Imagine you’re an alien flying in from the other side of the galaxy. As you approach earth, your adjutant says, “There’s a large group down there called Christians. They have a book. Do you want to know what they believe?” You agree, and you’re handed a New Testament. You read the Gospels. You work through the book of Acts. You read about the birth of the church, its gatherings, its persecution, its mission, its life together.
Then you land. You get off the ship and walk into what we call “church” today.
Would you even recognize this as the same group you just read about?
That’s the thought experiment I went through when I first walked into a megachurch at the age of thirty‑five. I wasn’t raised in the church. I didn’t grow up around Christians. My wife and I were together almost seventeen years before we ever walked into a church building for anything other than a wedding or a funeral. Up to that point, no one had invited us. No one had explained anything to us. When we finally stepped inside that huge church, I was a skeptic with a detective’s mindset and a fresh copy of the New Testament.
I spent months picking apart the Gospels to see if I could trust them. Eventually, I concluded that the best inference from the evidence was that Christianity is true. But the moment I stepped from “Is this true?” to “Okay, now what?”, a new question started nagging at me:
If this is true, why do we do it like this?
Because what I was reading in Acts and what I was seeing on Sunday mornings felt worlds apart. In Acts, I saw believers meeting in homes, sharing meals, knowing each other’s needs, selling possessions to care for one another, suffering together, and living on mission together. I saw an ecclesia—an assembly of people called out for a purpose.
What I walked into felt more like a spiritual event than a spiritual family. It was a place I went to, not a people I belonged to.
If you dropped our alien into the megachurch where I got saved, I think he’d be confused. He’d see thousands of people sitting in rows, all facing a stage. He’d see a few people on that stage doing most of the work—preaching, leading worship, running the program—while everyone else watched. He’d see people able to attend for months without anyone really knowing their name unless they fought to be noticed.
Then he’d flip back to Acts and ask, “Is this the same movement?”
Over the years, I’ve served in that megachurch, in a mid‑sized church as a youth pastor, and then in a house church we planted in our home. In each setting, I kept coming back to that alien question: Would a first‑century Christian recognize this as “church”? Or would they say, “This looks more like a performance than a family”?
None of this is to deny that large churches can be used by God. I was reached in one. That big stage gave a skeptic like me space to sit in the back and listen while my defenses slowly dropped. But once I’d embraced the truth of Christianity, I started longing for something that looked and felt more like what I was seeing in the New Testament:
- Known people, not anonymous crowds
- Shared mission, not just shared seating
- Real discipleship, not just weekly content
- Family patterns of behavior, not just well-planned events
When I eventually planted a church in my garage, I discovered something humbling: you can still turn a house into a mini‑megachurch. I set up fifty chairs all facing forward toward a screen and a pulpit. Architecturally, I had just recreated what I already knew—a place where people came to sit and watch—rather than a different kind of church, a people who lived life together. That realization forced me to rethink everything again.
So, here’s the uncomfortable question: If someone read only the New Testament and then followed you around with a camera for a week, would they conclude that “church” in your life is primarily a place where you go once a week, or a people who you are deeply engaged with all week? If someone read only the New Testament and then followed you around with a camera for a week, would they conclude that “church” in your life is primarily a place where you go once a week, or a people who you are deeply engaged… Share on X
And if you’re a church leader, ask it from another angle: If an alien read Acts on the way in, then sat in your services, joined your programs, and watched your people Monday through Saturday, would he think, “This is exactly what I read,” or, “I think I got off at the wrong planet”?
That tension isn’t meant to drive us into despair, but into honest reassessment. Maybe the question isn’t, “How do we make Sunday bigger, better, flashier?” Maybe it’s, “How do we become the kind of people described in Acts, whatever our size or structure?”
Because in the end, the first‑century church might not recognize our buildings, our sound systems, or our programs—but they should recognize our life together.
To dive a bit deeper into this notion of “church,” please listen to our podcast:
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For more information about the nature of Biblical faith and a strategy for communicating the truth of Christianity, please read Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith. This book teaches readers four reasonable, evidential characteristics of Christianity and provides a strategy for sharing Christianity with others. The book is accompanied by an eight-session Forensic Faith DVD Set (and Participant’s Guide) to help individuals or small groups examine the evidence and make the case.
