» How was it done?

I’ve been neglecting my blog. Had a great but demanding week. First of all our CRM leadership conference. Then the Forge Summit. Ready for some down time chipping away at a dry stone wall I’m building in our backyard.

At the Forge Summit, Ruth Powell from the Australian National Church Life Survey updated us on the latest disturbing trends of declining church attendance. I couldn’t help contrasting this story with that of the birth and growth of Christianity.

By one estimate the movement that Jesus founded numbered about 1,000 by AD 40. By AD 300 it has grown to somewhere between 5-7 million. When we consider the rise of Christianity there is really only one question that needs to be addressed: How was it done? How did a tiny obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become the dominant faith of Western civilization?

One cause we can discount was careful and coordinated central planning. From the outset Christianity spread quickly and anarchically, without overt strategy or leadership. When Paul writes to the church in Rome, he is not writing to a church he founded. Nor as tradition would have it, a church founded by Peter or any other apostle. We don’t know who founded the church in Rome. It just came into existence— “mysteriously”. The book of Acts provides a picture of the spontaneous expansion of the church without central coordination or control. The apostles, apart from Paul, are not so much spearheading the advance as trying to the keep up with it and make sense of it.

That’s enough of how it wasn’t done. Once the battery is recharged I’ll put something together on some of the factors that contributed to the amazing rise of the Christian faith.

Statistics are only a rear vision mirror view of reality. Helpful for understanding where we have come from. They don’t necessarily predict the future. God is sovereign. History is open ended. Anything is possible.