The first Christians were, like Jesus, Jews resident in Palestine who worshipped on occasion in the Temple in Jerusalem and weekly in local synagogues?. Temple worship was a ritual involving sacrifice, including blood sacrifice, offered to Yahweh. The New testament includes many references to Jesus visiting the Temple, the first time as an infant with his parents.
The early history of the synagogue is controverted, but it seems to be an institution developed for public Jewish worship during the [Babylonian captivity]? when the Jews did not have access to the Jerusalem Temple for ritual sacrifice. Instead, to give a rough summary, they developed a daily and weekly sevice of readings from the Torah or the prophets followed by commentary. This could be carried out in a house if the attendence was small enough, and in many towns of the Diaspora that was the case. In others more elaborated architectural settings developed, sometimes by converting a house and sometimes by converting a previously public building. The minimum requirements seem to have been a meeting room with adequate seating, a case for the Torah scrolls, and a raised platform for the reader and preacher.
Jesus himself participated in this sort of service as a reader and commentator (see Gospel of Luke 4: 16-24). and his followers probably remained worshippers in synagogues in some cities well into the first century when the new Christian movement and Judaism parted ways.
The first part of Christian worship in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions procedes this way with introductory prayers, readings from scripture, a recited or sung psalm, a sermon, and a statement of faith. This pattern, with its elements occasionally rearranged, is followed in many Protestant churches.
The second half of the service offered in the older traditions, known as the Eucharist in Catholicism, called for some novelty of arrangement. For the Eucharist, which reflects the [Last supper]? of Jesus and his apostles, provision had to be made for a table or altar.
The church at Dura Europos has a special room dedicated for baptisms with a large baptismal font.
A common architecture for churches is the shape of a cross. (a long central rectangle, with side rectangles, and a rectangle in front.