Grace posted yesterday these observations from from Larry Chouinard as to what/why people are attracted to the Kingdom community;
The attractional appeal of the Kingdom community is based on
- an expression of power that transforms,
- a solidarity based on a common dependency,
- a sense of justice that cares for the least,
- values the one and seeks their restoration,
- pursues reconciliation,
- and ever extends the hand of forgiveness.
Who wouldn’t want to walk with such people in the journey of life?
Yes, indeed. Who wouldn’t want to walk with such people?
Building on those thoughts from chapt. 2 of Wolfgang Simson’s Houses That Change the World;
So how and why did people become Christians?
If it was not through systematic evangelistic programmes, mission outreach and invitations to attractive worship services, how did people become Christians? And if becoming a Christian meant joining an outcast and secretive society, endangering one’s social success and potentially ending up as a candidate for death, why did people want to become Christians?
We will look now at some of the historic reasons why large numbers of people decided to join the church. We may find here clues to similar developments now. Again we should not fall into the trap of slavishly copying historic methodologies and procedures from another time and space, but learn from the underlying principles and work these out by creatively and flexibly in today’s cultures and people groups.
Beyond the fact that Christians lived in organic and easily multipliable house churches, equipped and guided by the fivefold ministry (Eph. 4:11), some of the main reasons for people becoming Christians in ancient times, according to numerous historic studies done by Alan Kreider and others, are as follows.
1. Curiosity
Many of today’s churches try to be attractive to the world, welcome visitors with sweets and visitor cards, display signs at the entrance reading ‘Everyone welcome!’ They have outreach campaigns of all shapes and sizes, focused on getting outsiders to come to church, and they are generally trying to be at least seeker-sensitive or even seeker-driven.
The early churches worked on very different dynamics. One of them was people’s insatiable curiosity. People are by nature adventurous and curious, seeking ‘to go where no one has gone before’. Many today wonder why the occult movements and secret societies like the Freemasons are still flourishing. The answer is: they appeal to people’s basic instinct to be part of an exclusive family, group and tribe, for which humans are ready to undergo almost any sort of initiation process.
Jesus knew this, and had something like a dual communication style, one for those ‘inside’, and another for those ‘outside’: ‘Jesus spoke … to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable’ (Mt. 13:34). This pattern seems to continue in the church: preaching was for those outside the church, teaching for those inside. Jesus was very firm on this dual pattern: ‘The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, “though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand “‘ (Lk. 8:10). Even His words about the ‘narrow gate’ created a powerful curiosity and an almost feverish excitement amongst many to know the mysterious message and movement of Jesus. Do they know something we do not know? Jesus knew that the ‘mystery of the gospel’ is not like ‘pearls thrown before swine’, but something discovered, sought out, and only then, by revelation, found. People were not freely admitted to churches, and this only sparked and heightened their interest. If I tell my four-year-old son not to open that drawer under any circumstance once I leave the room, I prophetically know to which place he is almost magically and irresistibly drawn once I go out: the forbidden drawer. Today we are sometimes in danger of pressing home answers to people who have not even asked the right questions, and preventing people from becoming truly curious. Jesus described himself as the water of life, and the disciples as the salt of the earth. If people eat salt, it will make them thirsty, even if they have not been thirsty before. If people are not yet thirsty for the water of life, feed them salt. Then they will become thirsty, and then they will drink.
2. Steadfastness in persecution and martyrdom
The first time that many people in the first centuries set eyes on a real, living Christian was when they saw one die. Many Christians were crucified, attacked by wild beasts, roasted on chairs of molten iron, or just burnt. Their humble and patient and, often enough, joyful endurance of those dreadful torments was medically inexplicable; their love for each other, giving each other the kiss of peace, a revolutionary sign of an obvious secret society before they were killed, was transparent. Those who guarded the Christians on their way to their executions often said: There is a power among them!’ The fact that they were ready to die for their belief made many secretly wish they had something so powerful to believe in. As a result, more people were fascinated, their curiosity level rose even more – and they were attracted to the church. It has often been said, ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.’ A Christianity which has something to die for has a powerful attraction for the living.
3. Exorcism
When Jesus exercised authority over evil spirits and then told his disciples to ‘drive out demons’ (Mt. 10:8), his early followers listened carefully – and did as they were told. In the early centuries, described by many as ‘an age of bondage, life-disfiguring addictions and compulsions’ – which does not seem much different from today – the freedom and fulness of life in Christ could not remain hidden for long. As one spokesman for many, Irenaeus pointed to the ‘evangelistic’ function of exorcism: ‘Those who have been cleansed often both believe in Christ and join themselves to the church.’ In an age of competitive miracle working, the Christian God and this powerful ‘spiritual detoxification’ in the name of Jesus seemed stronger and more profound than the influence of other gods.
Catechist Justin of Rome, writing about AD 150, described how Christians helped other people almost systematically to renounce demons, and saw them being liberated from spiritual oppression mainly in four key areas: unlawful sex, the secret and magic arts, escalating private wealth, and violent xenophobia. The early Christians would have seen people who practised illicit sex outside marriage, who accumulated material wealth for their personal gain, who were involved in occultism, or who were violent to foreigners and strangers, as demonically bound people who needed the help of Jesus to be released from these overpowering spiritual forces which were beyond any known human control. As the church stopped focusing on these ministries in later centuries, they left a gaping vacuum. This might need to be filled again by the only organism on earth called and gifted to do so, the church.
4. They had found the Way to live
Christians believed they were God’s instrument for making a new world, and not only had they found the right reason and way to die, they had also found the right way to live. Before they were called Christians, they were called followers of the Way. This was for two reasons: Jesus had said ‘I am the Way’; and the Christians had obviously found the way to live. The way they organized and structured their life was called the church. When a Christian whispered to a pagan, ‘I have found the way to live!’ it was not offensive but intriguing, and quite attractive in an age when people were aware
that things were somehow going wrong in their lives.
In addition, Christians had a communal lifestyle, socially inclusive like no other group in ancient history. They shared material blessings with everyone in need out of a common fund. They even used to pick up discarded babies left to die on the local garbage dumps, and raised them as their own; or volunteered to nurse victims of the plague, endangering their own lives, much to the dumbfounding of their contemporaries. In the eyes of a materialistic society, they were either crazy or holy. They were approachable and trusted friends and counsellors for anyone. This was especially true for the women, perhaps because of their ability to listen to people and be attentive to their questions. Augustine wrote quite embarrassed to a group of men: ‘Oh you men, you are easily beaten by your women. It is their presence in great numbers that causes the church to grow.’
The Christians were aware that the life of their ‘free communities’ was remarkable. It is the ‘beauty of life that causes strangers to join the ranks/ one of them wrote. They could self-consciously say: ‘We do not talk about great things, we live them.’ That is also why the early leaders of the churches gave much attention to maintaining the quality of fellowship, love and relationship amongst each other, because they knew that this is one of the main reasons for people being drawn to Christ and being saved.
5. The teachings and person of Jesus
A modern-day Christian leader from Africa once exclaimed about the Christian missionaries he knew: They came to preach the gospel to us, but they did not show us how to live!’ In the words of Alan Kreider, many early Christians were convinced ‘that conversion began not so much at the level of belief but at the level of lifestyle’. Only a person who was willing to change his life was ready for the gospel. Thus, one of the most compelling dynamics of people being drawn to the church was the person and teaching of Jesus Himself. His Sermon on the Mount was not so much understood as a sermon or moral dream, but as a set of godly ethics, a heavenly guide to live by. Pagans of all ages were powerfully drawn to Jesus and His sayings. No other teaching of Jesus was more often repeated than the command to love one’s enemies. These words, many held, were so wonderful that they made you either laugh or cry. The church did not preach itself, it preached Christ by promoting his teaching and by living his lifestyle.
Hi Tom, here are a couple NT examples I don’t see fitting in to your post.
How would you categorize Paul going into the Synagogues?
How would you categorize Paul going into Athens in Acts 17?
Are these examples the church should follow? Why or why not? If yes, what would that look like?
J.R.,
I must be dense…maybe it’s the air pressure…?…Are you asking those questions relative to the long quotation of Wolfgang Simson? If so, I’m sorry, but I’m not making the connection. Help me out.
Tom
Hi, yes. I did not see these in the quote and wondered what you thought.
J. R.,
I think (?) you’re asking about Paul dialoging in synagogues and his apologetic in Athens on Mars Hill relative to this first sentence from the Simson quote;
I didn’t post the whole chapter from Simson’s book, rather, just a section that dealt with what I was responding to in regard to observations from Larry Chouinard.
In prior sections of chapter 2 from Simson’s book Houses That Change the World, Simson outlines a history of house churches and the spread of Christianity from the 1st century onward. Within that outline/overview Simson challenges several areas of conventional wisdom as to why people “signed up with the Jesus movement” in the first two centuries or so. In our day we tend to read back into history the thinking and methodology that is common in our present age. One of those “conventional wisdoms” is our propensity to think and act in terms of mass evangelism. Simson does not deny the reality of “evangelism” taking place, but he is challenging our (often common) perception that evangelism is “what it’s all about” and our propensity to divorce evangelism from relationship and community and thus, a “personal thing”. Our present traditional understanding of the dynamics of growth in the Body of Christ are much at odds with the reality of the understanding and practice of Believers in the first couple of centuries.
Simson writes;
Joe, I hope this addresses your question. I’m sure it would be better to have the whole chapter for context. I can email it…just let me know.
Tom
Thanks, yes go ahead and email me the whole chapter.
joe.miller [at] emerginglife [dot] org
HIs point about the “secret society” is interesting. I think many people today don’t understand some of Jesus’ more esoteric sayings because they are interpreting them literally (i.e. as “outsiders”), when Jesus made it clear their true meaning had been deliberately obscured.
And certainly it was the power which many early Christians demonstrated, healing and casting out demons, that made “The Way” attractive. Sadly, it’s not so much the case today. As St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out many years ago, the church can no longer say “Silver and gold have I none”, but neither can she say, “Rise up and walk”.
Aquinas was quite the wit at times. Did you know he was called the “Ox” by his associates?
The secret society idea reminds me of Bonhoeffer’s “religion-less Christianity.
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2010/12/letters-from-cell-92-part-3-world-come.html