For a long time I used to think that Jesus and the apostles never laid out specific instructions on how to do church. Recently I’m beginning to learn that perhaps they did, but it’s so different from what we have today that I couldn’t see it. Jesus and the apostles never lay out an order of worship, style of music to be used, times that services are to be held, various ministry programs to have, lists of minister/pastor/preacher/priest positions and job descriptions to be filled, ways and frequency to take communion, baptism, liturgies, etc. Basically, since all churches have these things but just disagree on some of the details, I was looking for instructions along these lines, in order to try to figure out which church’s way of doing things was right. Since I didn’t find any, I believed that this was an area where we had freedom of expression, where different churches could “worship” in different ways, and no one was really wrong. As it turns out, it seems that none of the ways modern “churches” “do church” are right, and that Jesus and the apostles taught about church, but understood it to be something so completely different than our modern institutions that I couldn’t even see it for years.
