Douglas Jacoby Podcast

Church History: Evangelism in the Early Church - Part 2

Episode Summary

Douglas continues his series: Church History. Today, looking at Evangelism in the Early Church.

Episode Notes

For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ website.

EVANGELISM IN THE SECOND CENTURY

• Challenges to evangelism
  • Apostles now gone – tendency to get more and more involved in disputes
  • Persecution: from Jewish to Roman
  • False teachers (Marcionites, Gnostics, Montanists)
  • Evolving priesthood (spectator shift)
• Success!
  • Other nations, but little work outside the bounds of the Roman Empire.
  • Church of the East (per comments in previous podcast)
  • Continued to reach all strata of society (women, slaves – who even served in leadership, and intellectuals – like Justin Martyr)
  • The martyrs greatly inspired others.
  • By 200, up to 1-3% (my guess). By 300, perhaps 10% of Empire.
  • Learn more about this from the main AIM Church History series (2000 years in under 10 hours) and the Early Church History set (about 7 hours).

Conclusion

• We can't always imitate their methods, or recreate the culture of the first 2 centuries, but we can imitate their faith.
  • As in 1 Corinthians 11:1, imitation relates to following Christ, not necessarily methods…
  • As Tertullian put it, around 200 AD, “The blood of the martyrs is seed.”
  • They spoke out, because they believed they had something worth sharing.