The Teaching of the 12 - Part 1

For the past couple of years my husband has been trying to get me to pick up the book, "The Teaching of the 12" by Tony Jones. I'll admit that I tried reading once, but just was not interested at the time. So I put it down and left it down. Recently, however, I picked it up again to see what the book is all about.

According to the back of the book,

The Didache, an early handbook of an anonymous Christian community, "is the most important book you've never heard of." It spells out a way of life for Jesus-followers, including how to love one another, how to practice the eucharist, and how to take in wandering prophets.

So, the plan is to blog briefly on each section of the Didache as I read it. I read Jones' introduction, which for some reason, struck me as more interesting this time around than last. Who knows why? Sometimes you're ready for something and sometimes you're not, I guess!

Introduction
In the introduction, Jones describes what the church looked like in the time that this document is assumed to have been written as, "a small, if growing, band of believers, spreading across the Roman Empire. A blend of educated and uneducated, female and male, poor and rich, slaves and free, Jew and Gentile..." who had to keep their new religion "under wraps." Already this description has me intrigued. To think of so many different types of people all having this one thing in common is kind of interesting to me. It makes me think of my own church (which, admittedly, I love dearly) and makes me wonder what it might look like with such a diverse group of congregants....
The rest of the Intro is the story of how the Didache came to be in our hands today. A brief and fun history lesson. :) The best line in this section is what hit home for me: "The real power of the Didache is its ability to remind us what is truly important in Christianity: showing the love of Jesus to the world."

Now that is something I could enjoy reading.