Baptism is presented as an ablution, a purification rite, and aspersion may be substituted for immersion if no pools or rivers are available. Communal prayer entailed the recitation of "Our Father" thrice daily and the thanksgiving meal (Eucharist) was celebrated on the Lord's Day (Sunday) (Did. 14:1). It was a real dinner as well as the symbol of spiritual food. It also had an eschatological ingredient, signifying the reunification of the dispersed members of the church, and ended with the Aramaic cry, "Maranatha" (Come, our Lord!). No allusion is made in Pauline fashion to the Lord's Supper.

Teaching authority in the Didache lay in the hands of itinerant prophets, whom we know also from the Acts of the Apostles 11:27-8. They were supplemented by bishops and deacons. However, these were not appointed by the successors of the apostles, as became the rule in the Gentile churches, but democratically elected by the community. 

Perhaps the most significant element of the doctrine handed down in the Didache concerns its understanding of Jesus. This primitive Judaeo-Christian writing contains none of the theological ideas of Paul about the redeeming Christ or of John's divine Word or Logos. Jesus is never called the "Son of God". Astonishingly, this expression is found only once in the Didache where it is the self-designation of the Antichrist, "the seducer of the world" (Did. 16.4). The only title assigned to Jesus in the Judaeo-Christian Didache is the Greek term pais, which means either servant or child. However, as Jesus shares this designation in relation to God with King David (Did. 9.2; see also Acts 4:25), it is clear that it must be rendered as God's "Servant". If so, the Didache uses only the lowliest Christological qualification about Jesus.

In short, the Jesus of the Didache is essentially the great eschatological teacher, who is expected to reappear soon to gather together and transfer the dispersed members of his church to the Kingdom of God. The Pauline-Johannine ideas of atonement and redemption are nowhere visible in this earliest record of Judaeo-Christian life. While handed down by Jewish teachers to Jewish listeners, the image of Jesus remained close to the earliest tradition underlying the Synoptic Gospels, and the Christian congregation of the Didache resembled the Jerusalem church portrayed in the Acts of the Apostles.