Book excerpt: The focus of Christianity is Jesus Christ, yet for many he has been displaced by focusing on religious practices that were unknown to the early church. The question is - Why? If a time travelling first century Christian visited a church service today he would immediately recognize most of what we do. However, he would recognize it as part of the pagan world that he, as a Christian, had been called out of. He would probably turn tail and head for the exit while thanking Jesus that he no longer needed any of that. We, on the other hand, do connect all these things to our Christian experience in the twenty-first century. Where we have a problem is in seeing how they connect to the church of the first century. That is why this book is subtitled, 'Why Do We Do It The Way We Do?' Against a backdrop of world events, from the earliest days to the present, Last Stone Standing lays out how the church came into being and how many of the accepted practices of today became entrenched within it.