The idea of “church growth” would have been very different to a first-century Christian than it is to us today.
In The Patient Ferment of the Early Church,1 Alan Kreider tells the story of the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. I was prompted to read this book after Bishop Steve mentioned he had read it over last summer. I enjoy church history and I enjoyed this book for that reason, but more than that, I felt it contained challenges to us about how we proclaim the gospel today.
Kreider’s thesis is that, in the early church, growth occurred through God’s mysterious action as Christians patiently practised being Christians with their focus within the church.
Christians still had to live in the world and so be aware of how society worked, although their involvement was limited by their Christian commitment. Beyond this, there was no interest in trying to change the world or society around them. The church expressed no concern about pagan practices and didn’t attempt to influence them. Rather, Christians were concerned with being taught about the faith and sharing worship, living life with Christians and non-Christians alike according to what they had been taught, and being patient about seeing growth.
With service attendance tightly controlled, the church operated almost in secret. There is an obvious common sense to this in times of persecution, but such times were not the generally prevailing environment in the first three centuries of the church. Persecution did occur, but it tended to be localised and sporadic until the beginning of the fourth century. So, the secrecy surrounding worship services was the usual practice irrespective of the political climate.
Despite what seems nowadays to be a strange approach, the church grew until by 300CE it was perhaps between 2 and 10% of the population (although making ancient population estimates is notoriously difficult).
They were honest in business transactions and looked after their fellow humans, Christians and pagans alike. The latter included rescuing babies discarded and left to die because they were unwanted, and caring for the sick when their pagan neighbours might abandon them. This behaviour attracted attention and, in some, prompted enquiries about its motivation. This would be the beginning of a prospect’s journey towards Christ and eventual incorporation in the church.
This approach ended in the fourth century, starting with the emperor Constantine. Christianity became the state religion over that century, and Kreider notes that impatience and instrumentality were introduced.
Instrumentality refers to the means (the instruments used) to serve this impatience. For example, Christianity was eventually the mandated religion for those in the empire.
Of course, we might proffer up the many examples in Acts of the gospel being explicitly preached to counter the thesis. However Kreider makes the point that, strangely to us, the early church understood the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) as applying only to the apostles themselves. Once their ministry ended, then so did the commission and the church moved to its patient ferment model.
After the apostles, the church patiently went about its business as a community separate from society at large. Church growth was rooted in the mysterious patient ferment worked by God as early church members went about their lives for more than two hundred years, from the late first century to the early fourth century.
But it wasn’t that Christians were ignorant about evangelism – each had to be prepared to give an answer about their faith and its impact to a pagan enquirer. A positive response would mean having to start the enquirer on her journey to Christ.
Kreider’s thesis and analysis raised questions for me about how we should proclaim the gospel in our context.
The church was a small counter-cultural community embedded in a much larger society which was largely hostile to it. The church, in post-Christendom New Zealand, is also a small counter-cultural community within a society which, while not often hostile, is largely indifferent to it.
There are lessons we can learn from early church practice in such a context, but we need to be aware of differences between the contexts as we draw them out.
In the early church, a prospect’s start on the journey to Christ would come with an encounter with a Christian. Something in the Christian’s behaviour or manner would attract her, and perhaps a question asked, or a conversation started. The Christian played an important role here, but all the heavy lifting was done by God behind the scenes.
If a salvation results, it’s based on this one-to-one encounter and perhaps others like it. It has occurred, not because of some “big” action or activity by the Christian, but rather through the “small” everyday actions of living the Christian life. The “big” stuff has been done by God in the background, so to speak.
This “small stuff” is one lesson we can take from the early church, but it needs modification. Despite the decline of the church and some erosion of Christian values, most people in New Zealand live their lives according to a broad Christian ethic even if they are completely ignorant of doing so.
This difference means we can’t rely on us simply standing out, we must manufacture the one-on-one encounters.
One way we can do this is individually through the familiar advice to build relationships with non-Christians to a point where we can broach the gospel with them. But a more attractive approach for the average Christian is to manufacture one-on-one encounters in a context where Christianity is expected to be “in the room”. Examples are programmes such as Mainly Music and Messy Church, which aim to create a context where Christians and non-Christians can mix, and the gospel be overtly and gently proclaimed in a “small” way. Here, there still needs to be a relationship established one-on-one so the challenge about the gospel is expressed by one person to another. The context means that we can be overt about the gospel challenge and introduce it at a much earlier stage in the relationship, I suggest. It also gives the opportunity for the church to maximise use of people who find it easier to establish relations and invite a response to the gospel, yet still provide a useful role in different ways for others in the programme.
In the early church, once a prospect was on the way, he faced quite a journey. This would involve contact with Christians and teaching about the faith for a long period – perhaps 3 years. Only after that could he be baptised and admitted to full fellowship and so participate in worship services. This is a long process of incorporation which presumably would not cease as he began to function as a member of the church.
Today, we might expect more rapid progress, and certainly we practise a complete openness to non-Christians in our public activities. But, we must not ignore the importance of incorporation: we must practise good discipleship.
The early church approach says, too, that we should avoid instrumentality – placing reliance on some method, or instrument, to generate salvations. Of course, there is some instrumentality in such programmes as Mainly Music and Messy Church, but there the instrument is subservient to the one-on-one encounters. This suggests that we should be at least wary of embracing large evangelistic events which focus on a one-on-many encounter (the evangelist and her audience).
Another difference in contexts is our democracy and the opportunity it gives to have our say as Christians as to how our society should work. The average Roman in the street had no say in governance or government policy which was influenced and determined by a tiny elite.
While we might feel the same at times, the reality is actually very different. But we need to take our example from the early Christians who behaved authentically. They weren’t strident in their opposition to anything; they quietly went about doing what was right.
I do think Kreider provides us with useful lessons for today, and we should listen carefully to them. There is one last such lesson which should give us pause.
While good Christian behaviour doesn’t stand out in our society as it would in the Roman Empire, the reverse would surely apply. Bad behaviour by Christians would not have stood out in that pagan society, but surely does today. We need to take care we don’t stand out for the wrong reasons.
1Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
The idea of “church growth” would have been very different to a first-century Christian than it is to us today.
In The Patient Ferment of the Early Church,1 Alan Kreider tells the story of the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. I was prompted to read this book after Bishop Steve mentioned he had read it over last summer. I enjoy church history and I enjoyed this book for that reason, but more than that, I felt it contained challenges to us about how we proclaim the gospel today.
Kreider’s thesis is that, in the early church, growth occurred through God’s mysterious action as Christians patiently practised being Christians with their focus within the church.
Christians still had to live in the world and so be aware of how society worked, although their involvement was limited by their Christian commitment. Beyond this, there was no interest in trying to change the world or society around them. The church expressed no concern about pagan practices and didn’t attempt to influence them. Rather, Christians were concerned with being taught about the faith and sharing worship, living life with Christians and non-Christians alike according to what they had been taught, and being patient about seeing growth.
With service attendance tightly controlled, the church operated almost in secret. There is an obvious common sense to this in times of persecution, but such times were not the generally prevailing environment in the first three centuries of the church. Persecution did occur, but it tended to be localised and sporadic until the beginning of the fourth century. So, the secrecy surrounding worship services was the usual practice irrespective of the political climate.
Despite what seems nowadays to be a strange approach, the church grew until by 300CE it was perhaps between 2 and 10% of the population (although making ancient population estimates is notoriously difficult).
They were honest in business transactions and looked after their fellow humans, Christians and pagans alike. The latter included rescuing babies discarded and left to die because they were unwanted, and caring for the sick when their pagan neighbours might abandon them. This behaviour attracted attention and, in some, prompted enquiries about its motivation. This would be the beginning of a prospect’s journey towards Christ and eventual incorporation in the church.
This approach ended in the fourth century, starting with the emperor Constantine. Christianity became the state religion over that century, and Kreider notes that impatience and instrumentality were introduced.
Instrumentality refers to the means (the instruments used) to serve this impatience. For example, Christianity was eventually the mandated religion for those in the empire.
Of course, we might proffer up the many examples in Acts of the gospel being explicitly preached to counter the thesis. However Kreider makes the point that, strangely to us, the early church understood the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) as applying only to the apostles themselves. Once their ministry ended, then so did the commission and the church moved to its patient ferment model.
After the apostles, the church patiently went about its business as a community separate from society at large. Church growth was rooted in the mysterious patient ferment worked by God as early church members went about their lives for more than two hundred years, from the late first century to the early fourth century.
But it wasn’t that Christians were ignorant about evangelism – each had to be prepared to give an answer about their faith and its impact to a pagan enquirer. A positive response would mean having to start the enquirer on her journey to Christ.
Kreider’s thesis and analysis raised questions for me about how we should proclaim the gospel in our context.
The church was a small counter-cultural community embedded in a much larger society which was largely hostile to it. The church, in post-Christendom New Zealand, is also a small counter-cultural community within a society which, while not often hostile, is largely indifferent to it.
There are lessons we can learn from early church practice in such a context, but we need to be aware of differences between the contexts as we draw them out.
In the early church, a prospect’s start on the journey to Christ would come with an encounter with a Christian. Something in the Christian’s behaviour or manner would attract her, and perhaps a question asked, or a conversation started. The Christian played an important role here, but all the heavy lifting was done by God behind the scenes.
If a salvation results, it’s based on this one-to-one encounter and perhaps others like it. It has occurred, not because of some “big” action or activity by the Christian, but rather through the “small” everyday actions of living the Christian life. The “big” stuff has been done by God in the background, so to speak.
This “small stuff” is one lesson we can take from the early church, but it needs modification. Despite the decline of the church and some erosion of Christian values, most people in New Zealand live their lives according to a broad Christian ethic even if they are completely ignorant of doing so.
This difference means we can’t rely on us simply standing out, we must manufacture the one-on-one encounters.
One way we can do this is individually through the familiar advice to build relationships with non-Christians to a point where we can broach the gospel with them. But a more attractive approach for the average Christian is to manufacture one-on-one encounters in a context where Christianity is expected to be “in the room”. Examples are programmes such as Mainly Music and Messy Church, which aim to create a context where Christians and non-Christians can mix, and the gospel be overtly and gently proclaimed in a “small” way. Here, there still needs to be a relationship established one-on-one so the challenge about the gospel is expressed by one person to another. The context means that we can be overt about the gospel challenge and introduce it at a much earlier stage in the relationship, I suggest. It also gives the opportunity for the church to maximise use of people who find it easier to establish relations and invite a response to the gospel, yet still provide a useful role in different ways for others in the programme.
In the early church, once a prospect was on the way, he faced quite a journey. This would involve contact with Christians and teaching about the faith for a long period – perhaps 3 years. Only after that could he be baptised and admitted to full fellowship and so participate in worship services. This is a long process of incorporation which presumably would not cease as he began to function as a member of the church.
Today, we might expect more rapid progress, and certainly we practise a complete openness to non-Christians in our public activities. But, we must not ignore the importance of incorporation: we must practise good discipleship.
The early church approach says, too, that we should avoid instrumentality – placing reliance on some method, or instrument, to generate salvations. Of course, there is some instrumentality in such programmes as Mainly Music and Messy Church, but there the instrument is subservient to the one-on-one encounters. This suggests that we should be at least wary of embracing large evangelistic events which focus on a one-on-many encounter (the evangelist and her audience).
Another difference in contexts is our democracy and the opportunity it gives to have our say as Christians as to how our society should work. The average Roman in the street had no say in governance or government policy which was influenced and determined by a tiny elite.
While we might feel the same at times, the reality is actually very different. But we need to take our example from the early Christians who behaved authentically. They weren’t strident in their opposition to anything; they quietly went about doing what was right.
I do think Kreider provides us with useful lessons for today, and we should listen carefully to them. There is one last such lesson which should give us pause.
While good Christian behaviour doesn’t stand out in our society as it would in the Roman Empire, the reverse would surely apply. Bad behaviour by Christians would not have stood out in that pagan society, but surely does today. We need to take care we don’t stand out for the wrong reasons.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
