Missional Is Historical

As a university professor I heard many stories about college students struggling with two major concerns: money and grades. That’s why I love this story of a college coed told by Chuck Swindoll. After a long struggle, she finally wrote an ingenious letter to break the news to her parents:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Just thought I’d drop you a note to clue you in on my plans. I’ve fallen in love with a guy named Jim. He quit high school after grade eleven to get married. About a year ago he got a divorce.

We’ve been going steady for two months and plan to get married in the fall. Until then, I’ve decided to move into his apartment (I think I might be pregnant).

At any rate, I dropped out of school last week, although I’d like to finish college sometime in the future.

On the next page she continued:

Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that everything I’ve written so far in this letter is false. NONE of it is true.

But Mom and Dad, it IS true that I got a C in French and flunked Math. It IS true that I’m going to need some more money for my tuition payments.1

Creative, huh! Poor grades and an empty pocketbook fare better with Mom and Dad than illegitimacy and a bad marriage.

The need for perspective shows exactly why studying history matters. In particular, looking at the witness of the early church helps us to be more effective in living and sharing the gospel today. Santyana correctly argued  that those who do not learn from history are doomed to relive it; however, we can also learn positive lessons from yesterday for today.

How exactly did that band of believers, that den of disciples make such a remarkable impact to the point that they soon were accused of “turning the world upside down?” How did they do it? Was it mainly through amazing miracles and a few incredible preachers?  The question of how they spread so rapidly in the face of such difficulty recognizes the remarkable rise of Christianity in the face of virtually insurmountable odds.  Indeed, Rodney Stark’s subtitle to his book The Rise of Christianity makes the point well; “How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominent Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries.” While obtaining actual numbers of Christians in the Roman Empire in a time before computers and the modern obsession with numbers proves difficult,  I think Alan Hirsch is close to the mark when he estimates the growth of the faith from around 25,000 in AD 100 to around 20,000,000 by AD 315.  He gathered this from a variety of sources but mainly from Stark’s research.  Stark assumed a population of the Empire by 315 of around 60 million, noting that others including Harnack believed that by then Christians were actually the majority, perhaps as many as 33 million.

Hirsch notes a similar time of remarkable growth clower to our time—the rise of the church in China.  Estimates before the religious purge of Mao Tse-tung hover around 2 million believers.  After the lifting of the Bamboo Curtain in the 1980s, Westerners were amazed to discover at least 60 million believers in China, with some claiming as many as 80 to 100 million!  While the percentage of Christians to the empire remained smaller when compared to the Roman Empire in China with well over a billion citizens there, the remarkable growth at a time when the Communist government sought to obliterate such religious belief is no less amazing.

The Western church is stagnating; but it has not always been the case. It should not surprise us that in each of these cases above, Christianity’s growth came as a marginalized and often persecuted system rather than in a time of favored status and great influence in the centers of power.

Stark argues that the early church grew not primarily via miraculous events or mass conversions, but through the growth through social networks of many believers communicating the message, for movements that continue to grow “discover new techniques for remaining open networks, able to reach out and into new adjacent social networks.”  Movements that die on the contrary become closed to outsiders, unwelcoming, and disconnected, forming their own subculture without need of others. Thus the contemporary institutional church, when it becomes inward focused, plants the seeds of its own destruction in its efforts to focus more on its subculture than those in need of Christ outside her walls. 

The question remains: just how did the gospel spread in the centuries following Christ’s resurrection?  Did the church expand mainly through evangelists who gave all their lives to spread the good news?  Did the gospel simply spread naturally through culture by the witness of common folk whose lives were changed by its power?  The answer would be both. And the answer would be more than that.  There were “full-time wandering missionaries,” who, as Origen put it, “wander not only from city to city but from town to town and village to village in order to win fresh converts for the Lord.”  Early historian Eusebius wrote of evangelists who went to places where the gospel had not been preached, preaching the gospel and appointing pastors as they went.

At the same time, however, all believers seemed to carry the message as did believers in the Acts. Green observed how “Christianity was from its inception a lay movement, and so it continued for a remarkably long time.” He brilliantly summarizes the expansion of the church via common believers:

But as early as Acts 8 we find that it is not the apostles but the “amateur” missionaries, the men, evicted from Jerusalem as a result of the persecution which followerd Stephen’s martyrdom, who took the gospel with them wherever they went. It was they who travelled along the coastal plain to Phoenicia, over the sea to Cyprus, or struck up north to Antioch. They were evngelistis, just as much as any apostle was. Indeed it was they who to the two revolutionaty steps of preaching to Greeks who had no connection with Judaism, and then of launching the Gentile mission from Antioch. It was na unselfconscious effort.

He adds how the gospel likely was spread:

They . . . went everywhere preaching the good news which had brought joy, release and a new life to themselves.  This must often have been not formal preaching, but the informal chattering to friends and chance acquaintences, in homes and wine shops, on walkes, and around market stalls. They were everywhere gossiping the gospel; they did it naturally, enthusiastically, and with the conviction of those who are not paid to say that sort of thing.

The personal witness of believers in the early centuries has been documented. Continuity is seen from Jesus calling Peter and Andrew and the unknown woman at the well, to Philip and the Eunuch and Peter with Cornelius, to Pantaenus’ witness to Clement of Alexandria and Justin’s witness to Tatian. We see in Acts 2:10-11; 4:31; 8:1-4; and 11:19-23 how the gospel spread rapidly through the witness of ordinary folks who never quite got over Jesus.  We read in I Thessalonians 1 how that the gospel took root in that city and spread throughout the region through the witness of the Thessalonian believers.

            How did the early church expand so rapidly? Because missions did not stand for a committee in the church or an emphasis twice a year—it formed the heart of their movement.  Because witnessing never became sidelined to a day of the week or placed in the hands of a few “experts,” but was seen in believers in general.  For them, being missional marked their movement.

Another reason was because they were willing to face persecution on the one hand and disease and epidemics on the other.  One should not underestimate the impact of the changed lives of unbelievers to impact a pagan culture.  One of the more underestimated facts of early church history is the massive plagues that hit the Empire. During the reign of Marcus Aurelius, beginning about AD 165, a plague devastated the Empire, taking the emporer as well.  Another came around AD 251 with similarly devastating effects. About 260, in his Easter letter, Dionysius wrote a tribute to the believers whose heroic efforts cost many of them their lives. Pagans tended to flee the cities during plagues, but Christians were more likely to stay and minister to the suffering: ”Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.” Dionysius added, “Needless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy.”  Reading this from a comfortable home in the West, I wonder if we can share in the difficulty of the persecuted church by our willingness in the West to forsake comfort to minister to those in dire need, whether it be AIDS patients, or giving ourselves more to those who suffer in our culture, whether by illness or poverty.  Dyonisius would agree: “The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons, and laymen winning high commendation so that death in this form, the result of great piety  and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom.”

I feel that sometimes we in the West can feel a bit of self pity that we do not suffer as believers do in places like Saudi Arabia and China.  Of course, some relish our wealth and pursue a prosperity gospel long on narcissism and short on sacrifice.  But if Dionysius is right, there is yet a way to be valiant for Christ in any culture: seek the marginalized, the disenfranchised, those not one cares about, and love them and touch them and be Christ to them.  And all of us along the way can speak much of the gospel.