referring with some exaggeration to the scattered congregations in the various cities and towns of the Roman Empire where he had planted churches during his missionary journeys, together with (presumably) other congregations founded by other apostles, with whom they were in contact (Romans 16:16). • Second, there is the Church in general, the Church in a generic sense. ‘I was violently persecuting the church of God’, Paul confesses (Galatians 1:13), meaning the Church conceived as a single entity,