Water From A Deep Well | Belonging E02
Practicing the Way with John Mark Comer
Practicing the Way
4.9 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What difference can being different make? In this conversation, John Mark and Dr. Gerald Sittser uncover how the early church functioned as a genuine, lived community against the backdrop of the dense and challenging environment of Roman cities, and explore why that counter-cultural life drew people in.
This podcast and its episodes are paid for by The Circle, our community of monthly givers. Special thanks for this episode goes to: Stephen from Torrance, California; Jordan from Galena, Ohio; Kathy from Corsicana, Texas; Matthew from Williamsburg, Michigan; and Larry from Bradenton, Florida. Thank you all so much!
If you’d like to pay it forward and contribute toward future resources, you can learn more at practicingtheway.org/give.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome. My name is Yinka Dawson and I'm the host of Practice in the Way with John Mark Homer, |
| 0:08.2 | a podcast featuring teachings and conversation with John Mark and other voices to help us journey into a deeper life with God in the modern world. |
| 0:16.6 | Today we're continuing our series Water from a Deep Well with John Mark and Dr. Gerald Sitzer, |
| 0:22.2 | which explores the rich history of Christian spirituality and how we can learn from and practice the wisdom of early followers of Jesus in their unique eras. |
| 0:31.7 | In this episode, John Mark and Dr. Sitzer discuss how the early church function as real, lived community against the backdrop of the |
| 0:40.3 | dense and difficult environment of Roman cities and why that countercultural life drew people in. |
| 0:47.3 | Here's John Mark. |
| 0:49.4 | Welcome back to Water from a Deep Well, where we are learning with Dr. Gerald Sitzer about the history |
| 0:55.2 | of Christian spirituality. In the last session, we covered the early Christian martyrs, the |
| 1:01.0 | spirituality of witness. But in this session, we want to look at the early church itself. What made |
| 1:07.0 | it special? Why were people drawn to it? How was it the same or different from the church today? |
| 1:13.1 | And what can we learn from the early Christian communities? This is belonging, the spirituality of the early |
| 1:21.3 | church. Dr. Sitzer, time map this for us. What era of Christian history are we talking about? |
| 1:29.8 | Same period as last time, |
| 1:35.8 | so the birth of Christianity spilling over into the early 4th century. So kind of similar dovetails into the period of persecution. Now, most church historians say the big, one of the big |
| 1:41.2 | turning points was when the emperor Constantine became the |
| 1:45.8 | emperor of Rome, had some kind of quote conversion experience. I don't want to, I don't want to |
| 1:50.3 | blame. He was crowned emperor in 307. There was a couple of big battles and he finally became |
| 1:57.3 | official emperor in 312 over the West and over the entire empire in 323. |
| 2:03.6 | And we make a big deal about Constantine and Christendom as if they're the same. |
| 2:08.6 | They're really not the same at all. |
| 2:10.6 | Christendom took a long time to emerge. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 25 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Practicing the Way, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Practicing the Way and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.