First Christian Voices: Practices of the Apostolic Fathers

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First Christian Voices

I am often curious about what compelled people to believe in Jesus after He ascended to the Father. The Christian authors we have read in this volume have given us a glimpse of how the early disciples continued His work. We do not read about overtly evangelistic efforts through mass campaigns. Neither do we see any hint of reducing Jesus to someone He was not in order to attract people. Strategies for various ministry programs are noticeably absent from the life of the early church. There are no children’s programs, vacation Bible school, catchy Sunday services in contemporary structures, marketing techniques through social networks, or flashy exegetes in the latest sneakers. That was not the way the early church attracted people to Christ. Instead, the people living in the first- and second-century Roman Empire witnessed the lives of Christians and were compelled to Christ. As the Letter to Diognetus reminds us, God does not coerce people to faith (chapter 7). Plain and simple, Christians imitated God’s compassion and meekness to persuade others to faith. Even though the writings we have studied are mostly descriptions about Christian belief and life, in other places we learn that the disciples carried on the work of the gospel throughout the Roman Empire and, indeed, around the world. For example, in the fourth century Eusebius, the father of church history, writes about the advancement of the gospel in the early centuries we have been studying: Then starting out upon long journeys they performed the office of evangelists, being filled with the desire to preach Christ to those who had not yet heard the word of faith, and to deliver to them the divine Gospels. And when they had only laid the foundations of faith