Welcome to Verity Podcast. I'm your host, Felicia Mason-Himer, and I am here to

teach you how to know what you believe, to live it boldly, and to communicate it

graciously to the world around you. I believe that women are ready to go

deeper in their faith than ever before, and they don't have to go to seminary to

do it. I am so glad you're here, and I hope you'll join me on this journey

because every woman is a theologian. Welcome back to Verity Podcast friends. Today,

we're talking about how the early church did church. You might find, depending on how many

denominations you have been, that many churches claim to follow the early church model

of how a service should be structured or how they go about their traditions, how they go about

their worship rituals, and so today we're going to look at the structure that the early church

followed, which closely connected to the synagogue model as we've talked about previously

in this church history series, and I hope it gives you some clarity as well as some perspective

on where some of the traditions and rituals that we have in church services today may have come

from. So we're going to be heading all the way back to the first few centuries of the church

between 8033 and 8500, and going to take a look at how church service structure transitioned

in that period. Now the word for theology of the church is called ecclesiology taken from the

word ecclesia. So this is a word again coming from the Hebrew meaning gathering or assembly,

and it referred to the whole assembly of Israel in the Old Testament, which transitioned to the new

Israel, the spiritual Israel, and the new covenant, the new testament. And so the word for the yet

whole assembly of Israel, God's people came to include the Gentiles, the non-Jews, and the new

covenant, and referred to the whole church. So when we are reading in English, we are reading about

this gathering of believers who are coming together to worship Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah,

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