The Jerusalem Church

We learned in the sermon by Pastor Doug how Paul collected donations for the poor of Jerusalem from his missions abroad. It is mentioned that donations thus collected would go to the Church of Jerusalem to help the victims of the great famine.

The first church of the faith would have been the itinerant ministry of the Lord as he travelled with his followers from the Galilee to Jerusalem.

After the Crucifixion and Ascendance to heaven the disciples remained in Jerusalem and organized a synagogue there. Peter, James and John were prominent there until Peter moved out of the area due to persecution by King Herod Agrippa.

The leadership of the Jerusalem church fell to the half brother of Jesus, James (also known as James the Just). James was not a believer until Jesus appeared in the Resurrection. Paul often refers to James in his Letters to the church. James was martyred some where between 62 and 69 AD.

The bishop of the church then fell to Simeon, son of Clopas, a cousin of Jesus. The Church of Jerusalem was forced out of Jerusalem when it came under siege by the Romans in 70 AD and moved to Pella.

The Church of Jerusalem was the home of Jewish Christianity in the early first century but leadership of the Gentile church moved to Rome under the ministry of Peter (The rock upon which the church was to be built.) The Faith transitioned from an offshoot of Judaism to a largely gentile Church by the latter half of the first century. The remarkable spread of the faith through out the Mediterranean and the rest of the world is another story.

— Mike Myers
Student of the Word