More than just friends - early Church community was radical

Being part of a community of believers wasn’t just a ‘nice-to-have’ for the first Christians. Fellowship was vital for a family’s wellbeing, explains David Instone-Brewer

My father died without a pension, leaving my mother with a pair of toddlers. He’d belonged to a barristers’ Inn of Court, a church and the Freemasons. Sadly, only that last group offered my mother any practical support. She dismissed them angrily, saying she didn’t want help from an organisation where women were viewed as inferior to men. So we lived on welfare, which was more generous in the 60s than it is now. It was OK.