Ever wonder how Christianity spread so rapidly in the first century?
No internet. No mass media. No blogs. Very little written material. Was it the preaching of the apostles? Was it signs and wonders? Was it the house-church movement? Was it just a one-time special movement of the Holy Spirit?
We kicked that question around in our small group Sunday night.
Roland Allen, in his book The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, writes
"Seventy years after the foundation of the very first Gentile Christian church in Syrian Antioch, Pliny wrote in the strongest terms about the spread of Christianity throughout remote Bithynia, a spread which in his view already threatened the stability of other cults throughout the province. Seventy years later still, the Paschal Controversy reveals the existence of a Christian federation of churches, stretching from Lyons to Edessa, with its headquarters situated in Rome. Seventy years later again, the emperor Decius declared that he would sooner have a rival emperor in Rome than a Christian bishop. And ere another seventy years had passed the cross was sewn upon the Roman colors."
With break neck speed, Christianity spread across the ancient world.
Several centuries later, Islam spread rapidly through the ancient world. That, however, was accomplished with military victories. How was Christianity spread so fast? It certainly was not with military might. It was not with well organized mass media campaigns. It was not through tele-evangelists.
It turns out that Christianity was rapidly spread by lay people. Ordinary men and women. It was spread by word of mouth. It was spread by men and women who experienced joy and could not stop talking about it. In fact, the mere act of talking about it deepened their joy further.
Roland Allen writes,
This instinct is admirably expressed in the saying of Archytas of Tarentum quoted by Cicero: "If a man ascended to Heaven and saw the beautiful nature of the world and of the stars his feeling of wonder, in itself most delightful, would lose its sweetness if he had not someone to whom he could tell it."
That is it, in a nutshell. There is an instinctive force within us which drives us to impart to others a new-found joy. It is so hard to keep a secret, isn't it? It is fun sharing good news. Now combine this with the longing of the Holy Spirit to draw others toward God, and you have an unbeatable combination. You will reach the tipping point. And Christianity in the first century certainly did.
The question to you and me becomes, are we experiencing such a new-found joy that we are absolute blabber mouths about it? We can't shut up. We can't stop yapping about it.
Or has the good news become old news?
The secret to evangelism is not techniques. It is not obedience. It is not television. It is not EE clinics. It is not reading Out of the Salt Shaker once a year.
The secret to evangelism is joy. The secret is the sweetness that we experience in telling others of God's grace in our lives. Telling, and re-telling of God's grace just deepens the joy, doesn't it?
Ever notice how many times Paul brings up the Great Commission in his epistles? Ever notice how many times he chides the church to get out there and start witnessing? Not once. He didn't have to. The gospel was spreading. Don't get me wrong. The church in the first century had plenty of problems: heresies, a need for leaders etc. But one problem they did not seem to have was being stingy about sharing the grace of God.
Let joy over God's grace in your life be the motivator that causes you to be a blabber mouth today. Sweeten that joy by sharing it with someone else.
Great words, Jeff. This is a message that we all need to hear.
Spreading good news is easy! It's good news!
As a friend recently put it, "King Jesus is on the throne. We can live for the King today. He will be returning soon!"
How exciting! This is also the reason the Good News is so subversive. It is a message about a new King. He is the true ruler. He entered with mighty power through his death and resurrection. I want to be a herald for the King!
Soli Deo Gloria!
Posted by: Brian | November 08, 2005 at 08:03
Well, I've got some well-founded theories on how and why this happened, but you're not going to like them. :)
(You won't like them because they have nothing at all to do with the Holy Spirit or with personally witnessed miracles...)
Posted by: tgirsch | November 08, 2005 at 13:03
Tom,
I welcome your well-founded theories on why Christianity spread. I will share a thought of my own on why Christianity spread and later died out.
The Gospel proclamation was subversive to the emperor cult in the Roman world without ever directly assaulting that worldview. The early church was living in community in complete opposition to the way in which the Hellenists around them we living. They loved one another. Sure they had problems but they experienced community that was so foreign to the way of life that had spread throughout the Roman empire.
It was this community that was so attractive. Sure Paul was able to make a logical case for faith in Jesus but it was their lives together that gave this message real meat. They were living for a different King.
How do you think Christianity spread like wildfire? Why did the wildfire stop when Constantine turned Christianity into something official and something you intellectually assended to?
- Brian
Posted by: Brian | November 08, 2005 at 17:30
"The early church was living in community in complete opposition to the way in which the Hellenists around them we living."
I think its important to note that the early Church was very communisitc. Belonging to a Church provide material benefits to people that the religiosn fo the time did not. Present starving people with food and tell them the food came from God's love, and its a powerful argument.
Also, unless my history is totally off here, Hellenistic society didn't have anything like heaan for all in its religions. that right there is a huge selling point, so to speak.
Posted by: kevin | November 14, 2005 at 13:57
Brian:
I never got back to you on this, and for that I apologize. I'll have to sort of phone it in, but there are a number of socio-political factors that were in play. First and foremost, because of Roman imperialism, you had a large disenfranchised populace that was desperate to cling to any hope that came along. Couple that with some brilliant marketing by the founders of the early church, and the marked similarities between Christianity and Mithraism (the latter of which had been around at least a hundred years longer and was especially popular with the Roman soldiers), and the conditions were ripe for a fireball explosion.
The "brilliant marketing" bears spelling out a bit more. For starters, the religion elevated the poor to a status above that of the wealthy. Let's face it, who makes up the bulk of your target audience? Further, the fledgling Christian church made its feast days coincide with existing pagan holidays, and even incorporated some of the pagan traditions, such that a shift to Christianity didn't require a dramatic change in habits and traditions. (This last can still be seen every time you buy an "Easter bunny" or those little marshmallow chicks.)
Obviously, it's a lot more complex than that. But the bottom line is that it had a lot more to do with the populace being ripe for the idea of a risen Christ -- and all that purportedly entails -- than with the truth or falsity of that event.
Then, of course, we can get into the hindsight games involving the competing factions that belie the idea that "the early church" existed as anything resembling a single entity. Much of this can be seen in the scripture -- particularly in the Pauline epistles -- where much ink is spilled discrediting those rival factions (most notably the gnostics, and to a lesser extent, the followers of James).
Posted by: tgirsch | November 15, 2005 at 15:12