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[Twenty] First Century Missions
The early church did something
right! In the span of just three centuries
Christianity grew from a small band of believers
from a provincial backwater to the leading faith of
the Roman Empire. Historians and missions experts
have long marveled at this rapid transformation. How
did it happen? Could it be repeated?
Obviously, from a Christian
perspective the growth of the Church was and is the
work of the Holy Spirit. But by what means did the
Holy Spirit move in the early church?
For many years, historians have held
the view that Christianity grew because its message
of hope, future liberation and equality of all
people resonated with the oppressed and poor
comprising the greater part of the Roman Empire. But
Baylor University sociologist Rodney Stark argues
that such a view does not square with the historical
data.
In his book Cities of God, Stark
employs historical quantitative analysis to show
that, contrary to popular opinion and expectation,
Christianity did not achieve its remarkable growth
by reaching the rural peasantry. Instead,
Christianity’s primary growth came as it attracted
unusual numbers of literate and educated people
living in major urban centers.
Stark writes, “If the goal is to
‘make disciples of all nations,’ missionaries need
to go where there are many potential converts, which
is precisely what Paul did. His missionary journeys
took him to major cities… No mention is made of him
preaching in the countryside… Any study of how
Christians converted the empire is really a study of
how they Christianized the cities.”
According to Stark, prior views of
how Christianity spread were the result of
hypothetical assumptions without reference to
concrete data. However, analysis of archaeological
data upends the conventional wisdom. In addition,
analyses of early Christian literature and studies
of first century churches like the one in Corinth
reveal that the early church included a surprisingly
large percentage of people from the higher, more
educated social classes.
In the modern era, centuries of
almost exclusive missionary focus in rural areas has
failed to produce national transformation on the
scale achieved by the early Christian church. The
faulty understanding of how the early church grew
may be partly responsible for the limited success of
primarily rural-oriented approaches.
Nevertheless, in recent years there
are increasing signs that Christian missions is
starting to rediscover its urban roots. By God’s
grace, CMI has been privileged to be on the front
end of this new urban wave of missions for more than
three decades.
This new wave holds great hope for
seeing the discipleship of nations. Early apostles
and missionaries like Saint Paul sparked the
transformation of the Roman Empire by reaching its
urban centers when only 5% of the population lived
in cities.
Today, more than 50% of the world’s
population lives in cities. If we would more
vigorously follow the urban approach of the early
Christians, what might the Holy Spirit accomplish in
our day?
EQ Spring 2009
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