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— “mysteriouslyâ€. 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.
3 Comments
Steve,
I was interested in the (last-minute updated) venue for the Forge Summit… Wesley College in Glen Waverley. The image of affluent establishment private schooling in old Bible belt Melbourne… as far from, one might surmise, the “cutting edge” of missional work in the 21st Century! Or indeed from the new paradigm-forging ministry of Wesley himself many years ago.
I visited the Summit for just an hour or so and listened to talk of prioritizing the poor, of new models to reach the marginalized and all that… all the while feeling strange that here we were in a fairly expensive Uniting Church private school, reeking of old money, of establishment, of anything but “emergent church”!
I’ll be interested to see what came out of the Summit for the many and varied attendees…
- Alister
Alister, you’re a hard man to please. Although I must declare that I grew up going to a private school. But I think you read too much into the venue thing. It certainly wasn’t the Hilton and as a venue it worked quite well.
Alistair, the choice came down to logiistics and pricing. Don’t read too much into the choice of building as Steve says above. If you can you suggest another venue that would reflect Emerging Missional Church…email me.