What did Early Church Worship look like?

Jewish history is full of interaction with God who called them to be His people, and who gave them specific instructions, patterned after things in heaven, as to how they should worship Him.

Jewish Worship

It all depends on which sect of Judaism you belong to. But Jews in general pray in formal worship services three times a day. Daily prayers are collected in a book which shows the order of prayers for each service.

During the Babylonian Exile, they were not able to sacrifice in the temple, so they prayed as a substitute for sacrifice. They prayed three times a day, corresponding to the three daily sacrifices.

A very important part of the services was the reading from the Scriptures. The Torah, at least in services today, has been divided into sections, so that if each of these sections is read for a week, they can cover the entire Torah in a year. The Scriptural readings are performed with great ceremony: the Torah is paraded around the room before it is brought to rest on the podium.

The person leading the liturgy has his back to the congregation, and prays facing the same direction as the congregation. And the congregation responds with an “amen" at certain times, and bows and stands at specific times.

Jewish worship includes a cycle of liturgy, prayers and meals: daily, weekly, monthly and annually.

In Acts 2:42 we read that also the first believers “were continuing steadfastly in the teaching of the apostles, and the fellowship, and the breaking of the bread, and the prayers.”

1. The people gathered in fellowship around the gospel message – the central part of the meeting. 2. The celebration of Christ’s passion, the “breaking of the bread,” was the central part of their worship. 3. They continued in “the prayers.” Not only did they pray, but they recited “the prayers.” Which prayers? This language suggests that the disciples were committed to some form of set prayers in a more liturgical context. Most likely they prayed the prayer book, also known as the Psalms. But now they prayed the Psalms in the light of Jesus; all things that were written in the Psalms concerned Jesus, and were fulfilled by Jesus, (Luke 24:44).

And they were “continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart,” (Acts 2:46).

The early church continued on a daily basis its Jewish worship practices in the temple, but Jesus had given them a whole new motivation; His death, victory over darkness, dread, and death, was celebrated in “the breaking of the bread.”

Nonetheless, they continued to worship in the temple. “Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour,” (Acts 3:1).

Not only did they continue in Jewish worship practice, but they kept the cycle of daily prayers at set hours of the day, as well as the major feast days. The disciples “were continually in the temple praising and blessing God,” (Luke 24:53), and they went to the temple “at the hour of prayer.” Paul went to the “synagogue on the Sabbath,” (Acts 13:14-15), and there he “preached the Christ,” (Acts 9:20).

Stephen, the first martyr, notes in his sermon that Old Testament worship was “according to the pattern” given to Moses, (Acts 7:44). We also see this phrase in Hebrews 8. Jesus is the “leitourgos” [the liturgists], or as it is translated, the “minister” of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, (Heb. 8:2). But Jesus is a different minister. The Old Testament priests offered sacrifices according to the law. Had Jesus remained on earth, He would not be suitable as a priest, because He longer has any sacrifices to offer. His sacrifice was made “once and for all.” And He is now the High Priest who is seated at the right hand of the Father since His work has been accomplished. Nevertheless, the Old Testament priests served the “copy and shadow of the heavenly things” as Moses instructed them to do all things “according to the pattern,” (Heb. 8:1-5).

The worship on earth should be patterned after that which goes on in heaven. However, Jesus is now our High Priest who has now obtained “a more excellent ministry,” a ministry that is superior to the old priests, just as the covenant which He arranged between God and His people is a “better covenant,” (Heb. 8:6).

But note that the worship continues both here on earth and in heaven. Earthly worship partakes now of the eternal, heavenly worship. “We have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant,” (Heb. 12:22-24). We are surrounded by a “cloud of witnesses,” so every time we worship we join the worship that goes on forever in heaven, (Heb. 12:1).

The Heavenly Worship

God had given the instructions in the Torah which describe in detail the manner in which worship is to be offered. The worship in the temple was to reflect the worship in heaven.

The Scriptures provide glimpses of what the heavenly service looked like. There are reports of it in Isaiah, Daniel and Revelation. How literal we should take the visions is another question however. Isaiah 6: Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.” Above Him flew the Seraphim. The temple was filled with smoke from the incense. And there was an altar. Daniel 7: Daniel saw the Ancient of Days seated on a throne which was a fiery flame. And a fiery stream was flowing out from before Him. Thousands upon thousands were serving Him, and myriads upon myriads were standing before Him.

Revelation: Jesus is seated on the throne surrounded by twenty-four elders who prostrate before Him, “each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints,” (Rev. 4 & 5). Both Jesus and the angels are “clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band,” (Rev. 1:13).

It was upon this heavenly worship that the worship of God on earth was patterned. Exodus 25-27 further provides detailed information about the nature of temple worship, including the physical structure of the temple, its design and decor, the priestly vestments, the use of incense, anointing oil and images etc. The temple was artistically designed with cherubim, carved palm trees, flowers, pomegranates, oxen and lions.

Worship under the New Covenant

Jesus adhered to the Old Testament pattern of worship. He attended the synagogue services, (Mark 1:21; 3:1; 6:2), and observed the Jewish festivals at the Temple, (Matt. 26:18; Mark 14:14; Luke 2:41; 22:7-11; John 7:1-13).

However, Jesus’ interpretation of the law was very different to the interpretation of the religious leaders of His time.

Jesus did not seem to care too much about the Sabbath laws. He was walking through a field with his disciples during the Sabbath. They got hungry and ate the grain, (Matt 12). In Luke 6:1 we read that the disciples not only harvested the grain but also began to “rub them in their hands and eat the kernels.” The Pharisees saw it and accused Jesus of breaking the law, since Exodus 16 and 32 gives a precedent for neither harvesting nor preparing food on the Sabbath. The disciples did both.

Jesus scandalized the Pharisees by healing on the Sabbath and asking the healed man to rise up and carry his mat (John 5). Jeremiah 17:21 states that none should carry a load on the Sabbath.

Jesus touched the lepers, even though he would be considered unclean according to the law if He did. Why did Jesus touch this leper? He could have spoken a word and the leper would have been made whole. But this man mattered far more than rules and needed a physical touch.

Jesus bypassed the temple sacrifices by forgiving people’s sins. He extended mercy to the adulterous woman when the law stated that she should have been punished by death. His disciples did not follow the rituals of washing their hands before eating. The list goes on and on.

So we must ask ourselves how Jesus’ followers viewed temple worship, especially after Jesus' death and resurrection. Nevertheless, it must have been natural for the first believers to continue worshipping God in a manner as they had been told, in the pattern God had revealed to them.

At least parts of temple and synagogue worship practices must have characterized the church in its earliest days, and parts of the synagogue form must have still continued to be the basic order of worship for the Christian church. This structure of worship, then, was set during the era while the church was still seen as a messianic “Jewish sect.”

But all that had been anticipated was now completed. All that had been prophesied was now reality. The Messiah had come. So for these early Christians, the Jewish worship practices were continued with a brand new understanding given by the victorious Christ.

However, all Jewish worship practices were not passé. But neither did the first Christians continue in some kind of mindless habit of outdated rituals. The Old Testament worship practices, now fulfilled and given new meaning in Christ, became the core of Christian worship within this New Covenant.

The apostles continued the “pattern” of worship. Following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the first Christians met at the temple, (Acts 2:46). And Paul, like Jesus, attended the synagogue (Acts 13:5, 14; 14:1; 17:2; 19:8).

Paul recounts how God spoke to him while he was at the temple in Jerusalem praying, (Acts 22:17). The Apostle was eager to attend the Pentecost services in Jerusalem (Acts 20:16). The other Apostles even advised him to take part in the purification rituals to show his loyalty to the Torah (21:22-26). So the old temple worship was still dear to their hearts.

But Jesus had radically changed the whole structure of the worship. The sacrificial death of Christ and His subsequent resurrection supplanted all temple sacrifice. He is the Lamb of God, who took away the sin of the world (John 1:29). In fact the whole temple worship was fulfilled in Jesus. Everything in the temple, and everything done therein, foreshadowed Christ’s redemptive work.

So in the New Testament church the worship is centered on Christ and is a “Christening” of the Old Testament liturgical life. Thus, the prayers of the Old Testament, the Psalms, or any Scripture, are read and sung in the light of Christ.

The sacrifice of Jesus replaced the Old Testament sacrifices. The only sacrifice we now have are “spiritual sacrifices,” (1 Pet. 2:5). We give our bodies as a living sacrifice, not to add to Jesus’ finished work, but as a response to His love, (Rom. 12:1).

We still have an “altar” according to Hebrews. But it’s not the altar of “those who serve the tabernacle.” But our altar is the sharing of Christ’s reproach, (13:10-13).

The Jewish feasts took on new meaning. Under the New Covenant we no longer “observe days and months and seasons and years,” according to the Old Testament, (Gal. 4:10). So The Passover, for example, became the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection; and the feast of Pentecost became the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit.

The New Covenant had replaced the old and made it obsolete. But it wasn’t until the temple was destroyed in AD 70 that it was fully realized that God was to be worshipped in “spirit and truth,” rather than in a “physical” temple. In between Christ’s resurrection and the temple's destruction, the Old Covenant was “growing old” and was “ready to disappear,” (Heb. 8:13).

Both Paul and Stephen insisted that God “does not dwell in temples made with hands,” (Acts 7:48; 17:28). Where did they get this idea from? They got it from Jesus, who spoke of the temple as being His body. He said, “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

The temple was previously the holy place, where God dealt with His people. But God is no longer in the real estate business. He no longer deals with humanity in a certain place. But what God does or did for humanity, He does and did in the body of Jesus, and by extension through the “ekklesia.”

Sidenote: Out of the 114 times “ekklesia” is mentioned in the New Testament, it never refers to a physical building of worship, but it always refers to a “spiritual house,” which is the believer. As believers in Christ, we are “in Christ” who is the Temple. Furthermore, we are now the temple which God dwells in.

So by cleansing the temple, Jesus went against the monopoly. He came against the religious industry and destroyed the whole religious system. The temple’s destruction meant that one could no longer come to a holy place for the remission of sins, because it was only found in Jesus.

It’s scandalous in fact how Jesus treated the sacred, which He called a “den of thieves.” He turned over its tables and turned the animals loose. These animals were for the forgiveness of sins, but now Jesus had shut down the business.

However, the disciples still attended the services in the synagogue. But there also came a time when that finally stopped. Paul, for example, had enough of how the Jews resisted the gospel. “He left the synagogue” and from then on focused on the gentiles, (Acts 18:6-7). In fact, he was forced to leave due to the persecution by the Jews (Acts 21).

Early Church Worship

So how much of the temple worship actually continued in the early church? The earliest Christians primarily viewed themselves as the Jewish “remnant” centered around the Messiah, and as such they tended to carry a lot of continuity with Jewish tradition. The first Christ-followers did not immediately cease to be Jewish and drop all of their traditions and customs.

However they immediately moved away from the Levitical system of sacrifices and centered their services instead around the meal table in homes, where Christ’s ultimate sacrifice was remembered in the Lord’s Supper.

The church’s fellowship meals may have been something like a potluck, referred to as “love-feasts” (Jude 12). The communion was in fact the replacement of the Passover, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed,” (1 Cor. 5:7).

They shifted from worshiping on the Jewish Sabbath to worshiping on “the Lord’s Day,” or Sunday, in honor of Jesus’ resurrection. During these gatherings, there would be public reading of Scripture, followed by a sermon (1 Timothy 4:13), along with the singing of psalms and hymns (1 Corinthians 14:26; Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16).

What did the Early Church look like?

It is hard to tell since the first believers gathered in either the temple or in their homes. They gathered in houses because of their understanding that they were in fact the temple of God. But also probably because of the persecution.

And the earliest found church buildings are now in ruins. The Dura-Europos church, from the early third century, is the oldest surviving church building. It is believed to have been a house at first which was converted into a church building. The church has numerous wall paintings. The “Good Shepherd”, the “Healing of the Paralytic” and “Christ and Peter walking on the water” are depicted, and are the earliest depictions of Jesus. A larger fresco depicts three women approaching a large sarcophagus; this most likely depicts the three Marys visiting the tomb. There’s also paintings of Adam and Eve, and David and Goliath. But an altar is not found in the church. Iconography was also found in the nearby Dura-Europos synagogue (see photo below).

The Megiddo Church may be the world's oldest known purpose-built church. What remains of it is a 580 square foot mosaic floor with images of fish, an early Christian symbol.

The earliest Christian art is found in the Roman catacombs, dating back to the second century (see photo below). Unfortunately there are no churches from the first century.