The early church didn't drift into the modern church.

History changed it.

One emperor. A handful of political decisions. And a series of changes that still shape how millions of Christians experience church today.

This episode explores one of the most significant turning points in Christian history: the conversion of Constantine and the dramatic changes that followed.

What began as relief from persecution eventually reshaped the structure, leadership, and public expression of Christianity. We trace the historical transition from a decentralized fellowship of believers to an increasingly institutional church and discover how those changes still influence the way we practice Christianity today.

Together, we explore how we ended up where we are—and why understanding the past may be the first step toward recovering what we've lost.

Read Primal Church:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GMB74CK7

Learn more:

https://primalchurch.org

We make these conversations freely available to anyone who needs them.

Your generosity helps make that possible.

Help Set the Table:

https://buy.stripe.com/3cI5kFcrIgzceE0a3Vd3i00

What made the early church so different?

They had few purpose-built buildings.

No professional clergy.

Very little access to Scripture.

No modern technology.

If the early church changed the world with fewer resources than we have today, why do so many modern churches struggle to produce the same kind of transformation?

In this episode, we compare the New Testament church with today's Western church and identify the biblical patterns that made the early church so spiritually alive.

Together, we explore the remarkable characteristics of the early church: a shared priesthood, everyday dependence on the Holy Spirit, home-based fellowship, deep community, mutual discipleship, and the absence of many structures we've come to assume are essential.

Together, we seek to discover what we've lost along the way.

Read Primal Church:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GMB74CK7

Learn more:

https://primalchurch.org

We make these conversations freely available to anyone who needs them.

Your generosity helps make that possible.

Help Set the Table:

https://buy.stripe.com/3cI5kFcrIgzceE0a3Vd3i00

What if the greatest problem facing the church today is that we've quietly accepted a version of church Jesus never intended?

For more than thirty years we've wrestled with a simple question:

Exactly what is Church?

In this opening episode of the Primal Church series, we explain why that question has become impossible for us to ignore. Along the way we discuss painful encounters with broken families, a near-fatal carbon monoxide poisoning that became an unexpected picture of the Church's need to breathe again, and why comparing the modern Western church with both the Book of Acts and the underground Chinese church of the last 80 years raises difficult—but necessary—questions.

This is our invitation to rediscover what Christ intended.

Read Primal Church:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GMB74CK7

Learn more:

https://primalchurch.org

We make these conversations freely available to anyone who needs them.

Your generosity helps make that possible.

Help Set the Table:

https://buy.stripe.com/3cI5kFcrIgzceE0a3Vd3i00

In this introductory episode of Forgotten Mountain, Emily and Isaiah interview their parents, Dwight and Doe Kopp, about their story. They discuss everything from a homemade rickshaw and a virtual cruise to the many real ways God provided along the way. Together they revisit an awkward double date, early marriage, raising five children, life in Zambia, homeschooling, making do with very little, building a family culture of creativity, and eventually opening their home to people walking through crisis.

This episode is warm, funny, and personal, but it also sets the table for the larger conversation ahead: What does it look like when faith is not merely a Sunday service, but a shared life around tables, in homes, through hardship, hospitality, and discipleship?

Before the series turns to Primal Church, this episode gives listeners a window into the people, family, and lived experience behind the conversation.

Pull up a chair. Welcome to Forgotten Mountain.

Read Primal Church:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GMB74CK7

Learn more:

https://primalchurch.org

We make these conversations freely available to anyone who needs them.

Your generosity helps make that possible.

Help Set the Table:

https://buy.stripe.com/3cI5kFcrIgzceE0a3Vd3i00