From Athens to Galilee: Recovering the Biblical Model of Church Through Redemptive Education

Summary

The Greek, lecture-centered model of education has deeply shaped the modern church, turning it into a space for listening and knowledge accumulation rather than obedience, discipleship, and mission. While powerful, this model reflects Athens more than Galilee, producing informed believers but weak disciple-makers. A true return to the church Jesus established requires redeeming education itself, restoring life-on-life, obedience-based, and mission-centered formation.

Call to action

If education reshaped the church, it can also restore it. We must abandon spectator Christianity and reform our training to produce obedient, multiplying disciples. At CKMC, we commit to using academics to recover the church Jesus left—rooted in homes, driven by mission, and faithful to making disciples of all nations.

Education Shapes Civilizations—and the Church Is No Exception

As a Bachelor of Education holder, one of the most formative and fascinating disciplines in my training was the History of Education. It exposes a simple but sobering truth: education does not merely transfer knowledge; it shapes how societies think, organize power, define success, and reproduce themselves across generations. Today's education system has been greatly influenced by Greeks philosophy.

You are who you are as a result of education you attained weather formal or informal. 'As man thinks so is he'. Nothing else reshapes our thinking more than Education.

Few civilizations illustrate this better than ancient Greece. Through education, Greece conquered the world without armies. Athens and Sparta present a striking contrast: Sparta trained the body for dominance; Athens trained the mind for influence. History vindicated Athens after Sparta physically conquered Athens but over time Athens transformed Spartan through Education, they literally conquered them mentally. Mental formation outlived physical force. Ideas traveled farther than spears.

That same educational power—ideas shaping reality—has profoundly influenced the modern church, often in ways we have failed to critically examine.

The Greek Educational Model: Powerful, Persuasive, and Persistent

Greek education was not neutral. It was intentionally designed to produce a certain kind of person and society. Central features included:

- Teacher-centered instruction (the philosopher as authority).

- Lecture-based knowledge transfer.

- Formation of elite thinkers rather than whole communities.

- Audience gathered to listen, not to reproduce the message.

Plato lectured. Aristotle reasoned. Students listened, admired, debated—but rarely replicated the philosopher’s life or mission. Education produced intellectual heirs, not movement carriers.

This model proved remarkably effective—and dangerously adaptable.

When Greek Philosophy Entered the Church

As Christianity moved from the margins to the mainstream, especially after Constantine, it unknowingly baptized the Greek educational model. Over time:

- The teacher became the center.

- The lecture replaced apprenticeship.

- The sermon replaced obedience-based discipleship.

- The church gathering became a weekly classroom.

Today, many churches function like philosophical academies:

- One elevated speaker

- A passive audience

- Weekly lectures

- Minimal expectation of imitation, obedience, or mission

Every Sunday, we reproduce Athens—not Galilee.

Even Bible schools, seminaries, and theological institutions—often with sincere intentions—have largely adopted this same framework. We train students to know, explain, and defend theology, but rarely to obey, model, and multiply disciples.

The result is devastating: a knowledgeable church that does not disciple, a theologically articulate church that does not multiply, and a well-taught church that does not finish the mission.

The Church Jesus Left Was Not Greek

Jesus did not start an academy. He formed a movement.

His model of education was radically different:

1. Life-on-life apprenticeship (“Follow Me”)

2. Obedience-based learning (“Teach them to obey”)

3. Reproducible training (ordinary people, everywhere)

4. Mission-centered formation (“I will make you fishers of men”)

Jesus taught while walking, eating, traveling, healing, praying, and suffering. Knowledge was always tied to practice. Revelation demanded response. Learning was incomplete until obedience occurred.

The early church continued this model:

- They met house to house.

- Every believer participated.

- Leadership was plural, local, and relational.

- Growth came through multiplication, not attraction.

This was not philosophical education. It was kingdom formation.

Why Structural Reform Without Educational Reform Fails?

Today, many are calling for a return to:

House churches

Disciple-making movements

Missional communities

Organic expressions of church

These instincts are right—but often with challenges.  

Why?

Because you cannot build a biblical church using an unbiblical educational model. I have met people practicing home churches but also in conventional bible schools. This the danger.

Those bible schools courses, curricula, and training systems still:

- Elevate the expert.

- Reward information over obedience.

- Produce listeners rather than disciple-makers.

Then structural change alone will collapse. Old wineskins cannot hold new wine.

A return to the biblical church requires a return to biblical education.

Education Is Powerful—So It Must Be Redeemed

If Greek education reshaped the world, then redeemed, biblical education can restore the church.

This means designing courses that:

- Measure success by obedience and fruit, not grades.

- Require learners to practice immediately what they learn.

- Emphasize spiritual formation, not academic performance.

- Train believers to teach others, not impress audiences.

- Integrate theology, mission, community, and daily life

Biblical education must be:

1. Missional, not merely informational.

2. Reproducible, not elite.

3. Relational, not institutional.

3. Spirit-dependent, not lecture-dominated.

CKMC: Using Academics to Undo Academic Damage

At CKMC, this is the mission we are committed to.

Not to abandon learning—but to redeem it.

We use academic tools, frameworks, and discipline against the very distortions they created. Our goal is not to produce philosophers of Christianity, but obedient disciples of Jesus who can:

- Live out the gospel

- Multiply house churches

- Engage mission cross-culturally

- Integrate faith with real life (work, family, community)

Our courses are designed to:

- Restore obedience as the measure of learning.

- Return theology to the streets and homes.

- Form disciple-makers, not sermon consumers.

- Recover the church Jesus actually left behind.

This is not anti-intellectualism. It is rightly ordered education—where the mind serves obedience, and knowledge fuels mission.

From Athens Back to Galilee

1. The church does not need better lectures, It needs better formation.

2. It does not need more philosophers in pulpits. It needs faithful disciple-makers in homes, marketplaces, and nations.

The future of the church will not be secured by refining Greek methods—but by recovering Jesus’ model.

And that recovery must begin where the damage began: education.

If education is powerful enough to shape empires, it is powerful enough—when redeemed—to restore the church.

From Athens, we learned how to think.

From Galilee, we must relearn how to follow.

“Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…” (Matthew 28:20)

Yours in Christ 

Onesmas Murithi

By a theologian and educationist committed to discipleship, mission, and the recovery of the church Jesus left.