Alien Shock: Would First Century Christians Even Recognize Our Churches?
The Cold-Case Christianity Podcast
ColdCaseChristianity.com
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2026
⏱️ 70 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Would first‑century Christians even recognize what we call "church" today? In this episode, J. Warner Wallace uses a simple "alien thought experiment" to examine how closely (or how poorly) our modern church models resemble the church described in the book of Acts. Drawing from his own journey—from walking into a megachurch as a 35‑year‑old skeptic, to serving in a mid‑sized church, to planting a home church—Jim explores where we may have drifted from the New Testament pattern and how we can realign our communities with the biblical design for gathering, mission, and discipleship. This conversation will challenge how you think about Sunday services, church size, programs, and what it really means to live as the people of God in the world today.​
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Cold Case Christianity podcast, where a veteran Cold Case homicide detective investigates the truth of the Christian worldview. |
| 0:08.5 | Jay Warner Wallace is a Dateline featured detective, Christian apologist, and bestselling author. |
| 0:13.3 | This weekly show applies real investigative tools to the claims of Christianity. |
| 0:19.0 | All right. Thanks for joining us here at the Cold Case Christianity |
| 0:21.7 | podcast. I am Jay Warner Wallace. I'm going to do a podcast today that I have kind of talked |
| 0:27.8 | about this issue in the past, the nature of church, like what is the church? And what do we think |
| 0:33.1 | is good or bad about it? Where have we kind of gone wrong? And how can we rethink the nature of the church |
| 0:38.4 | to get to actually line up with what scripture teaches? And I'm going to try to challenge you. |
| 0:44.6 | This is the kind of the thought experiment that I went through as I first became a Christian at the age of |
| 0:51.4 | 35, not raised in the church, not raised by people who |
| 0:55.7 | attended church, didn't know Christians growing up, didn't get invited to church by our friends. |
| 1:02.7 | And Susan, I used to always think, that's interesting. |
| 1:04.3 | We surely knew Christians, and we did know Christians, I'm sure. |
| 1:08.9 | But why didn't anyone ever invite us? |
| 1:10.7 | And even the first, we were together nearly 17 years before we walked in the first church together like this for anything other than like a ceremony, like a wedding. |
| 1:20.6 | And so, you know, what took us so long? |
| 1:23.6 | And we were, really, it caused me afterwards to think about the nature of church. |
| 1:29.5 | What does that word even mean? |
| 1:32.5 | So let me give you the thought experiment that I often use when I'm talking to people about my own struggle. |
| 1:37.9 | And I got saved in a huge megachurch that I youth pastored in a medium-sized church here in Southern California. And then I actually planted a Southern Baptist church. Then I youth pastored in a medium-sized church here in Southern California. And then I actually |
| 1:46.3 | planted a Southern Baptist church plant that was a home group. And it was an official Southern |
| 1:53.5 | Baptist church plant because I went to a Southern Baptist seminary. But we met in my home. And it |
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