What were the first followers of Jesus called?

The Book of Acts calls the movement "the Way" six times, at 9:2, 19:9, 19:23, 22:4, 24:14 and 24:22. Members were also called disciples, believers, brothers and sisters, saints, and by outsiders "the sect of the Nazarenes". The word "Christian" appears only three times in the entire New Testament and was, on the usual reading, coined by outsiders at Antioch.

Did the earliest Christians have church buildings?

No. They met in homes. The New Testament repeatedly greets "the church that meets in their house", and the Greek word ekklesia means an assembly of people, never a building. The earliest identified purpose-adapted Christian building is the house church at Dura-Europos in Syria, converted in the mid-third century, roughly two hundred years after the movement began. Large basilicas follow imperial toleration in the fourth century.

What did the earliest church actually do when it gathered?

Acts 2:42 lists four things: the apostles' teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. The surrounding verses add shared possessions and daily meeting, in the temple courts and from house to house. It was a meal-shaped gathering in a home, not a service in an auditorium.

Library · History

Before they were Christians, they were the Way.

The movement had a different name, a different shape, and no buildings for roughly two hundred years. Here is what the sources actually say, including the parts that complicate the story.

TL;DR

Acts calls the movement “the Way” six times. That is the in-house name, used by its own members.
“Christian” appears three times in the whole New Testament, and on the usual reading it was coined by outsiders at Antioch. Nobody in Acts introduces themselves with it.
They met in houses. Ekklēsia, the word translated “church,” means an assembly of people and never a building.
Leadership was plural, local and functional: overseers, elders, servants. The single-bishop model is an argument still being made in the early second century, which tells you it was not yet settled.
The earliest identified Christian building is a converted house at Dura-Europos, mid-third century. Grand architecture arrives with imperial favour in the fourth.
And the honest correction: Acts is not a neutral recording. The first generation fought bitterly, and the golden-age picture is partly Luke's arrangement and partly our own longing.

The name they used

Six times in Acts, the movement is simply the Way. Greek: ἡ ὁδός, hē hodos, the road or the path.

“…so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.” Acts 9:2, on Saul before Damascus

“However, I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect.” Acts 24:14, Paul on trial before Felix

The other four are at 19:9, 19:23, 22:4 and 24:22. Notice the range: it is used by an enemy hunting them, by a member defending himself, and by a Roman governor who evidently knew the term. It was the movement's actual name, not a poetic flourish.

The word choice is not accidental. All four gospels open the public story by quoting Isaiah 40:3, “prepare the way of the Lord.” And a separate Jewish community, the one that left the Dead Sea Scrolls, applied that same verse to itself in its Community Rule, describing its members as going into the wilderness to prepare the way. “The Way” was a live and loaded phrase in first-century Judaism before anyone applied it to the followers of Jesus.

It also describes a shape. A way is something you walk. It is not a set of propositions you affirm at the door.

Where “Christian” came from

“…and the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.” Acts 11:26

Three appearances in the entire New Testament: here, on the lips of King Agrippa at Acts 26:28, and once in 1 Peter 4:16, where it turns up in the context of suffering for the name. In none of those does a member of the movement use it to describe themselves in ordinary conversation.

The form of the word points outward as well. Christianoi carries a Latin-style suffix used for the partisans or household of a figure, the way Herodians meant Herod's people. It reads like something the neighbours in Antioch said about a group, possibly with a shrug, possibly with a sneer, that the group later accepted and eventually wore with pride.

Outsiders had other names too. At Acts 24:5 a prosecutor calls Paul a ringleader of “the sect of the Nazarenes,” which is roughly how the movement is still named in Hebrew and Arabic today.

What they actually did

“They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer… Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.” Acts 2:42, 46

Four things, then a location. Teaching, fellowship, a shared meal, prayer. And the location is a house, with food on the table. The earliest gathering was closer to a dinner than to a service.

The letters confirm it from a completely different angle, in the greetings, where nobody is making a point:

“Greet Priscilla and Aquila… and the church that meets at their house” (Romans 16:3–5).
“Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly… and so does the church that meets at their house” (1 Corinthians 16:19).
“Give my greetings to Nympha and the church in her house” (Colossians 4:15).
“To Philemon… and to the church that meets in your home” (Philemon 1–2).

Note who is hosting. Two of those four households are named for a woman.

The word we translate “church”

ἐκκλησία, ekklēsia, was an ordinary civic word for an assembly of people summoned together. Acts 19 uses it, in the same book, for a riotous town meeting in Ephesus that has nothing to do with Jesus at all.

In the New Testament it never means a building. The English word “church” comes into the language down a different road entirely, and it drags architecture with it. That single translation habit is responsible for an enormous amount of confusion about what the first communities were.

No buildings for two centuries

The archaeology matches the texts. The earliest clearly identified Christian meeting building is at Dura-Europos, a garrison town on the Euphrates, where an ordinary house was adapted for Christian use in the middle of the third century. A wall was removed to make a larger room. A small chamber was fitted for baptism and painted.

That is roughly two hundred years in. Before it, the movement grew across the empire in dining rooms. The basilicas, the clergy as a professional class, the great architecture: those arrive after imperial toleration in the fourth century, and they change the religion's centre of gravity in ways people are still arguing about seventeen hundred years later.

How it was led

The vocabulary is functional, not exalted. Episkopos is an overseer. Presbyteros is an elder. Diakonos is a servant or agent. They appear in the plural and they are local.

The clearest evidence that the later structure was not yet in place is that Ignatius of Antioch, writing around 110 CE, has to argue strenuously for the authority of a single bishop in each city. Nobody argues that hard for something everyone already does.

The same period shows women in roles the later church would spend centuries removing: Phoebe is called a diakonos of the church at Cenchreae and Paul asks a whole congregation to assist her (Romans 16:1–2); Junia is described in the next breath as outstanding among the apostles.

The correction this page owes you

Everything above is evidence, and it is genuinely what the sources say. But a page that stopped here would be handing you a golden age, and there was not one.

Acts is a composed account, written by an author with purposes, most likely decades after the events. “The Way” may partly be Luke's own preferred term. It is good evidence. It is not a transcript.
The first generation fought. Paul describes opposing Peter to his face at Antioch (Galatians 2:11). Corinth had already split into factions by the time Paul wrote to it (1 Corinthians 1:11–12). Acts 15 exists because a bitter dispute needed a council.
Sharing everything did not last. The very next thing Acts records after the common purse is Ananias and Sapphira lying about it.
Restoring the primitive church is a well-worn road. Many movements have set out to do exactly that, sincerely, and become institutions with buildings and hierarchies within two generations. That pattern is itself part of the evidence about human beings.

What survives the correction

A good deal, actually, and it is worth being precise about it. The claim that stands up is not the early church was pure and we have fallen. It is narrower and harder to argue with:

The things many people now treat as the essence of the faith are later additions, and the movement existed and spread without them. No buildings. No professional clergy. No denominations. No creeds in the fourth-century sense. A name that meant a road, given by insiders, and a name that meant a party, given by outsiders.

Whatever you conclude from that is yours to conclude. But if someone has told you that leaving the building means leaving the faith, the first two centuries are not on their side.

This page is part of the Deeper Waters Library: cross-tradition explainers for seekers who want primary sources rather than slogans. Related: can you follow Jesus without a church? and is the kingdom of God within you? Have a follow-up? Ask the desk, or bring it to the Commons.