The Early Church

After the first hundred years Christians gradually started to change the way they did things. In time, the Christian Church would become like the Catholic Church today. There was now a difference between Bishops and Elders. The church in each place came to be led by one Bishop, with a group of Elders helping him. Deacons still did the practical work.

Services came to include set forms of words (liturgy) that would be roughly the same wherever you went. Adults becoming Christians would still be baptised, but Christian parents wanted their children to be part of the Christian church and they were being baptised at very young ages until infant baptism became a normal practice

The first Christian churches had looked to the twelve apostles (first disciples of Jesus) for guidance and leadership. Because Rome was the centre of the empire, the Bishop of Rome became increasingly important in giving a lead to churches everywhere.

A Service in Second-Century Rome:

"At the end of the prayers, we greet one another with a kiss. Then the president of the brethren is brought bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he takes them, and offers up praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and gives thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at his hands.

"We call this food "Eucharist", which no one is allowed to share unless he or she believes that the things which we teach are true, and has been washed with the washing that is for remission of sins and unto a second birth, and is living as Christ has commanded. For we do not receive them as common bread and common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Saviour. ... For the apostles, in the memoirs called Gospels composed by them, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, said, This do in remembrance of me, this is my body; and that, in a similar way, having taken the cup and given thanks, he said, this is my blood; and gave it to them alone."

JUSTIN, Apology 1 65-66: AD 150.