Reading acts as an antidote to the bad habits of consumerism, utilitarianism, individualism, and other wayward -isms. . . . reading demands engagement.
Jessica Wooten Wilson
Once upon a time I was an art education major. I chose education because I didn’t want to learn a second language — a requirement of the fine arts college. But I dropped my art major and switched to social studies my junior year in college. Why . . . and what has this to do with influential books?
My watercolor painting explained it all. On the back of the painting was the professor’s comment: “C- Trite and unimaginative.” That sums up my art career and explains why I switched to social studies. After all, history and politics was always an interest for me.
History is a reading favorite. My list of favorite history books and biographies could dominate these postings, but I’ve chosen one influential book. The title says it all: The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries by Rodney Stark.
The late author Rodney Stark was a professor of sociology at Baylor University. In his book he traces the rise of Christianity by comparing it to a current religious movement — the growth of the Mormon Church. Using a statistical analysis which compares growth rates over time he not only calculated the rate of numerical growth in the early church but drew some conclusions on how this growth happened. Three growth principles from his findings have shaped my life and ministry. The first principle may surprise you.
The growth of the early church was not caused by mass conversions or miracles but through the networks of open friendships. In fact, friends were one of the primary methods of conversion to the faith. Quoting historian Robin Lane Fox, he notes:
Above all we should give weight to the presence and influence of friends. It is a force which so often escapes the record, but it gives shape to everyone’s personal life. One friend might bring another to the faith.
Stark documents how the ties of family, marriage, and loyalties to heads of households (Acts 16:15, 31-32) proved to be an effective means not only in recruiting members to the church but encouraging the continued adherence of new believers to the faith. In other words, friends made the faith attractive, and friends sustained the growth of new believers.
The proverbial light bulb went off in my head — evangelism was more than an event, it needed relationships. I had a lot of training in the “event” but little instruction in connecting with lost people. The early church and its growth happened because people built relational bridges for the gospel. The people who crossed this bridge were called “informal missionaries,” by church historian Michael Green. They were everyday believers who “chattered the gospel to friends . . . in wine shops, on walks, and around market stalls.”
This relational bridge has motivated Peggy and I to walk across the street to meet our neighbors. We play euchre with them, watch OSU football, and invite fourteen people into our home for a neighborhood Christmas party. All along the way we’re asking God for opportunities to start faith conversations.
In his study of religious movements, Stark discovered that immediate and sustained growth happens “only if the group constitutes an open network.” Let me illustrate his point by describing a typical Roman city.
Roman cities were intensely dense places — people were packed together beyond anything experienced in modern day New York or Paris. Most homes were small cubicles driving people to live outside in the streets in close contact with their neighbors. A church in a home shrouded in secrecy could not have existed in such density and in an open space. Stark makes this observation:
Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships . . . To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family.
How could this happen if people were living in secret, with churches hidden only to a privilege few who had the password? While there were periodic waves of persecution, Stark would argue that most of the time the church was an “open” network — a place where people could identify and connect with these local Jesus gatherings. Open networks inclusive of lost people is key to evangelism.
The third element is what we have often contemptuously called the “social” gospel. Connecting the good news with good works for the common good (our communities) marked the life of the early church.
Plagues were prevalent in the early centuries. One record has 5,000 people dying weekly in Rome alone. How did the church respond? Stark quotes the early church leader Dionysius:
Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to those in need and ministering to them in Christ . . . drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains . . . The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner. . . .
The pagans (worshippers of the ancient gods) noticed this sacrifice. The emperor Julian “launched a campaign to institute pagan charities in an effort to match the Christians.” The emperor complained in a letter to a high priest in 362 that “the pagans need to equal the virtues of Christians . . . The impious Galileans support not only their poor, but ours as well, everyone can see that our people lack aid from us.” What a testimony to the church!
While the pagan priests fled the city for safety the Christians stayed behind to care for the sick. This spirit of hope and sacrifice in serving others won many converts. Peggy and I have tried to apply the principle to our lives.
We helped launch and served a free medical clinic, I’ve served in urban churches, Peggy works with educational gardens for children in Columbus’ urban center, and we have devoted a percentage of our giving to people who minister among the disadvantaged. It’s easy to stay in the safety of suburbia. While these are small ventures of faith they were sparked by Stark’s book.
I love his ending thoughts: “Christians effectively promulgated a moral vision utterly incompatible with the casual cruelty of pagan custom . . . . They brought a new conception of humanity to a world saturated with capricious cruelty and the vicarious love of death.” This message was in the gospel.
Check out The Rise of Christianity. I’ve only touched on a small portion of Stark’s insights. In this readable book, you will be thrilled by the story of the gospel and challenged to re-think some of your theories of church growth and evangelism.
Three other resources to consider: Evangelism in the Early Church by church historian Michael Green. Two sources by sympathetic but unbelieving authors are Pagans and Christians by Robin Fox and Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland.
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