David Fitzgerald is a historian that argues against there being a historical Jesus. One of his claims is that around the time Jesus died, churches were beginning to sprout up in Judea, Damascus, Greece, and even Rome itself.
While I can't answer the question about the earliest recorded church, Fitzgerald's position is very much a minority one within the scholarly community, and the question of whether there was a historical Jesus has been pretty exhaustively discussed on this sub (to the point of its having its own section in the FAQ). See /u/talondearg's post on the subject.