What does first century Christianity have to teach the church about belonging today? In this episode of the Pivot Podcast, Dr. Kristofer Phan Coffman, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, joins hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm to explore the early church as a community of genuinely unlike people navigating real social upheaval. From the chaos of the Roman Empire to Paul's fledgling congregations scattered across the Mediterranean, Kristofer helps us see that the early church was not a settled institution with established patterns. It was a community figuring out, often under pressure, what it meant to belong to one another across real difference.

That history has direct implications for church leaders today. Kristofer challenges the assimilation patterns that quietly shape much of North American Christianity and invites leaders to ask hard questions about who feels at home in their communities and why. Drawing on Paul's letters and the witness of Acts, he points toward self-awareness and deep listening as the foundational practices for forming Christian community in a fragmented cultural moment.

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We are figuring it out as we go and that we are not doing that thing where we have an established pattern that works and that if you want to join us, you're going to figure out how to live within our established pattern. But that instead in this new reality, which is a reality of great social upheaval, just like we talked about with the first century Roman empire, that in that reality, we have to come up with new ways of being together and new ways of caring for each other.

that aren't based on making you look like me or making me look like you.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Pivot Podcast where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Alicia Granholm and my co-host is Dwight Zscheile

This season on Pivot, we're exploring the challenge of cultivating Christian community today, which is a hard thing in contemporary culture. Last week, Kathryn Schifferdecker helped us trace the deep roots of God's gathered people in the Old Testament. And this week, we turn to the New Testament. We're excited to welcome to Pivot Dr. Kristofer Phan Coffman who's Assistant Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary. Kristofer brings a wonderful interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective to the Bible.

and we knew he would be a great thought partner for this conversation. Today, we explore the early church where communities of Jesus followers were figuring out often under pressure what it meant to live together as the body of Christ. Their questions turn out to have a lot to say to ours. Kristofer, welcome to Pivot.

Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

We're so grateful to have you with us today, Kristofer. Let's begin with the social and cultural context of the New Testament. What was the background for community and belonging in first century Jewish and Greco-Roman setting? And what exactly should we be paying attention to today if we're going to understand these writings?

So one of the most important things to remember about the first century context of the New Testament is that the first century is a time of immense social upheaval in the Roman Empire, which is now an empire. So one of the things we often don't think about when we think about the New Testament is how new the Roman Empire is. So if we think that Jesus is born in the year one or so, the Roman Empire starts in 27 BC. So only

really a generation before Jesus is born. And Judea, which is the province that he's born in, is only incorporated into what was then the Roman Republic, maybe 20 years earlier. So we have this social upheaval, we have the end of the Roman Republic, the beginning of the empire, and this is accompanied by civil wars all over the empire in Italy, in Judea itself. There's a war between the Romans and the Parthians.

which the Parthians are the Persian empire to the east of Judea. They actually conquered Judea right before the Roman empire starts and then the Romans take it back. And so it's just, it's chaos in this part of the world. And so everybody is trying to figure out what does the world look like now that we have this thing called the Roman empire, that we have this thing, again, this new Christian community is coming of age.

in a time not only when we're trying to figure out what's going on with the Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire very quickly after the time of Jesus is going to destroy the temple in Jerusalem and is going to destroy life as they knew it in Judea. So I just, can't emphasize enough that the cultural context of the New Testament is in some ways chaos and trying to make sense of the chaos that the Roman Empire has brought to that part of the world.

So let's talk about the gospels then and Jesus forming a new kind of community of disciples. What was distinctive about that community and then what are some key elements about what it meant to belong to it?

Yeah, one of the really fascinating things about the gospels, especially in terms of what we have in other Greco-Roman literature, is that most Greco-Roman literature that talks about community talks about it from the perspective of the social elites of the Roman Empire. These are the people who had the money to do writing, the money to preserve those writings and pass them around. But in the gospels, we see this interesting community that's made out of people

from a variety of social strata and many of whom are from a, what we would call middle class is a kind of anachronistic term, but are from this interesting sort of middle where they're not the poorest of the poor, but they're people who are engaged in the sort of rising economic opportunity of the Roman empire. So a great example of this are Peter and Andrew and James and John. They are fishermen, so they're not

social elites in the terms of like they're not politicians or something like that. But they are engaged in ⁓ commerce where they're catching fish in the Sea of Galilee and they're exporting it across the Roman world. And so they're making connections in a way that wouldn't have been possible 50 years ago, because remember this is all a new social setting for them. But it's interesting because we have this testimonial

of these people who are, again, not social elites and who are trying to figure out what does it mean to live in this new world and what does it mean especially to follow God in this new world? That's the other important thing about this upheaval is it's not just social, but it's religious. What does it mean when Judea goes from being an independent kingdom with under the Hasmoneans, the priest and the king are the same person? Again, this is a relatively new thing in Jewish history.

to no longer having a king, to figuring out what it means when the Romans are connected with the temple complex and the Romans are trying to form what that religion looks like. And into this you get Jesus calling people and calling people from, again, these lower social classes to come together and to think about what does it mean to follow God and not explicitly with reference to the temple. That's the other interesting thing about this new community.

that he's putting together.

Kristofer, what is the role of the Holy Spirit in forming community in the New Testament? What are some key takeaways for today in that?

think one of the really interesting stories, and this one gets talked about a lot because of course we have Pentecost, which is a celebration of the role of the forming of the community by the Holy Spirit. But one of the really interesting things about that is the way in which the Holy Spirit at Pentecost gives the stamp of approval, so to speak, for the great multiculturalness of that first community.

And one of the interesting things is there's this big conflict in early Christianity and really in kind of in second temple Judaism between Jews who live in Judea, who live near the temple in Jerusalem, who have lived in the land their whole lives and the Jews who live out in the diaspora. That is people who they've grown up in places like Asia minor or Egypt or even Rome and

They are still faithful to the same God, but they practice in different ways because they've grown up in these different places. And there's this tension there. And in Acts, you see the Holy Spirit comes into that and again, blesses that multiculturalness and doesn't do so through conformity, but does throw by enabling the disciples to speak to everyone that they encounter in their own language. And so it's this way in which the Holy Spirit

sends the disciples out of kind of their own ethnic enclave into the greater Greco-Roman world. And I think that this is a really important, I think we see this not just in the New Testament, but then on through the whole missionary history of Christianity, the way in the spirit constantly calls people from their own circumstances out into encountering those who they are unfamiliar with or those who are different from them.

So Kristofer, let's just dig in a bit more to the shape of life in that new community of disciples that is comprised of these unlike people, right? Who would otherwise not be yoked together in the same way or kind of adopted into the same family. What's distinctive about the way of life that they practice?

Yeah, so one of the things that we see, and this is common throughout the Roman Empire, especially in the early first century, is we get these new types of associations where people are coming together, not based again on sort of how powerful they are or on their elite social status, but around common causes. And we see this in a variety of different places. Sometimes it's tradesmen, sometimes it's burial societies to help the poor get buried.

But then sometimes it's religious and Christianity adopts some of the aspects of these new Greco-Roman communities in helping to bring people together. And one of the aspects like we've talked about is that anyone can join. And this again is different than some of the things we've seen earlier in that the criteria for joining is much more about allegiance than it is practice, which is an

is an interesting thing in terms of the sort of un-Roman understanding of how you belong. It's not that you have to act in a particular way and Paul is really pushing on this in his communities, that the acting is based on this allegiance to Jesus Christ and that it is not your actions that show your allegiance but the other way around. And I think one of the things within that that's really important for us to see is it gives people the opportunity

to find a new way of belonging where they felt maybe in another circumstance, their belonging was determined by themselves as opposed to who their allegiance was to. And so I think this is one of the things that we're seeing different in this Christian community is they're defining themselves by the God that they worship as opposed to by their social standing or by their profession or by their ethnicity.

So Paul writes in his letters to new, often fledgling Christian communities around the Mediterranean basin, addressing all kinds of stressors and challenges, as you have named. Some of these stem from the fact that these communities were uniting or adopting people into a much more expansive, heterogeneous kind of family than was prevalent at that time.

Can you help unpack that a little bit more and help us understand that?

Yeah. So one of the things that we see, and we see this in the New Testament as well, is that there were people who were not ethnic Judeans, so not born in Judea or not of Judean descent, who were interested in the lifestyle that the Judean people lived and in worshipping the God of Israel. And in order to join that community, the way in which you could convert, we call these people proselytes.

But in order to convert, again, it was all about the behavior and adopting the rituals of being a Judean. Kind of from the other side, we also see the way in which there are Judeans or other non-Greek peoples who adopted Greek lifestyles by doing all of the things that, and usually it ended, included getting a Greek education, speaking Greek, wearing Greek clothing, et cetera.

But notice these are all really behavior based and they're all really about how you change who you are to become incorporated into this people. And Paul is writing into this atmosphere. So he's familiar with this kind of conversion. But one of the really interesting things is he goes, Galatians is a good example of this. And he talks about this in Romans as well, where he goes kind of on the offensive and he says, it's not about these sorts of behavioral things.

Or these sorts of custom things that make you a follower or a member of this family of Jesus Christ. But it's about the things that Jesus did for you that then incorporates you into this body through belief. And so he's really giving a a very different way of understanding membership in a community. And part of, I think part of what's going on there is, as you pointed out, it's because these are people

from all over. These are people from different ethnicities, of different social class, of different profession, who are all trying to figure out how to be together in these new communities. And so Paul is looking for something to bind them together that is not about making them all the same, but is about who they worship and whose community they belong to.

So I wanna explore that a bit more. So many of Paul's letters, it's kind of the first half or two thirds is exactly that emphasis around what has God done in Christ to create this new community. But then he does often have another third or half that's, okay, so then how do we live together? And how do we share life together? And what does holiness and community look like? Again, in that broader context that you're describing and just say a bit more about the shape of that, right? Cause it seems like there's sort of

There is a distinct way of life, but it's different from what you're describing around some of the Jewish ⁓ and Roman or Greek contexts as well.

Yeah,

I think one of the interesting things again, to sort of contrast it with that earlier form of conversion that Paul is also familiar with is that that other form of conversion is really about how it is that say you go home and live in your new family now that you are part of the Judean religion, as opposed to your own ethnic religion or how you live now that you are part of Greek religion versus your own ethnic religion.

Whereas Paul is really concerned with the question of how do we live together? How do we as a community, yes, we come from different families who come from different ethnicities, but how do we, when we get together as a community, act with each other and how do we support each other? How do we not lord our differences over each other? And again, I think it goes back to what we said because these communities are so different from each other.

And remember in that other example that I was talking about, it's very often an established Judean community that invites one or two other people into it. So you have kind of ⁓ a homogenous or a more homogenous community that somebody is entering into. Whereas Paul, you have a really heterogenous community. And so they've got to figure out what does holy living together mean when we don't have an agreed upon model from beforehand.

that we can just incorporate a new person into. And so this again, I think is why he spends so much time on that is that this is an active question for all those communities. And as we read his letters, sometimes they're better at solving it than others.

Well, so I wonder if we step back and think a bit now about our contemporary cultural context in the West and particularly in the U.S. So many of the things that you've been talking about are very much things that we're struggling with in America too. Cultural diversity, social diversity and difference, polarization, fragmentation of society, you know, in many ways shaped by these modern Western myths around, you know, really it's we're all these individuals seeking our own way. You know, we've lost the sacred shared.

and sacred horizon, how do you think about how the New Testament witness speaks a different way of being and belonging and hope, I think, into that moment?

Yeah, I think I would point out two things. One, I think would go back to the first question that was asked about the gospels and the community that Jesus is forming there. And one of the things I would say there is that I think we as North American Christians especially need to be cognizant of the way in which without sometimes realizing it, we reproduce an elite form of Christianity.

a form of Christianity that is really based upon credentialing, that is really based upon our ⁓ access to institutions of higher learning that have long, proud histories and so forth. And these are all great things. But one of the things, as I said, that we see in the gospels that is so important is that it is this community that is built from all social stratas, that is built from people who all come together to contribute to this community.

most of whom do not have any sort of access to these elite institutions of their time. And so think that's one of the things that I would point out is just being a cognizant of sort of who we're inviting into our spaces and who we're investing with authority in our spaces and just sort of what that says about the things we value as a Christian community. The second thing that I would say, and this goes to Paul's letters, is to be aware that we are figuring it out as we go.

and that we are not doing that thing where we have an established pattern that works and that if you want to join us, you're going to figure out how to live within our established pattern. But that instead in this new reality, which is a reality of great social upheaval, just like we talked about with the first century Roman Empire, that in that reality, we have to come up with new ways of being together and new ways of caring for each other that aren't based on

making you look like me or making me look like you.

Kristofer, what are some things you would say to pastors or other church leaders who are struggling to form Christian community in today's North American context?

The first thing that I would say is, so you got to read the letters of Paul. And when you read the letters, just as point one, point two, and point two, once you've read the letters of Paul, Paul, who is one of the great orators and in some ways, one of the great religious geniuses of the Western tradition, just that he writes with such power and with such passion.

also struggled with how to form Christian community. It was not as though he, you know, burst onto the scene and was immediately, you know, immediately formed these perfect communities that he left throughout the Roman empire. So even a man as filled with the spirits and as filled with talent as Paul was as a, as an organizer, as a rhetorician, et struggled. So take heart on that. That would be the first thing that I would say.

But then the second thing that I would say is I again would reiterate that even when we don't know it, North American Christianity tends to be built on social patterns that really encourage assimilation. It's built on patterns that encourage, if you want to join our community, you have to learn to be like us, to sound like us, to dress like us, et cetera. And that this is not what we see in the New Testament.

but we see instead this community that is interested in asking, what does it look like when different people come together? And how do we, in the midst of our frustrations, in the midst of our fighting with each other, love one another in the Holy Spirit and form Christian communities from people who were not previously a community together? And so again, I think that we're in that same kind of moment where we're trying to figure out those patterns where we have to perhaps let go of some of the ways in which we have

formed people or assimilated people beforehand so that we can open ourselves to the way that the spirit is trying to form our communities now.

If there are pastors and church leaders who want to kind of lean into that, what would be your recommendations for how they might be able to do that and live out that kind of community today?

I think the first thing is being aware of their own history and asking the question of sort of where both as kind of on a personal level, but then as on a community level, what is the history of their community? What traditions does it come out of? What ethnic groups does it come out of? Because again, one of the things that I truly believe about earth American Christianity and just sort of historically speaking Christianity overall is that the

patterns that formed us in the past continue to work on us in our present circumstances. And that if we're unaware of those patterns, we tend to reproduce them uncritically. So that's the very first thing to ask. Like, what formed this community that I am walking with and that I'm leading, and how do the patterns that form this community continue to show up? That would be the first thing to ask. And then the second thing would be figuring out

How it is that you inhabit a space as a listener, as a learner, so that when someone comes into your space and someone comes into your community or when more than one people hopefully come into your community, you have the capacity to see their difference and learn from their difference, to see who they are as people, again, without sort of having to front the ways that they can conform to your community, but in learning about them as a person and what they might bring to your community.

And so think that sort of self-awareness and that learning to listen, it's what we see in Paul really is one of the things that I think made him so effective was his own self-awareness and his own capacity for listening. And so that's something that I would encourage leaders to emulate.

Well, Kristofer, thank you so much for helping us read these texts with new eyes and connect them with the church navigating a changing world today.

To our listeners and viewers, you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. Join us next week for another conversation as we dig deeper into this challenge of cultivating Christian community. To help spread the word about Pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, leave a review on your favorite podcast platform, or share Pivot with a friend. See you next week.

Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary. Faith Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.