--- Not many consider where it first began to go wrong for the church:
"Church" is used in at least three ways today. 1) the building or place and the ceremony one goes to, usually but not always, on Sunday. 2) the organisation of people with a particular set of beliefs, and often with a leadership hierarchy - e.g the Roman Catholic Church, the Presbyterian 'Church' (as an organised denomination); 3) the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, being all those who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ - He knows who they are, they may or may not go regularly to one place or building to worship, they may or may not be associated formally with a particular denominational organisation.
All who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ are subject to an on-going process of transformation, and most of us are keenly aware that this process is not smooth, nor without its setbacks. We all come into the process with out own "baggage" and are all on unique journeys. We know that things all too often "go wrong" for us as individuals, and sometimes we are part of local groups of believers where things go wrong collectively. If we use an analogy of heaven as a mansion with God in it, and we are alive on earth, Jesus is like the large glass "french doors." When we look through these glass doors to get a glimpse of God, we see (through) Jesus. When God looks 'out' at us through the same glass doors he also sees Jesus. In this sense he sees us perfect in Jesus. The Father sees his son's bride as perfect. (perhaps from this view, and in this sense the church (# 3) has never "gone wrong.") We look at ourselves and each other, and we look at Jesus our goal and our model, and we see that we fall far short of what we should or will be.
Of course God is also fully aware of all our shortcomings, and the Holy Spirit is constantly working with us and in us to take us from where we consciously are to where the Father intends us to be - fully and actually transformed to the image of his Son.
If we ask the original question about the group of original followers of Jesus, my own view is not so much that they "went wrong" as that they started "wrong." Throughout Jesus' three years of teaching, then following the resurrection, and in spite of all his attempts to get things straight in their heads, they STILL clung to their cultural baggage, believing that the Messiah would establish a kingdom of power, based in Jerusalem, re-establishing David's throne, and throwing the pagan Romans out of the promised land. They preached a gospel of POWER and vengeance. The cross was a dreadful mistake that fortunately God had corrected. Peter's message at Pentecost was very much "You killed the Messiah, God raised him from the dead, and (according to their sincere belief) He is coming back within their lifetime, so woe betide you, if you don't repent he will bring God's wrath on you." Peter exercised this raw power when he accosted Ananias and Saphira and they fell down dead. That was not the way Jesus had treated him after his denial of his Lord; instead Jesus had very gently brought him back and given him responsibility in spite of his earlier weakness. But Peter seems not to have understood this different approach. Much later Paul did when he advised mature Christians how to deal with fellow believers who had "gone wrong."
They did not understand that a new covenant was in effect; that the old one based on the temple and the curtain between ordinary people and God was torn open. They continued going to the temple, participating in temple worship. They continued to teach circumcision. They continued to live under the law, with the corrollary being that this law must be enforced (there is no forgiveness under the law, even if there may be mercy). They continued to discriminate agains non-Jews, or gentile proselytes to judaism in their support activities. And their action in choosing a successor to Judas Iscariot was entirely necessary to meet their understanding of the prophecies, with 12 being such an important number in their concepts of complete organisations. And the one Greek born believer, Stephen, who seems to have understood more than they themselves, was stoned to death. Not a single one of the apostles was there to support him in his final hours! They could not accept his understanding of the good news.
The Lord did tell the apostles to remain in Jerusalem until they were filled with the Spirit came. But then his command was clear - go out to Judah, the rest of Israel and to the utmost parts of the world. Why didn't they do that? A very plausible reason was that the headquarters was (in their mind) Jerusalem, the Messiah would come back there, and they saw it as essential that THEY be present to welcome him and form his cabinet. If they were in India or Spain or anywhere else, it would be years before they heard he had returned, and they would miss out. (Their attitude is evident in Acts 1:6.)
So they got it wrong from the beginning.
It wasn't until Paul's second missionary journey, possibly between Athens and Corinth that he had a vision that totally shook him to his roots and filled him with fear as he entered the city to preach something NEW ("you were the first to hear MY gospel" he wrote to them). This fearless man who had endured beatings, imprisonment, earthquakes while in stocks inside an unstable prison building, stonings, mobs. What could have shook up this eminent well educated Jew? Personally, I believe he was shown, and finally understood, that the cross was not an aberration that God fixed, but was the WHOLE POINT of Jesus life work! He himself described it as anathema to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles. This was the birth of his gospel, the good news of God's LOVE, his GRACE and redemptive work of reconciliation - the very opposite of POWER. And so began a very tough campaign to convince the apostles of this gospel. Apparently, what Jesus had described to Cleopas on the road to Emmaus had never filtered through.
As long as the people of God have emphasised power, and exercised power, in whatever form, they have "gone wrong." Whenever they have emphasised love, compassion, reconciliation, grace, in humility the Spirit has been able to work. Power is not listed among the fruit of the Spirit.
Creating formal organisations automatically gives power to a few. It automatically creates the need for rules - the law - and then needs someone to enforce them. However good these rules are (and the scriptures are clear that at least in some sense "the law" is good), they ultimately remove responsibility from people, stunt their growth towards maturity, and "kill." And they directly hinder the full freedom of the Spirit to work in and through us. We forget that humans were not alone in the Fall. All of nature was, and all institutions also. Organisations and institutions by the nature of the fall, ultimately end in death, and are often the instruments of "death" where death includes all things associated with hindering our movement towards becoming all God intended us to be, individually and collectively. The church (#2) as a man-made organisation is not exempt.
That's my own personal "short answer." I'm very sure many readers will not agree with this, will challenge it. But before you do, look carefully at this narrative and consider what you know about the exercise of power in the church (or anywhere for that matter), and the association of this power with the use of fear. Remember that love does not force its will on the loved one. God has given us all free will and he respects that. From the beginning he established principles of cause and effect that apply even to interpersonal relationships. We can choose what we wish to do, but we cannot choose the consequences afterwards - they come automatically. I find the use of fear to be very inconsistent with God's love. God is love, He can do nothing except in love because it is his intrinsic nature, and we are told clearly "perfect love overthrows fear." Think of all the times God's messengers and the Lord himself said "Fear not." He does not use tools like terror to win us to him, his means are never inconsistent with his ends. (That we become afraid when we see him in his glory and we see our own shortcoming is not his doing, but ours.)
Sorry for being so long...
Monna