Evangelism
In The Early Church
(Evangelism By
The Lord & His Apostles)
By
Christianity in the first
century was the most beautiful icon of Christianity. During this period we have seen the
characteristics of the
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
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 considers ‘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
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
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
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
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
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
9- A church of
unity. ‘Now the multitude of those who believed were
one heart and one soul” (Acts
An Insight Into
the Church of the Apostles:
This church never imposed
any cultural aspects on any nation or community. Although most of the apostles were raised in
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.
+ + +