Module Overview

The New Testament records for us the beginning and the growth of the early church, started by the followers of Jesus and then expanded by Paul the Apostle. This record includes the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, shipwrecks and imprisonments, and life changing sermons delivered by faithful believers of Christ.

J. Warner Wallace, a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, on writing about the early church as described in the New Testament, wrote:

“The first Christians were revolutionaries. The group they formed was, in many ways, very different from what we know as the Church today. According to the Book of Acts, they met in their homes and devoted themselves to God’s Word. As a result, these early Christians brought about the most amazing and powerful transformation the world has ever known. Think about it for a minute. Christians emerged in the midst a tremendously diverse Roman melting pot of social and religious ideas, and through purely peaceful means completely changed the Empire and united it under the banner of Christianity. And they did it without a single mega-church, television program or website. They simply opened their homes, spoke the truth fearlessly and trusted God for the results. Long before Christianity became a dominant political power, it was a divine movement of God. Long before Christianity found a comfortable home in church buildings, it was an active body of passionate believers…”

In this module we are going to be spending time looking at the early church to include her beginnings, her growth, her characteristics, and her challenges.

It is an exciting story!

Module Outcomes

By the end of this module, students should be able to:

• Describe the role of the Holy Spirit in the birth of the church.
• List what the basic characteristics of the New Testament church should be.
• Define the terms Justification, Atonement, and Salvation.
• Describe some of the major challenges the early church faced.
• Explain the Christian understanding of salvation.