Why Does Church History Even Matter?

Uh, what, but, you know, before we get into some specific, you know, moments, uh, why is this important? And if somebody said here in 2026, it's like, I mean, why the heck do I need to know about this lady who was following Jesus in 90 AD or whatever it is? Like what, you know, is this a, just for fun? Is there a bigger thing at play? What's, what is your exhortation and the importance of even familiarizing ourself with this type of stuff?

Right, yeah, it's a great question.

I think one of the things, the key thing I would say is that our people, when I call them in this book, our people, Christians... through time and space, right, Christians of the past across the world, there's so many ways in which they face some of the same things we face regularly, right? And so often things that we might think are maybe peculiar to our day or new to the church and no one's ever experienced this before, right? And then you start looking at some of these stories, you're like, no, you know, whether it's from fascination, if not obsession with the end times, right? Hey, Christians have been there many times before, right? So struggles over how do you take your Christian identity and how does that fit together with your political identity or your cultural identity? And so those are some of the questions that you start looking at the history of the church and you think, you know, there's so many ways in which we just have a lot that we can learn from people who have been there before.

So in one sense, just studying the history of the church shows us that we're not alone.

And in our struggles, in the questions that we have before us, and we have a lot to learn from our people, the great cloud of witnesses who have come before us.

Oh, yeah, and that's actually that Hebrews 11 or 12.

Now all my studying is for naught at this point when I can't recall that chapter in real time.

But it is, and I do think it's hard.

I'll speak for myself.

I'm focused on the church we're planting here.

We have our local expression.

I can't even think universal church like, okay, everybody that's alive right now, but the – Like you say, our people, but that's such a broader category than we've probably ever stopped to think on, isn't it?

Yes.

Yep.

And yes, you start encountering early Christians from Persia, modern day Iran, China, Nubia, Ethiopia, Armenia.

You start all over the place, and you can see that the church has just been – one of the things I try to present in this is that the church has been really a global outreach from the get-go.

It didn't become global in the 19th century or the 20th century with the major, especially Protestant missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries.

But we've got vibrant Christian communities scattered all throughout the world at these.

And so, yeah, just exciting to discover and also just introduce them to my fellow Christians living today.

And that's been a real drive for this.

One of the things I love about the way you approached it, I guess one thing to take a class in church history or a seminar and you kind of get the big idea of this is what the church was facing.

This is how it developed.

This is when it went from homes to building.

But by telling individual stories, you actually kind of get a feel, somewhat of a feel for personally what it was like to try to live and follow Jesus during that time.

So in the thousand year period.