Larry's World

2 August 2021

On the Church

It is highly significant that the wandering apostles, evangelists, prophets, and teachers of the earliest Christian era were very soon supplanted by a resident clergy: the bishops, presbyters, and deacons. The local congregation, i.e. primarily the city congregation [Stadtgemeinde], is the form in which the church of Christ appears in the world. To this day a Catholic bishop uses as his surname not his family name but the name of his diocese. The church of Christ, God’s wandering people, exists through all centuries in the churches of Antioch and Alexandria, Ephesus and Smyrna, Rome and Carthage, Lyons and Treves, Cologne and Canterbury. The city may be destroyed, the church building may fall into ruins, the shepherds may be killed, and the flock scattered. The church, however, endeavors to rise again even in such a place. The church in Treves died out as a Latin church, but it rose again as a German church.

         Hermann Sasse