Apologetics: How Do We Know That Christ Founded a Church? by Carson

    The word "Church can mean multiple things. The word literally means “The Lord’s House”, or “Assembly.” When most people hear church, they are most likely thinking of a building used for worship. Another definition is “An assembly or congregation of a group of believers.” [Paraphrased]. Today, the Church we will talk about is closest to the last definition, defined specifically as “A visible organization or society composed of those who profess His religion.

    Looking at the New Testament, we see that Christ found not just a religion, but a Church as well. Let’s break this down. We view religion here as the doctrines he taught, and we view the Church as the people he formed to teach and profess this religion. We see that he had his students, the Apostles. Jesus established the role of the Apostles for the purpose of watching, learning, and teaching about Him. He didn’t need the Apostles to have been able to teach what he taught back then, but he had them so close to him so they could learn and teach when he was gone.

As we can see very well, Jesus’ plan worked. After he ascended, the Apostles scattered to spread the good news. Some went here, some there, but they did exactly what Jesus told them to: they spread His love and teaching, greatly expanding the “visible organization or society composed of those who profess His religion,” otherwise known as the Church. They also imitated Jesus in the way we talked about earlier, teaching and preparing others. As soon as the original Apostles were gone, there was Mark, Luke, Timothy, Titus, and all the others who the Apostles had at their side to teach and spread the Church. They succeeded and the Church was spread because the Holy Spirit was with them.

Today we see clearly that Christ found a Church. Today, much of the world is now Christian. We can also see which Church was the original Church, by tracing our steps backwards. Today we have many, many, many different forms and denominations of Christianity, but we can look back and see they all stem from the Catholic Church, the original Church Jesus and His Apostles established. From there, it split into Catholic and Protestants, and from there the Protestants split into many groups. The Catholic Church has stayed relatively the same as when Jesus left it.

Through these facts, we can see that Christ definitely found a Church. We see through the way He taught, establishing people to continue teaching people after He was gone, and those people to teach others, and so on. We can see that His Church is still running strong today, by the help of His Holy Spirit which He promised to send us to help. Let’s use the example Christ set for His Apostles by teaching others about Christianity, which builds up the Church into even greater unity.

Inside Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Church, Cartago. (I objected to this picture being taken, but whatever.)

Outside church in Cartago, Costa Rica.

I'm obviously the handsome dude with the hair on the right side.