jesus regardless of where they meet. However, I also believe that dedicated church buildings usually hinder God’s people more than helping us. In the next post, I’ll share five reasons the church may be healthier without church buildings!