Images and Understandings of the Church in the New Testament: An Overview

The author investigates the range of New Testament writings for a composite picture of how the church was imaged and understood by NT Christians. Putting the colours and shapes of multiple images together sheds considerable light on the origins, nature and mission of the church as a whole. What is highlighted in the total picture of the church of the beginnings is that it was small, multiple, varied, self-determining, personal, home-based and local. Such attractive features stand in some contrast to the massive, monolithic, centrally-governed, pyramidical, top-down, and somewhat imperial and impersonal church of more recent times. It's no wonder, then, that a world-wide movement in the church today for the development of small and somewhat decentralized church communities should keep looking to the church of the NT as its chief inspiration.