Evangelism in the early Church

Here are a few sentences from a great book I’ve been reading (“Evangelism in the early church” by Michael Green). In them he’s observing what it was about the church in the early church that led to the explosion of the Gospel. It’s a really exciting picture of what the church can be!

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One of the most striking features in evangelism in the early church was the people who engaged in it… Evangelism was the prerogative and duty of every church member… The spontaneous outreach of the total Christian community gave immense impetus to the movement from the very outset.

What is more, this infectious enthusiasm on the part of such diverse people of differing ages, backgrounds, sex and cultures was backed up by the quality of their lives. Their love, their joy, their changed habits and progressively transformed characters gave great weight to what they had to say… Paganism saw in early Christianity a quality of living, and supremely of dying, which could not be found elsewhere.

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Together with this enthusiasm on the part of the ordinary members of the church as well as its ordained ministers to share the good tidings with those who had never heard them, went a deep sense of the seriousness of the issues involved. They really believed that those without Christ might suffer eternal and irreparable loss, and this thought drove them to unremitting labours to reach them with the gospel. (p.380-382).