A Brief History of Christian Evangelism V
The First One Hundred Year of Christianity
By
Victor Beshir
Christianity in the first century was the
most beautiful icon of Christianity.
During this period we have seen the characteristics of the church of
Christ in its fullness. It lived as the
Lord planed for it with no deviation from its objectives as a communion and as
individuals. This period is the
gloriest- one in the entire church history, and this is why I delayed talking
about it until the end of this series.
It is sad to report that starting from the Fourth century the church
began to loose its pure characteristics as a result of many factors that I am
going to refer to in this article.
The Greatest Evangelist:
======================
The first century of Christianity started
with the birth of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ, His evangelism, and then His
death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven. In this article, let us talk
about the evangelism of our Lord Jesus Christ, which eventually would need many
volumes to cover it, however, for our purpose here, I am going to talk briefly
about:
The characteristics
of His evangelism:
1-
Since the
purpose of His first mission was His ‘His own’ (John 1: 11), i.e., the Jewish
people in their land of Israel, He incarnated
and lived in Israel since childhood till He appeared to Israel (John
1:31). Here is a good lesson for
evangelists. They need to comprehend not only the language of the region they
are going to evangelize but also the culture. Here, He set the best example and the norms
for the best evangelism practice.
2-
He worked as a
carpenter and lived among the poor people of the
country, so He can see, touch, and feel the life reality of the majority of the
population. He did not live
in an ivory tower, but was raised and lived as a poor person. This is a clear
invitation for evangelists to be armed not only with the Gospel, but also with
deep understanding of people’s circumstances, and their needs. Also, to share
their feelings, and their lives if possible.
3-
His
evangelism was saturated with parables, examples, words, and vivid images of
the culture that every one of His audiences could identify with them easily.
Nothing in His teaching was foreign for His audience. His words were understood by the poorest and
the uneducated as well as the richest and the well learned. He gave a great example of not forgetting
the poor and uneducated, a repeated mistake of many evangelists in every
age. The power of His message was not
in using eloquent language or philosophy, but rather it was in the power of the
Spirit that initiated and accompanied the teaching.
4-
When He
selected His disciples and apostles, He chose
them from the same culture, and not from a foreign culture, another
indication of the importance of appointing persons who live in and understand
the culture and consequently can identify with the people of that culture.
5-
His work was seed planting. For
over three years, the Lord did not invite people to attend a specific church,
neither He built a church. He planted seeds of salvation in the hearts of the
people. His apostles, after His ascension, established the churches. Many evangelists troubled when they do not
see direct and quick results of their own efforts, while the Lord may be using
them only for seed planting.
6-
Power of prayers and fasting: The Lord gave Himself as
an example of an evangelist. He spent
the nights in prayers and the days in preaching and meeting people. This is the
source of power for evangelism. He
started His service by fasting for forty days and forty nights. The lesson here is to depend on God’s power
and not on our own wisdom, and reach that through the power of prayers and
fasting.
7-
His evangelism
was very focused on the important aspects of
evangelism:
a-
Christianity is
based on the “Faith,” as a fundamental requirement (review the Sermon
on the Mountain). In Orthodoxy today
many are afraid to talk about faith, because some Orthodox consider ‘faith’ as
Protestantism’s tenant. Faith is a very
initial requirement of evangelism. We
can’t succeed in evangelism until we can talk and ask about ‘faith’ freely.
b-
Invitation to ‘Repentance.’ Repentance is the beginning of a
spiritual life and it continues to strengthen the spirituality. We can’t just
become teachers, but we have to continue to call people to repentance. They called the Lord ‘teacher,’ but He did
not stop to call them to repentance.
c-
Eschatological
aspect: ‘From that time (His
baptism) Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand” (Matt 4:17). The Gospel is
full of His teaching about heaven, the kingdom of God, the last day, and the
judgment, using words, vivid parables, and prophecies. I don’t exaggerate if I say that the
eschatological aspect of His teaching was the main core of His work.
d-
Showed
great love, care, intimacy, respect, interest in individuals and dealt with them with mercy and humbleness. This is a
clear invitation for all Christian servants to follow His lead in how to
respect, love, care of individuals.
When we serve the multitudes we tend to be less appreciative of
individuals’ needs, which is a grave sin in evangelism.
e-
Refusal
of materialistic richness, acceptance of honor from others, and of practice
authority over others. ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles
lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it
shall not be so among you: but whoever desires to become great among you, let
him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your
slave. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to
give His life a ransom for many.” (Matt 20:25-28). No one will forget when the Master washed His disciples’ feet.
[In the history we have seen the weakness crept into the church when the church
or its servants seek materialistic richness or exercise authority over others].
f-
Deep
understanding of religion and its applications: Any reader of the Gospel will easily
recognize the continuous courageous attempts of the Lord to go beyond the rites
and the laws to show that they were all created for man and not to be a burden
on man. If you recall the importance of sacrifices in the Old Testament, you
know what kind of a challenge He had when He declared ‘I need a mercy and not a
sacrifice.’ Orthodox evangelists need
today to draw the attention to the purpose and depth of the ecclesiastical
rites, and to proclaim them as spiritual means and not as objectives in
themselves.
g-
Obedience: All His service was a continuous obedience
of His Father. He waited for His Father’s declaration on His baptism before
starting His service, although He could start His mission earlier. He obeyed
until death on the cross, in self- denial and sacrifice.
The Church of The Apostles:
When the Jewish people refused the Gospel and
it was clear that the message should go to the Gentiles, we noticed on the
Pentecost Day the Holy Spirit prepared the
apostles for evangelism through giving them the ability to speak the languages
of all the well-known nations of that period. This shows us the basic fundamental
requirement of evangelism, speaking the language.
The Characteristics of Evangelism
in the Apostles’ Period:
1-
Evangelism
was the main objective of the church. The Lord’s left
for the church a great commission “Go into all the world and preach the gospel
to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved: but he who
does not believe will be condemned.”
Therefore, the great commission of the church was very clear, to
evangelize. The apostles did exactly
that, and even when the numbers of the faithful reached tens of thousands, they
never replaced evangelism with pastoral care or social services or construction
or any other activities. They were well focused on
evangelism. When
there was a need for a social service, they asked the people to elect seven men
to perform this service, and to let them, the apostles, concentrated on
evangelism and prayers (Acts 6:1-6).
Nowadays the Orthodox Church needs to focus again on the great
commission left for her by the Lord, make it its top priority.
2-
Evangelism
was not only the objective of the apostles but also of all the faithfuls. Everybody in the church had
evangelism as an important objective.
Evangelism started with the person’s baptism, when he feels the light of
the grace. Then it reinforced weekly
when he/she received the holy communion, as they kept their eyes focused on the
Lord’s commandment: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you
proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes” (1 Cor 11:26). We see this clearly after the great
persecution that followed the martyrdom of St. Stephan when the faithful were
forced to leave Jerusalem. We read:
“Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word” (Acts
8:4). In the Orthodox Church we need to raise the awareness of the importance
of faithfuls’ evangelism.
3-
Salvation
was an objective of evangelism. The objective was not
just preaching or educating or telling the story of Jesus, but rather
‘salvation.’ Not anyone joined the
church, but only those who were saved “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were
being saved”
(Acts 2:47). Currently, in our churches
we are afraid of speaking about salvation because of fear that we may be
labeled as Protestants, a practice that we need to ignore in evangelism.
4-
Faith
was a requirement to join the church. In the book of Acts, we read
about so many incidents in which there were direct correlation between
salvation and faith, such as in: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you
will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). So, faith was a requirement for baptism. No body can get baptized without faith, and
nobody got saved without baptism.
5-
The
Holy Spirit directed the evangelism efforts.
We have
read about the invitation of the Holy Spirit of Barnabas and Paul “the Holy Spirit
said: “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called
them” (Acts 13:2). The book of acts showed us how the Holy Spirit was the
leader in all evangelistic efforts.
6-
Planting Churches: The apostles traveled from one city to another,
proclaiming the Gospel, and baptizing people. Then they stayed not long in each
city until they ordained priests and deacons from the indigenous. The apostles delivered the faith and
established churches, ordaining clergy from the people for the people. They delivered faith, prayers, and worship
means, but not culture.
7-
Evangelists
were filled of joy and the Holy Spirit. The lives of the
faithful were characterized by joy and peace, as a result of the deep feeling
of the work of the grace in their lives.
Their lives were drastically different from those who were not saved,
which attracted the unsaved.
Evangelists were not only filled with joy but also filled of the
continuous pouring of the Holy Spirit on them, “And the disciples were filled
with joy and with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 13:52).
8-
The
church was a church of prayers. Prayers were the source of power for this
church. From this church we learned
about the great power of the “spontaneous
prayers” “And when they had prayed, the
place where they were assembled together was shaken: and they were filled with
the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness’ (Acts 4:31). Many nowadays belittle of the spontaneous
prayers meetings and labeled them as Protestantism’s acts. In evangelism, we need to restore the
‘spontaneous prayer meetings.’ We need also to refer to the pure heavenly
liturgical life they lived, which filled their hearts with ‘gladness and
simplicity of heart’ (Acts 2:46).
9-
A
church of unity. ‘Now the multitude of those who believed
were one heart and one soul” (Acts 4:31). This verse is just one example of
numerous verses talking about the unity of this church. They loved each other deeply. The rich
brought their money to the apostles and distributed it to everyone, as he
needed (Acts 4: 32-37).
An Insight Into the Church of the
Apostles:
10-
This church
never imposed any cultural aspects on any nation or community. Although most of the apostles were raised in
Israel, however, when they preached the gospel, we did not hear about any
application of Israel’s culture on any church.
A lesson that we need to learn when we try to evangelize in the Western
countries. Their objective was preaching the Gospel, and the power of the Gospel
will change people’s lives. This church
is the one that we can say about it that it never delivered any aspect of
culture. It is a grave mistake when the
church tries to deliver culture instead of pure and strong salvation.
Sometimes, because of the cultural ties in the church, we think the
spirituality of the church exists in all these cultural aspects. But the
Apostolic period correct us. Here is
the greatest church in spirituality because its people lived the Gospel and
filled with the Holy Spirit without any help of the cultural aspects that are
available today in the church. The Orthodox Church needs to discern faith from
cultural aspects.
1-
The apostles concentrated on the essence of salvation:
faith, repentance, baptism, …etc. Their
main interest was a church full of saved people who show the fruits of the work
of the Holy Spirit in their lives, as a result of burying the old man and live
in the newness in Christ. Compare this with some churches nowadays that may are
full of people who are mostly not enjoying the fruits of salvation, because the
old man still mastering their lives.
2-
It was an Eschatological church. The church was waiting for His second
coming. The greeting among the faithful
was (Maran Atha = The Lord is coming), which inflamed with hearts with a great desire
to be vigilant and to evangelize.
3-
A
poor church. It
refused all materialistic richness, although it could collect much wealth if it
wanted. Christ never called the church
to live in materialistic richness. He
ordered His disciple: “Take nothing for the journey, neither staffs nor bag nor
bread nor money, and don’t have two tunics apiece” (Luke 9:3). Later on in the history when the church
started to build up wealth and to live not according to the poverty of the
gospel, the church lost the power of evangelism.
In conclusion, this church faithfully worked
very hard in evangelism and succeeded in evangelizing most of the known
civilized countries at the time. We
need to devote more time to study the characteristics of this church as an
introduction for us to learn about evangelism.
+ + +
What Did Happen During the Fourth and
Fifth Centuries?
Before talking about
this period, I’d like to make it clear that this is my own opinion, which
people could debate or have different point of view from what I am going to
mention here. The following does not
belong to the teaching of the church or theology or dogma or tradition, but
rather it is my personal interpretation of my reading to the history during
this time.
During the fourth, and
fifth centuries the church witnessed great evangelistic efforts and missionary
work, for example, the birth of the Ethiopian Church and Christianity in Nubia
as the result of Coptic missionary work.
During this period appeared some of the great fathers of the church who
did a great evangelistic work and left us a wealth of catechumen teachings,
such as St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Ambrose of Milan, and St. Augustine in
North Africa. Add to that the impact of
monasticism and the School of Alexandria, as I explained before. Also, this period witnessed the great
efforts of the church in defending its faith against the heresies. Christianity will not forget the life-long
struggle of St. Asthanasius, St. Cyril of Alexandria and others against
heresies.
However, this period
also witnessed the starting of welcoming the world into the church. The
politics found its way into the church.
In many instances, the holy church matters were politicized between the
emperors, queens, and some bishops.
Sadly to say, some churches’ leaders desired personal gains, glory, and
personal leadership of the church, more than seeking the glory of God and His
guidance of the church.
Although the church
got burned by the fire of heresies during this era, however, a deep analysis of
the history will show that division, pride, love of being the first, jealousy,
nationalism, and conspiracies were more damaging to the church than heresies.
As a result, the
church almost lost the mission mind and its great commission given to her by
Christ. Evangelism left its first place in the heart of the church to be
replaced by pride, nationalism, struggle to be the first, and materialistic richness. When the church was under persecution, she
lived in humbleness and meekness for the glory of her Bridegroom, and the world
had no place in her heart. However, as
a result of changing the heart, the church did not loose evangelism only, but
also became so divided. Our Lord warned
us against division, when He says,
“Every city or house divided against itself will not stand” (Matt
12:25). When Islam appeared a few
centuries later, it found an easy target, a divided house.
+ + +
My friend Mr. Nicholas
Siniari, Adjunct Professor of World History, wrote a lengthy article about the
history of Nubia, south of Egypt. I selected the following paragraphs about
evangelism in Nubia to add at to this series:
“Egyptian monks were the first to establish Christianity in Nubia
during the persecutions of Diocletian (AD 284-305). The order of the great St. Shenoute is know
to have enjoyed good relations with local Baga and Nubian tribes. Converts were made, but the
royal family, and hence the majority of the populace remained pagan.
Around AD 350 Kush was defeated in an important battle by the armies of Axum and collapsed as
a result. It broke down into three smaller kingdoms: northernmost was Nobatia between the first and
second cataract of the Nile River, with its capital at Pachoras (modern day Faras); in the middle was
Makouria, with its capital at Old Dongola; and southernmost was Alodia, with its capital at Soba
(near Khartoum). All the while, amidst the political chaos of a great empire collapsing, the Egyptian
monks continued with their missionary witness.
Eventually, after much labor, the efforts of the Egyptian monks began to bear fruit. The number of
Nubians converting to Alexandrian Orthodoxy was steadily increasing. The Nubian faithful who had
embraced Orthodoxy requested a bishop to lead them. St. Athanasius (Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria)
consecrated Bishop Marcus as bishop of Philae before his death in AD 373. The rulers of the various
Nubian Kingdoms took note of the spread of Christianity among their subjects, and sent envoys to
Alexandria bearing gifts, and requested that the Pope send clergy to teach them. St. John of Ephesus
(of the Syriac Church) records that a Coptic priest named Julian baptized the king and his nobles of
Nobatia around AD 545. He also writes that the kingdom of Alodia was converted around AD 569.”
+ + +
Now, I come to the conclusion of this series
on the ‘Brief History of Evangelism in the Orthodox Church.’ In this series, we followed the footsteps of
our beloved Savior and the beloved fathers and others in their evangelistic
efforts. The purpose was not to study the history alone, but to understand
evangelism through study of its history, to know about practical evangelism and
the thoughts behind evangelism that shaped all the efforts and directed them.
Did I cover all important aspects of
evangelism history? Not yet. There’re still many evangelistic events that
I am looking forward to cover one day when I have more information about,
especially the Coptic missionary work in Europe (as in Ireland and
Switzerland), also the Coptic evangelism in Africa (North Africa, Sudan), and
the contemporary Coptic efforts in Fijji by H.G. Bishop Suriel, efforts of H.G.
Bishop Paul in Mexico and other countries, and other contemporary Coptic
evangelism servants.
After this study, I hope you gain a spiritual
insight into the characteristics of the evangelist workers and evangelistic
church, because this is the most important foundation for any evangelistic
efforts. Then, I hope that you realized
the continuous obstacles evangelism faced by those who can’t distinguish
between the pure Christian faith and worship in one side and the culture which
manifest itself in almost every aspect of life. We as evangelist servants have to study the impact of our own
cultures on our Christian life, and courageously shed lights on them to
distinguish between what is Christian Orthodox and what is cultural. As long as we hold on culture too tight, we
can’t be evangelism servants, because its ties will cloud our evangelistic vision. Honestly, this culture impact still a big
hinder of Orthodox evangelism in western societies today.
.
Some references I used in this study:
1-
Luke Alexander
Veronis, Missionaries, Monks, and Martyrs, Making Disciples of All
Nations, Light and Life Publishing Company, 1994.
2-
Steven J.
Sfekas, George E. Matsoukas, Projects For Orthodox Renewal, Seven Studies
of Key Issues Facing Orthodox Christians In America, Orthodox Christian
Laity Inc., 1993
3-
H. G. Bishop
Antonius Markos, The Coptic Bishop of African Affairs, Come Across And Help
Us, Book One and Book Two, Coptic Bishopric of African Affairs, 1988,
1996
4-
History of the
church lectures by the late Bishop Youaness, of Garbia, Egypt.
5-
Otto Meinardus,
Two Thousands Years of Coptic Christianity, The American
University in Cairo Press, 1999