As I wrote last week, I’ve just finished reading The Triumph of Christianity:  How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World by Bart Ehrman.  It’s about the rise of Christianity from Pentecost to the end of the reign of Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor.  It’s a serious history book, but it’s written in a style that makes the subject accessible to a general readership.  One thing the book discusses, based on historical research, is how the Gospel was spread, and I’d like to tell you about it.

            In the book of Acts we read about Paul’s missionary journeys, which were the start of the spread of the Gospel.  Paul’s trips, as well as the normal movements of other converts, were greatly helped by the relative ease of travel and communication under the Romans; they had constructed a great road system and fostered peace in the interior of the empire (this is called the Pax Romana).  After the end of the Roman empire, travel would be much more challenging until the nineteenth century.  This free travel of citizens throughout the empire meant that Christianity also traveled.  We shouldn’t think of Paul’s journey as being like a Billy Graham crusade, however.  Paul was not known as a good speaker (the hymn “There Is a Balm in Gilead” talks about preaching like Peter but praying like Paul).  Acts records a man falling asleep and then falling out of a second-story window while listening to Paul.  We have no record of others making extended circuitous missionary journeys like Paul’s.

When Paul reached a new city, he set up his leather working/tent making business; he then founded a church using the contacts first created in his business.  Once the church was established, Paul would move on.  Local church growth continued, however; its members spread the Gospel, intentionally, through their everyday contacts with the surrounding community.  Apparently, there were few, if any, large Christian gatherings during the early centuries, and church services did not greatly contribute, since they were devoted to worship by believers.  The method of spread was almost entirely through personal witness.  As an aside, we should note that after the initial conversions of Jews in Jerusalem following Pentecost, almost all the growth in the church came from gentile conversions.  Paul did visit the synagogues in each town, but his message there was usually rejected.

There were a number of factors that made this person-to-person spread of Christianity successful: the Christians formed a close-knit, but open and welcoming, loving community; early Christians were very charitable and extended their charity to all, believer and non-believer alike; the Christians led morally upright, righteous lives.  I believe, though, that the biggest factor was the Gospel message itself, together with the Christians’ strong faith and belief in it.  All of these factors still hold today, and I believe that we should emulate the early Church in how we carry out the great commission.  St. Francis summed it up 800 years ago saying, “Preach the Gospel every day, sometimes with words.”

Read Acts 8:26-39 to learn about Philip’s personal witness to the Ethiopian official and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Jim