What accounts for the growth of the early church?
Published: Fri, 12/27/24
Updated: Fri, 12/27/24
Sessions Include:The Good and Beautiful Community, Lesson #1 Why Study Books?My church recently transitioned to using books as curriculum in our Sunday School. The reason is simple. My life has been profoundly influenced by the reading of books. I don’t think my life has ever been changed by any curriculum piece I have ever read. Ever. I have actually surveyed a number of groups I have taught over the years, asking: Has your life ever been changed by any curriculum? The most common response is for people to laugh out loud. Our first study was the Bless book by Dave and Jon Ferguson. It is a great study on relational lifestyle evangelism. About half-way through the the study, we did a survey to help determine what we would study next. No one wanted to go back to the curriculum. Not. One. Person. The #1 choice for what to study next was a tie:
We will be studying these two books over the next year and a half or so. Here is what Amazon says about Ortberg’s book: The Me I Want to Be will help you discover spiritual vitality like never before as you learn to "live in the flow of the spirit." Why does spiritual growth seem so difficult? God's vision for your life is not just that you are saved by grace, but that you also learn to live by grace, flourishing with the Spirit flowing through you. And this book will show how God's perfect vision for you starts with a powerful promise: All those who trust in God "will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit" (Jeremiah 17:7-8). Pastor and best-selling author John Ortberg first helps gauge your spiritual health and measure the gap between where you are now and where God intends you to be. Then he provides detailed tasks and exercises to help you live in the flow of the Spirit, circumventing real-world barriers - pain and sorrow, temptations, self-doubt, sin - to flourish even in a dark and broken world. As you start living in the flow, you will feel:
God invites you to join him in crafting an abundant and joy-filled life. The Me I Want to Be shows you how to graciously accept his invitation. I have just completed a new, 22-week study of John Ortberg’s book, The Me I Want to Be that we will be using in my church. (I had previously done a 7-week study.) I have always thought that using books as a curriculum would be a good idea, and I have written a lot of book studies over the years. One of the things that actually using books as curriculum caused me to realize has to do with cost. By writing a study on every chapter of this book, instead of my previous study that had a lesson for every section, the cost drops to below what we were paying for curriculum. Better curriculum. Cheaper cost. Win. Win.
|
In an early Christian document known as the Epistle to Diognetus (c. A.D. 120–200), the author wrote a response to some propaganda circulating in the Roman Empire. People had spread false rumors about the Christians, saying that they were a dangerous, secret society filled with bizarre behavior. People were saying slanderous things about Christians, such as they practiced cannibalism (because during Communion they ate the “body and the blood of Jesus”). The epistle is believed to have been written by a man named Athenagoras. In one important section the author describes how Christians are alike—and different—from others.
Does the church today sound like the church Athenagoras describes? Why or why not? I find this quote fascinating. Athenagoras spells out the ways Christians were the same as all people, as well as the ways they were peculiar. In outward ways they were no different from anyone else in the Roman Empire. They lived in the same homes, wore the same clothes and ate the same food as the average Roman citizen. They obeyed the laws—no one accused them of being thieves, of not paying their taxes or of harming others. Athenagoras is saying, “We are just like you.” And yet they were different. They obeyed earthly laws but lived by higher laws (“You have heard that it was said, … ‘You shall not murder.’ … But I say to you …” [Matthew 5:21–22]). They were members of the Roman Empire, but this world was not their home; their citizenship was in heaven (Colossians 3:1–2; Philippians 3:20). They endured suffering well and even blessed those who cursed them, as their teacher taught them to do—and as he himself did. I think my favorite part of the quote is where Athenagoras writes, “For the good they do …” This is an easily overlooked point: the good they do. It is no small thing to do good. Especially in a world in which there is so much wrongdoing. I suppose you could say that it was the good they did that got them into such trouble. It was, and is, peculiar to do good things for no good reason. People get suspicious. Despite the false accusations and the persecutions, Christianity not only survived, it actually flourished. According to secular historian Rodney Stark,* Christianity grew exponentially from its inception, at the astonishing growth rate of 40 percent per decade. Figure 1.1 gives a clear illustration of the rapid growth:
Year Number of Christians Percent of the Population A.D. 40 1,000 0.0017 A.D. 100 7,530 0.0126 A.D. 200 217,195 0.36 A.D. 250 1,171,356 1.9 A.D. 300 6,299,832 10.5 A.D. 350 33,882,008 56.5 Figure 1.1. Christians as a percentage of the world’s population What can account for such a growth rate, especially given the danger involved in being a Christ-follower? I have heard many explanations, but the one that I find most appealing is that the lives Christians were living were so winsome that others simply wanted to have what they had. The same is true today. Several years ago I recruited a young woman to play tennis for our team at Friends University. Her father said to me on the phone, “Is your college one of those places that beats people over the head with the Bible? Because we have not raised her to be religious, and we are concerned about that.” I told him that we never beat people with anything—being Quaker and all. But I did tell him that there were some wonderful Christian people she would be exposed to. He was fine with that. He just wanted her to have freedom of choice, and I assured him she did. A few months after being at the school, she noticed the vibrant lives of many of the students on our campus who were followers of Jesus but never pushed anything on her. I never once engaged in a conversation with her about God or Jesus or the Bible, but she did come to our campus fellowship. She went home over Christmas break, and when she returned she said, “I wanted to tell you that I gave my life to Jesus during the break.” After much rejoicing I asked her, “What made you want to do that?” She said, “After seeing all of these people who have peace and joy and love, I wanted to have what they have.” After two thousand years not much changes. James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Formatio, 2010), 28–31. If you would like to explore this new study, it is available on Amazon, as well as part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking |
