This past Sunday accidental oversight and quickly evaporating time conspired to cause me to neglect one phrase in the Nicene Creed.  The creed states.  I believe… in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

The original creed, written in A.D. 325, did not include a statement about the church. This paragraph was added at Constantinople in A.D. 381.

When this paragraph was originally written, there was only one church and there was no papacy in the sense that we understand it today. The word ‘catholic’ means universal and it simply refers to all believers in Jesus scattered around the globe.  All true believers in Jesus are members of his body (Rom 12:4-5; 1 Cor 12:12-13), even though the physical expression of his ‘body’ is scattered across the planet in various gatherings of local believers.  This truth, that Christians are one in Christ, transcends the division between the Roman Catholic church and the Protestant church.

The word ‘apostolic’ was included to make clear that the church was founded upon the actual teaching of the apostles and their eyewitness testimony of the events of Jesus’ life.  The word also serves as a reminder that Christ’s church is a ‘sent’ church.  The word ‘apostle’ means ‘one who is sent.’  Jesus’ final words to his disciples were “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations…”  There is a mission on which Jesus has sent his followers and that mission is make disciples of all nations.  That apostolic mission still stands today and we must be actively engaged in it.