Missions and the Early Church: Christianity a Religion of Mission
July 2013 marks our “Global Evangelism Month.” In this week’s article, we’re considering missions in the early church. We’ll examine the world in which the early church found itself, and its impressive growth in just a few centuries. We’ll also consider what early church missions can teach us today, and discover that Christianity is fundamentally a religion of mission.
Setting the Stage
To better appreciate the early church missions movement, we should begin several centuries prior to Jesus’ birth. In the 300s BC, Alexander the Great conquered the then-known world and built the Greek Empire. He unified Greek culture with similar customs, dress, food, language, religion, and more, such that its influence would be felt for centuries to come. As we’ll see, this would have great impact upon early church missions.
After ruling for nearly 200 years, the Greek Empire fell to the Romans. Though the Romans defeated the Greeks militarily, the Greeks swallowed the Romans culturally. For the first time since the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9), commercial, cultural, and political homogenization unified the world.
Common language, roads, and the Mediterranean Sea linked people and major cities to one another, making commerce, the exchange of ideas, and travel much easier. Learning increased as religious and philosophical leaders rose and traveled. Even Jews may have participated in missions (cf. Mt. 23:15). It was into this context that Jesus was born and the Church founded.
The Growth of Christianity
a. An Overview
In view of this context, when Jesus founded the Church, He did so “in the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4). The times were ripe. As Christianity expanded geographically, it expanded numerically too. Sociologist Rodney Stark charts its growth [1]:
Year # of Christians % of Population (based on an est. pop. of 60 million)
40 1,000 0.0017
50 1,400 0.0023
100 7,530 0.0126
150 40,496 0.07
200 217,795 0.36
250 1,171,356 1.9
300 6,299,832 10.5
350 33,882,008 56.5
What caused Christianity to grow at such a pace, especially 300-350? The most important reason: God (cf. Jn. 16:7-8). Above all else, mission is God’s work. Yet He invites others to join Him in it. In the early church, these included trained and lay evangelists, missionaries, apologists, martyrs, and lay believers.
These believers used Rome’s common languages, roads, and more to add to the legitimacy of Christian teaching and living before a curious, watching world. As we think about our own witness, evangelism, and outreach, we should remember this: God desires to use us in our given cultural, political, and social contexts too, as He did these early Christians, to accomplish His work!
b. The Inestimable Voice of Anonymity: Lay Christians & Travelers
Other than God Himself, the most important voice in God’s mission work is the voice of lay believers—then and now. This is where a significant part of missions work occurs. We see this in the early church. As Christians, businessmen, and common travelers used the Roman roads to travel and migrate, they took Christianity with them. While many of these weren’t vocational missionaries (as conceived today), they were nevertheless Christians who viewed their faith through the lens of mission.
Because Christianity traveled by road, it began as an urban movement. These early Christians weren’t noted for their glamorous lifestyles, being chiefly comprised of the lower class and women. In fact, one 2nd-century critic described them as “wool-workers, cobblers, laundry-workers, and the most illiterate and bucolic yokels” [2]. Despite the insult, history shows us that God used these people in a big way.
For instance, even Christianity’s critics noted that they were good and noble citizens whose acts of charity spread like wildfire, such as their ministries to victims of earthquakes and fires, and with the homeless and widows. We even see glimpses of this unfold in the pages of Scripture (cf. Luke’s Gospel-Acts work and Paul’s epistles).
Who were these early Christian missionaries? Regrettably, most of them will remain anonymous (in this life). But their influence has been incalculable. “Nothing is more notable than the anonymity of these early missionaries,” wrote Stephen Neill [3]. Like this nameless company (cf. Heb. 12:1-2), God desires to use us too to build His church.
c. Proclaimers of the Faith: Vocational Evangelists & Missionaries
Despite the overwhelming anonymity of early church evangelists and missionaries, we do know of some of them from Scripture, history, and tradition. In Acts, Peter, John, Philip, Paul, Barnabas, Judas, Silas, John Mark, Apollos, and others proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). These were among Christianity’s first missionaries. While we may not think of these people as missionaries in quite the same way as we do William Carey, Adoniram Judson, Laura Belle Barnard, or Lesslie Newbigin, they were.
Scripture also tells us about the Twelve Apostles and Four Evangelists. Though it doesn’t tell us what happened to (most of) them, tradition holds they preached as evangelists and/or missionaries throughout the world:
Apostle/Evangelist Tradition
Simon Peter Turkey, Georgia, Italy, and Asia
Andrew Georgia and Bulgaria
James Israel and Palestine
John Turkey
Philip Greece, Syria, and Turkey
Bartholomew India and Georgia
Thomas Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and India
Matthew Israel and Palestine
James Israel
Thaddaeus Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Libya
Simon the Zealot Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, Lebanon, and Egypt
Matthias Israel, Palestine, Georgia, and Ethiopia
Mark Alexandria
Luke Greece
Moving forward, other, less familiar missionaries also emerge from early church history:
Missionary Tradition
Pantaenus India
Denis France
Ulfilas Goths
David of Basra India
Patrick Ireland
Frumentius Ethiopia
Stopping with the fall of Rome in 476, many names beyond these are scant. Though obscure, they are nevertheless deserving of further study [4].
From those anonymous voices to the missionaries in Acts to the Apostles and Evangelists to these more obscure ones, God used missionaries to grow His Church. He must have! For a quick glance to some of the early church leaders’ provenances illustrates the breadth with which Christianity spread in just a short period:
Africa Germany
Tertullian of Carthage Ambrose of Milan
Perpetua of Carthage Italy
Cyprian of Carthage Clement of Rome
Augustine of Hippo Syria
Egypt Ignatius of Antioch
Clement of Alexandria Turkey
Origen of Alexandria Polycarp of Smyrna
Desert Fathers Ephrem of Syrian
Pachomius the Great Basil the Great
Athanasius of Alexandria Gregory of Nazianzum
Cyril of Alexandria Gregory of Nyssa
France Peter of Sebaste
Irenaeus of Lyons John Chrysostom
Hilary of Poitiers Theodore of Mopsuestia
d. Defenders of the Faith: Apologists & Martyrs
In addition to using lay Christians, evangelists, and missionaries to add to His Church’s increase and intrigue, God also used people willing to defend and even die for it. Early church apologists defended Christianity from allegations such as:
– Anti-socialism because they retreated from secular society and instead socialized with one another
– Atheism because they didn’t worship the emperor as divine
– Cannibalism because they claimed to eat the body and drink the blood of a Jewish man from Nazareth
– Incest because they married spouses that they identified as their “brothers” and “sisters”
– Intellectual foolishness because they elevated a common man who died upon a cross as God
Apologists also defended the faith from theological heresy and philosophical challenges. Examples include Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine.
The early church also faced sporadic periods of severe persecution [5]. Nero, for instance, allegedly doused Christians with wax and made human candles of them. Some traditions suggest that he also killed Peter and Paul.
Despite these difficulties, or perhaps in light of them, Christianity flourished, for “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church” [6]. As Christians looking back, we too should remember the potential costs of discipleship, which may include mockery, ridicule, and even death.
Missions & the 21st-century Church
What I’ve presented here is just the tip of the iceberg of early church missions. Yet we can clearly see that Christianity is a religion of mission at its heart. We should never forget that we’re on mission, everyday. In particular, it’s God’s mission in which we take part. We should also remember the honor of anonymity, as we witness to our families, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and others, both within and beyond America’s borders. Because, like those from the early church, chances are that anonymity will be our callings too.
What is more, God wants us to “go” as did the early church: to sell our goods, leave our homes, and take to the roads. Whether through prayerful or financial support, or by taking up the mantle ourselves, we must do something, because the world needs the Gospel. Despite its influence in centuries past, Christianity has lost momentum in many places where it once thrived. As a Church and individuals, we should appropriate the early church’s enthusiasm for a lifestyle of mission to reach every continent, country, ethnic group, and indeed every person.
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[1] Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religion Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 7.
[2] Celsus. This quote appears Origen, Book III, Against Celsus.
[3] Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 22.
[4] I should mention that Ulfilas was not orthodox, but an Arian. Nevertheless, because he is one of very few examples we do have for early church missions work, I mention him.
[5] Some of its great persecutors included Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Maximinus Thrax, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian, Galerius, and Julian
[6] Tertullian, Apologeticus.
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Further Reading
Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church (1970)
J. Herbert Kane, A Global View of Christian Missions: From Pentecost to the Present (1971)
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (1996)
Robert Louis Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (2003)
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