Evangelism, II: Paul's Mission

6 Epiphany
5 Hilary
Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries

Who was Paul evangelizing, and what form did that take?

Many Christians and church historians have told the story that “the Jews” of the ancient world (as a monolithic, homogenous group) rejected the apostolic proclamation of Jesus for the greatest part, leaving Christian missionaries to work primarily with Gentiles, who knew nothing of the God of Israel.

According to Rodney Stark (The Rise of Christianity), the arguments for this thesis are:

• In the Acts of the Apostles, a frustrated Paul declared that he was finished with Jews, and would go (minister) to the Gentiles.
• Archeological and literary evidence indicates that Jewish synagogues remained active in the Diaspora for centuries
• Extensive polemics between Jewish rabbis and Christian teachers indicate the continuing presence and interaction of distinct Jewish and Christian communities who found one another quite threatening.

Stark seeks to debunk this support, arguing respectively that

• Paul didn’t move on to just any Gentiles. The narrative in Acts depicts him going to “Godfearers,” those non-Jews who were familiar with and sympathetic to Israelite theology and ethics, but who hadn’t taken the step of conversion to Judaism. The picture of Paul at the Areopagus in Acts 17, introducing the faith to Greeks who were entirely unfamiliar with the Jewish narrative, does not seem to be the norm for his preaching.
• The idea that the continuation of any synagogues indicates the failure of the Christian mission to Jews is akin to supposing that just because a “Little Italy” neighborhood exists in some large American cities, Italians on the whole have never assimilated into American culture.
• All the harsh writings between Christian and Jewish leaders could be reflective of Christian success in mission just as easily as it could reflect failure. We can really only say that both sides were sensitive.

So what’s the implication? When people talk about evangelism in the early church, they like to imagine powerful preachers stepping out into the public square, introducing the entire Christian narrative to a lot of strangers who had never heard it before, who in turn converted en masse. That probably isn’t true. Stark’s arguments indicate that it’s possible that many converts had already been exposed to Judaism to a considerable extent.

The picture of apostolic evangelists telling groups of strangers about a “Romans Road” or “Four Spiritual Laws” just doesn’t hold up. That kind of “cold-call,” door-to-door sales approach to announcing the Reign of God in Christ isn’t biblical. Most people don’t pull that garbage anyway, and when they do, it doesn’t get them anywhere. And nobody likes the people who try. And do you know what? That’s okay. It really is an ugly and unloving thing to do.

So you can stop telling yourself that you should do those things, and like it.

Why is it that what most Christians think “evangelism” to be is actually something they don’t want to do, and would never want done to them? Why is it that people imagine that the work of proclamation is really a very dehumanizing thing?

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