The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

by Alan Kreider

How and why did the early church grow in the first four hundred years despite disincentives, harassment, and occasional persecution? In this unique historical study, veteran scholar Alan Kreider delivers the fruit of a lifetime of study as he tells the amazing story of the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Challenging traditional understandings, Kreider contends the church grew because the virtue of patience was of central importance in the life and witness of the early Christians. They wrote about patience, not evangelism, and reflected on prayer, catechesis, and worship, yet the church grew--not by specific strategies but by patient ferment.

Genres: History, Christian, Church History, Theology, Nonfiction, Christianity, Religion

336 pages, Paperback

First published February 16, 2016

Reviews

[Philip Yancey]

Historians have long puzzled over how, against all odds, an obscure offspring of Judaism triumphed to make Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. Kreider convincingly credits the virtue of patience--not a typical ingredient in revolutions.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who Should Read this Book – Readers interested in church history would of course enjoy this, but I think there is wisdom to learn from the early church for pastors, church leaders and anyone ministering/mentoring persons in faith.

What is the Big Takeaway – The earliest church (100-300 AD) rather than having any sort of evangelism plan or mission strategy actually limited visitors to worship services and even asked non-members to leave halfway through! The focus of the church at this time was developing people to live in the way of Jesus, specifically defined as patient trust in God’s plan for the world. Through this the church grew as outsiders noticed these changed lives and were curious.

And a Quote
“Christian communities worked to transform the habits of those who were candidates for membership – tinkering with their wiring or even attempting a more far-reaching rewriting – by two means: catechetical, which rehabituated the candidates’ behavior by means of teaching and relationship (apprenticeship); and worship, the communities’ ultimate counter formative act, in which the new habits was enacted and expressed with bodily eloquence” (41)


This book left me with a feeling of melancholy. On one hand, I absolutely loved it. As I read, I was moved and inspired by the way the early church taught new and prospective followers of Jesus. Working in ministry myself, I imagined ways to borrow this ancient wisdom. Certainly some of what Kreider talked about will already be known by people with a modicum of knowledge of the early church. But there is plenty that was new, especially the way he explains and illustrates the early Christian understanding of patience. They simply trusted God and sought to live as Jesus called them. They were not worried about the ends (success, growth, etc.) , they lived as they knew was right.

Just one example of this is where Kreider talks of how Christian leaders were concerned with potential convert’s actions towards poor people and not opinions on why people were:


“The leaders did not ask about the candidates’ orthodoxy, about their mastery of doctrine, about their memorization of biblical passages, about their piety or prayer life. THey did not ask about the many areas of distinctive Christian habitus that catechumens were attempting to master. They did not ask about the candidates’ opinions and attitudes – for example, what they thought about poor people. They did, however, want to know how the candidates treated poor people. Actions said it all” (156).

You could add to this examples of nonviolence in a violent culture, not charging interest in business, caring for people sick during plagues and much more.

On the other hand, I was sad because this all seems so distant from the church today. There is a big difference between then and today; in the early church, the majority of the populace had little to no knowledge of Christianity. So as rumors spread, the early Christians would be in a position to dispel rumors by their living. But we live on the other end of Christendom. Our world (at least the West) is not one that has no knowledge of Christianity but that everyone has encountered Christianity in some way. People have experienced and read stories of abusive leaders and wealthy mega church pastors and much more that lead to negative views of Christianity which, if we Christians are honest, are often deserved.

It all begs the question – what is Christianity? What is real Christianity?

Reading this book solidified my opinion that one of the greatest tasks for Christians today is to renounce the heresy of Christian Nationalism and the errant ventures of the culture wars. In these and other things we see the remnants of Christendom which ties right in with the final two chapters here, on Constantine and Augustine. Kreider shows how the conversion of Constantine began a process of changing how the church functioned, what it required of people and how people were taught. A century later, Augustine changed the entire definition of patience. Where earlier writers (Tertullian, Cyprian) spoke of patience as trusting in God and acting the right (Christ-like) way in outer acts, Augustine shifted the focus to the interior. For Augustine, the focus was on your inner disposition of love. But this allowed Christians to claim an inner disposition of love while acting in quite anti-Jesus ways.

Augustine could thus utilize all the power at his disposal to crush the Donatists and Pelagians. Rather than living and teaching as he knew was right, while allowing freedom of religion to these so-called heretics, trusting that God would work for the triumph of truth eventually (patience), Augustine impatiently did all he could to achieve victory as soon as possible. This was a replacement of patience with impatience. This set a precedent that led to burning of heretics, crusades and other violent, anti-Christian acts that could be performed, perhaps even in the name of love (we must kill the heretics to show our love of God!).

And we still have that today. Christians in America will justify almost any means if they think it is reaching the proper end (Won’t somebody please think of the children!). This is Christian Nationalism – our nation is at stake and we must do anything we can to save it! This is culture wars – in order to get the judges we need to protect our way of life we are justified in doing/saying almost anything.

This is where I borderline fall into despair for, as I said above, its not that people are not exposed to Christianity. Its that they’ve seen Christians and the church as just another power-hungry group in society.

I have certainly spent a few paragraphs hammering on some segments of the church and I’m sure they’d be quick to say the other side (progressives, liberals) uses the same tactics. Its worth saying the solution is not, for people like me, to just as impatiently and just as pragmatically, join with those who are willing to do anything to defeat the Christian Nationalists.

That’s not the solution.

There is plenty of hope and plenty of wisdom in this book. One primary lesson is that God is patient and working in the world. Our task, as Christians, is to shape our lives into conformity with Jesus Christ. We must do justly and live virtuously. Kreider’s book is a resource that gives profound insights on how to do this. One of the biggest areas we ought to change our thinking and acting is in regards to violence. The early Christians were non-violent; they didn’t join the legions or kill people. If a soldier converted, he was at times instructed to stay in the military but not kill (and how did that work). There’s a lot of specifics we don’t know and lots of questions came up as people in various professions wanted to join the church. With all that in mind, its worth asking: What if Christians today just refused to kill people or even own weapons of death?

Another question, as I despair on the reputation of the church, is: What if we worried less about the reputation of “the Church” and just sought to build the reputations of our churches in our local communities? No one or two of us can change how “THE CHURCH” is viewed but we can make impacts in our local communities. Rather than worrying we can, as Kreider illustrates the early church did, patiently trust God’s plan and work for the good in our communities.

Two more things. First, I think that any lessons we would draw from a book like Kreider’s must be filtered through our different contexts, as I alluded to above. We are in a different situation than the early Christians which means the way we go about living our patient lives might look a bit different. Specifically, I do not think we would be faithful if we simply built communities totally separated from the world. Drew Hart touched on this in his essay in the book A Living Alternative; in my review of that book I commented at length on Hart’s challenging words and I’d direct an interested reader there. Just a taste, here is one quote from Hart:

“Those that practice and identify with Anabaptism in the 21st century in America tend to be white, privileged, and undeniably situated in dominant culture. If societies—as living mechanisms, inherently having systems of advantage and disadvantage—manage those that participate in them, then it would seem that American Anabaptists are increasingly not only benefiting from societal advantages, but are blind to them all together.”

(See full review here: https://dmlhershey.com/2021/05/24/a-l...)

What I am trying to say is that the takeaway from Kreider’s book is not to just do our own thing apart from society and let the world go as it will. Instead, we ought to join with our Christians brothers and sisters whose experience is probably much closer to the early Christians (the church on the margins). We learn from them, serve with them and follow them.

Second, Kreider talks about how Augustine adopted the idea of two tracks for Christians. There were monks and nuns who continued to live like Jesus while everyone else, having to function in the world as soldiers and politicians and what not, were able to be more flexible. This links up with the work of Charles Taylor who identifies the same thing in the medieval church. Taylor argues one of the steps towards secularization was the Reformers calling all people to the higher level of living (the “fast track”). Ironically though, this ended up as a step towards secularism as this way of life was simply out of reach for the majority of the populace (Taylor’s argument is much more complex and my few words here did not do it justice). My point is, some of us will read a book like Kreider’s and desire for everyone to live like these early Christians. And sure, maybe we all should. But maybe that’s simply not possible?

In other words, the sort of church we see between 100 and 300 is inevitably going to be quite small. You can’t both open the doors to everyone and see a community where everyone has the high moral and ethics expected in the early church.

This ties back in with Kreider’s point the early church did not have a strategy of evangelism. Part of the reason Christians could live in this patient way was a deep trust in God and not a big worry to reach every single person as soon as possible with the message of Jesus. The American tradition of fundamentalist evangelism with its “you might die tonight…” message is anything but patient. If your goal is to get people saved ASAP so they don’t go to hell, you can’t have the high standards for membership the early church did. To be blunt, they simply didn’t worry about the eternal soul of people who spent years preparing to join the church!

I think I am getting at, how do we combine the best of the earliest church’s notions of high ethical expectations with a grace that welcomes all people? Honestly, I think there is some value in giving people space to live a bit differently, with different “tracks” of discipleship. It would take a smarter or wiser person than me to imagine what that looks like. I think any decent, wholistic and healthy way forward will combine the wisdom of the pre-Nicene church with its emphasis on patience with the flexibility of the medieval church which recognized, this side of eternity, not everyone is going to be able to live that way.

Finally, I would LOVE a version of this book which included some of the key works cited such as Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine’s works on patience and the Didascalia Apostle (or whatever). Maybe not the full text as it would be super long, but big chunks to get a good feel for those primary sources.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, well-research book about the factors, leading to the “improbable growth” of the church in its first two centuries. Kreider argues that the growth was not the result of an intentional evangelistic, missional strategy, but rather of the attractional nature of the counter-cultural Christian communities that were profoundly shaped by catachesis and worship. The author further argues that this began to change with Constantine.

I do not yet know the literature well enough to assess the accuracy of this proposal. Kreider may be selective in his use of primary sources. However, the research behind this book is impressive. The extensive quotations from the church fathers are illuminating, and often quite challenging. The chapter on “Catachesis and Baptism” is it worth its weight in gold. And whether one fully embraces Kreider’s thesis or not, this is a very edifying book to read.

[Jose Ovalle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good to an extent. Helpful reminders that while strategy is good, the Church is at its best when it’s “doing” flows out of what it “is.” I am reminded to better think through catechesis and worship as the best forms of formation instead of just telling people to “do” stuff. Ultimately though, the author stresses his point of patience as the chief virtue of the early church farther than the historical data allows.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book, even inspiring at points, and a welcome historical rejoinder to many modern, market-dominated views of church growth. His own Anabaptist leanings shine through, particularly in his treatment of Augustine (and convenient avoidance of Ambrose), but it remains a worthwhile read.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I hope the church can see/engage with the principles in this book in a rethinking of what is important in Christian spirituality.

[Nick Hay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look at the early church, exploring the theme of patience in its ethic and witness. I enjoyed this book a lot, and found the emphasis on the Christian’s transformed life being central to their witness to be a needed challenge in my own faith.

While the development, and supposed change in perspective was interesting to note, I didn’t enjoy how the author frequently attributed motives to such changes that we simply don’t know about. I also would’ve appreciated if he pulled from a less narrow stream of the fathers to build his case.

Overall, this book is an interesting exploration of the improbable growth of the early church.

[Grant Klinefelter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The early church grew quickly—roughly 40% per decade—but didn’t focus its energy on evangelism or mission strategy. Instead, they focused on catechesis and forming habits in their communities that embodied Christ. As Cyprian aptly noted, “We do not speak great things but we live them.” Kreider’s work on the patient way of the church’s mission in the first four centuries is remarkable and his finings convicting. “They believed that when the habitus was healthy, the churches would grow. Their theology was unhurried—a theology of patience” (p. 63). I can think of no greater book for Christian leaders to read during the turmoils and instability of COVID-19. In a season where we can’t be on the streets doing evangelism or easily inviting people to church, maybe God is wanting us to focus inward at our habits and communal lifestyles and let this be our witness to the world. This is what the early church focused on and how they grew. And as Tertullian noted, non-Christians looked at Christians and said “Vide, look! How the Christians love one another.” Instead, “we have travelled from patient ferment to impatient force” (296) tarnishing our testimony and failing to embody the self-controlled patient love of Christ and his early followers. The non-violent, enemy-embracing, patient love of Christ marked the early church and is the call of Christ to every generation since. Will we be found faithful?

[Michael Summers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patience "was centrally important to early Christians," Alan Kreider maintains. He sustains this thesis throughout the book. Although, to use a football analogy, I think that Kreider sometimes outkicks his coverage, he presents compelling evidence that early Christian evangelism and discipling differed in in aggressiveness and intentionality from modern strategies for evangelism. Can you imagine not allowing visitors to worship assemblies or requiring three years of tutelage and testimony from a Christian sponsor before baptism? Yet the churches grew steadily during more than two centuries when state opposition compelled wariness about admitting new members too quickly. Although I disagree with some specific applications, I agree that patience coheres well with living "peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness" (1 Tim. 2:2). Evangelizing by attraction to the distinctive lifestyle and choices of Christians is biblical but would require much patience, but also great sensitivity to interested people and an ability to answer their questions or direct them to someone who can. This is a book that deserves to be read, and considered carefully. Kreider says much that needs to be heard and practiced.

[Maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read about the early church, with a focus on their patience. They did not think about evangelism the way we do, they rather patiently waited for people to notice their different behavior and let that change in character draw people to the church. The early church actually made it quite hard to join. People had to demonstrate their change in character, on which they would be instructed on and work on for years, and only after this lengthy transformation did they learn about doctrines and were baptized.

The church was not concerned by growth and quantity, rather with quality. Constantine changed all that by creating incentives for people to fake interest in Christianity. It was interesting to learn how his influence on Christianity was negative in many ways.

I'm not rating it higher because it was very repetitive and too detailed. He could have gotten the point across much more efficiently. But the topic was interesting, and it is fascinating to see the differences between then and now.

[Jacob Hudgins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fresh and helpful synthesis of how early Christians thought about mission and growth—and how/why that changed.

Kreider’s thesis is that early Christians (esp 2-3 century and esp in North Africa) did not stress evangelism or concern themselves with spreading the word. They trusted that God would use their example, beliefs, and unique lifestyle to draw people to him. They did not allow visitors (or even new converts) to see all of their worship practices. They had elaborate (multi-year) processes of initiation and indoctrination. They believed God would be at work as they served him. Kreider labels this mentality “patient ferment,” but he is really describing a rugged confidence in God. They did not feel they had to force people to believe…they did not even work that hard to convince people. They felt the message and lifestyle spoke for itself.

He argues that this countercultural approach is the reason Christianity spread in a way that appears unlikely from our historical vantage.

He then traces how that changed, particularly with Constantine and Augustine, who began to prioritize universal unity and were willing to consider coercion to achieve it.

It is a little startling to see how the perspective described here contrasts with modern evangelical Christianity. Today it is about quick conversions, sales tactics, methods, mission, and apologetics. We heap guilt on each other for not teaching the lost enough or effectively enough. We seem to have bought into the coercion model and feel that if God is going to work today, it can only be because I am doing it for him.

But somewhere between these two, in my judgment, lies the NT record. People willing to spread the word, allow visitors to worship (1 Cor 14, James 2), and immediately accept new believers…but who also are not so impatient and can still trust God.

4 stars because the thesis was not always clear and several of the study subjects seemed unrelated to the thesis.

[Enrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patience and Christianity

Short review: buy it

Long review:

It is incredible the simplicity of the Christians praxis in its origins, and how Saint Augustine and then Luther totally misunderstood these origins.

I can’t give you all the thoughts about this book, but here a glimpse of some ideas:

- The forgiveness between Christians is still powerful mean to live in peace and in a productive way
- The peace kiss is now forgotten, but it was a very powerful practice that maintain unity in the communities
- Women in the church were extremely important, they helped with maintain the union and share information
- The first Christian didn’t think that mission was most important than behavior, and for good reasons: talk is cheap, actions are more important.
- The testimony was noting about believe, it was about behave as a Christian, you can only access the great teachings of the New Testament once you showed with your actions that you are worthy of that.

Incredible simple, I think that is difficult to destroy religion only with reason, because religions have nothing to do with theology, is about behavior and cooperation.

[Stephen Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounding up.

This is a difficult book to review; on one hand, Kreider's research is considerable, I am deeply sympathetic to his general thesis, and I think I will be reflecting on much of the book for quite some time -- far more than I have time to share here.

On the other hand, I think it suffers from a lack of...attention to what patience actually is -theologically and philosophically - and specifically with regard to temporal categories. Moreover, it became increasingly clear throughout the book that Kreider has angled his thesis as a thinly-veiled buttress in favor of his own Anabaptist tradition's emphases and distinctives. It is probably an unsanctified pet peeve of mine that I would prefer such things to be openly stated, but it did affect my reading experience, nonetheless.

[Greg Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did a small persecuted Jewish sect from an insignificant backwater grow to become the established religion of the Roman Empire? This book is another among many that try to answer that question. The author of this book does an extensive study of Christian writings and historical documents from the first 4 centuries of Christianity and comes to a surprising conclusion: the mysterious growth of Christianity was due to the “patient ferment” of the early church.

The growth of early Christianity was mysterious because the early church after the time of the apostles was closed to outsiders. “The churches did not use their worship services to attract new people. In the aftermath of the persecution of Nero in AD 68, churches around the empire — at varying speeds in varying places — closed their doors to outsiders.” In addition to that, it was difficult to convert to Christianity. To become a Christian, you had to have a sponsor who could vouch for you. Then you had to go through a catechism process that often took a couple years. The goal of the catechism was to retrain a person’s instincts and reflexes to respond and act as Christ would have. Finally, there was baptism after which you were finally accepted as a Christian and allowed to participate in their Eucharistic meals.

So why would anyone want to become a Christian? “The sources rarely indicate that the early Christians grew in number because they won arguments; instead they grew because their habitual behavior (rooted in patience) was distinctive and intriguing.” In other words, Christians lived differently from the rest of the Romans. For many, especially the poor, there was something appealing about the Christians’ lifestyle.

The author sees patience as the foundation of the early Christian lifestyle (or “habitus”). In the early Christian catechetical writings, we don’t find any teachings on evangelism but we find numerous teachings on the virtue of patience. The author writes:

The Christians believed that God is patient and that Jesus visibly embodied patience. And they concluded that they, trusting in God, would be patient — not controlling events, not anxious or in a hurry, and never using force to achieve their ends.

The focus of early Christian teaching was not just to know what Jesus taught but “to live the teachings of Jesus.” Cyprian wrote: “we do not speak great things but we live them.”

In addition, the author sees the growth of the early church as being similar to a process of fermentation. The author writes:

Christian leaders didn’t think or write about how to systemize the spread of Christianity; they were not concerned to cover the world evenly with evangelist efforts. Instead, the Christians concentrated on developing practices that contributed to a habitus that characterized both individual Christians and Christian communities. They believed that when the habitus was healthy, the churches would grow. Their theology was unhurried — a theology of patience. It is characteristic of their approach that the carriers and embodiers of the growth were marginal, humble, and often anonymous, women as well as men, individuals as well as communities.

This “patient ferment” meant that the growth of the church was uneven and slow but also steady as it spread out over the Roman Empire. The author writes:

It operated reticently, by what theologian Origen called God’s “invisible power”. It was not susceptible to human control, and its pace could not be sped up. But in the ferment there was a bubbling energy — a bottom-up inner life — that had immense potential.

This book goes into a lot of details about early Christian teaching and practices. It includes details about the early Christian catechetical process. It also describes how the church’s practices changed as it got larger and the changes that occurred when Constantine converted to Christianity. This book is extensively footnoted and the language tends to be scholarly. So it may not be as accessible for some readers. It can also get a bit repetitive at times as the same themes come up again and again over the course of the book.

For me, I found this to be a fascinating book, one that I will likely read again. There is something about the spontaneity and purity of the early church that I find attractive. And I found myself feeling sad when the author described how the church became more formal and institutional as it grew. I think there is a lot we can learn from the early church about how to live faithful lives in Christ.

If you have an interest in early Christian history, I highly recommend this one.

I'll leave you with one final quote from the book:

If we Christians today wish to embody this patience and to claim that our faith is not intrinsically violent, we may find it helpful to converse with the early Christians whom we have studied. We will not do things precisely as the early Christians did, but the early believers may give us new perspectives and point us to a "lost bequest". As we rediscover this bequest, we will not make facile generalizations or construct how-to formulas — those would be impatient responses! Instead, consciously seeking the reformation of our habitus by the work of the Holy Spirit and by catechesis rooted in the teaching and way of Jesus, we will begin to live in new ways in today’s saeculum. We will discover that we are in a good tradition. And we will say with Cyprian and other early Christians: "We do not speak great things but we live them".

[Christina C · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed look at the early church (through Augustine) and their views on a patient habitus. Highly academic but still very readable this book gave me a lot to think about. He looks at the early writings and what is known about the process of catechesis; how this would have shaped individuals, communities and been viewed by contemplates.
Importantly he addresses Constantine and Augustine and the historical turn from patience that has had long lasting consequences.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This book is a gift to the modern church as it unpacks our history and the road that the early church paved. In a time and place where faith is primarily an intellectual ascent to cognitive agreement with a set of doctrines; Kreider invites readers back to a time when being a follower of Jesus redefined the way people lived on a day-to-day basis.

Read this book.

[Rick Dugan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Kreider’s thesis is that during the first three centuries the church grew through “patient ferment” rather than through aggressive mission or evangelistic strategies. The early church was attractional, but it was the attraction of the saints’ lives that accelerated growth. They had been transformed not only by the message of the gospel, but by specific practices that cultivated a new “habitus” or way of living. Christian habitus formed the instinctive reflexes of the Christians in contrast to the habitus of Roman society. The author draws extensively from primary sources - historians and church fathers of the first five centuries.

Most growth during this period happened relationally within families and broader family network. It multiplied as Christians migrated. As ordinary men and women were shaped by Christian habitus (we could call this discipleship), their lives became a witness to the gospel that attracted others to explore the Christian faith. More growth could be attributed to relational networks and migration than to the itinerant prophets and missionaries. Because the unbaptized weren’t allowed to attend Christian worship, there was no attempt to make Christian worship services attractive to outsiders.

The mechanisms of developing a Christian habitus were catechism and worship, which Kreider pieces together from various sources. In the earliest days, catechism focused more on behavior than belief as Christians were identified by their habitus more than their theology. They were known for their patience and honesty in business, their care for the poor, and their peaceful nonviolence. Worship was simple, informal, and centered around a Eucharistic meal. As the numbers grew, there was more organizational development. Eventually the “evening banquet” was replaced with a “morning service.” And yet the process of catechism continued to involve both the relational modeling of a sponsor and the formal catechism of a teacher.

Kreider details many other elements that contributed to the development of church organization and growth, and he places this within the cultural and historic contexts or Roman society. And while for the first few centuries it appeared that the spontaneous life of the church was driving growth, there came a point when organizational development out-paced it. Emperor Constantine, Christianity’s most famous convert to date, championed this organizational growth. From being a persecuted minority attracting believers through the lives of its adherents, the Christian church became an institution supported by the state (and which supported the state in return).

Though buildings, liturgies, and hierarchy all existed in the church prior to Constantine, the freedoms and privilege that he gave to Christians and the recognition he extended to their leaders began to change the habitus of the church that had been formed through behavior, catechism and worship. Kreider lists 5 of these changes.

First, church leaders could now envision, be proactive and control the organizational development of the church. Second, the power of the state could be utilized to accomplish things that Christians used to do for themselves. A Christian-sympathetic emperor could use his power to care for the poor or build churches beyond what small Christian communities could do previously. Third, Constantine restricted the freedoms of non-Christian or schismatic groups. Becoming “orthodox” gave one a position of privilege. Fourth, the new freedoms and association of Christianity with status meant that the church grew at an unprecedented speed. Catechism was shortened and shifted in focus from behavior to belief in order to remove obstacles for the masses to be baptized. Lastly, the nature of conversion changed. It was diluted to allow more people to enter the church (nominalism), and the church itself began to reflect the Roman habitus in terms of hierarchy, prestige, and militarism.

In the centuries after Constantine, a migration in emphasis can be seen from mystery to method, behavior to belief, discipleship to organization, relationship to institution, non-violence to power, kingdom to empire, and patient ferment to impatient force. The church would change from forming disciples for martyrdom to recruiting crusaders for conquest. This is what happens when society is forming the Church more than the Church is forming disciples.

Kreider is not providing a holistic history of Christianity in the first five centuries. Rather, he’s looking at the role of the patient and deliberate development of Christian practices and formation for the growth of the church. He also identifies the dangers to the patient ferment of the church of prioritizing organizational development over relational catechism, numeric growth over quiet faithfulness, and the pursuit of state power to achieve church goals rather than sacrificial non-violence.

Writing from his Mennonite perspective, Kreider's voice is a welcome and helpful addition to studies of the early church.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting, readable account of how the early church grew. The emphasis was not on evangelism, but on living a Christ-like life. I enjoyed the descriptions of the catechism process incorporating new believers into the church. At times, I wondered whether Kreider's Anabaptist theological views colored his reading of the history. Still, an excellent and informative volume.

[Megan Inwards]

I was NOT patient reading this book but to be fair, Alan didn’t make it easy… I will say that I appreciated the last three chapters more than any other part. Maybe it took the entire book to truly understand how colossally different and impatient Christianity is now compared to the early church.

[James Passaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting perspective on spread of Christianity and emphasis on the habits of Christians and how growing in faith gradually changed.

[Wendy M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very informative and interesting while requiring a healthy attention span.

[Chris Bannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough, thought-provoking, convicting work of historical and ecclesiastical analysis, through an authorial lens steeped in anabaptist non-violent tradition.

[Cole Kliewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful history of patience as a core Christian virtue and practice. We have much to learn from our brothers and sisters of the past about living a wholly devoted life to the Lord.

[Seth Hale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book illuminating the focus the early church had. You can’t help but wonder how the modern church would grow if we adopted their mindset.

[Robby Eckard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this

[Daniel Nelms · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've been around me the past month or so, you've heard me talk about Kreider's book. This church history is absolutely relevant to the American Church in the 21st century. The first three centuries of the Christian Church and the American/Western Church increasingly have something in common: on the societal level, there is little to no shared Christian worldview, belief or understanding of humanity.

So if this is the case, there might be a logical question that follows: we as Christians are called to make disciples and to share the Good News of Jesus. How do we do so today? If our world is more and more like the ancient Roman Empire of old, what can we glean of evangelism and method from the early church? After all, the early church in the first three centuries, generally speaking, grew by 10% or so every decade. What can we learn from them? How did they talk and train their congregants on evangelism and mission? How did they treat new guests that came to their church? How did they invite new guests? And on and on our questions can go.

UNEXPECTED FINDS
As Kreider studied what he calls the 'improbable rise of Christianity" in the Roman Empire, he asked this question. After surveying the available data (which, admittingly, is not vast) he surprisingly learned that “according to the evidence at our disposal, the expansion of the [early] churches was not organized, the product of a mission program; it simply happened” (pg. 9). Even more surprising was the realization that among all the essays and treatises written in the first three centuries of the church, “they did not write a single treatise on evangelism” (pg. 10). Other unexpected finds:

- “Church did not use their worship services to attract new people” (pg. 11)
- In fact, worship services were closed to outsiders fort fear of spies, especially in stronger seasons of persecution
- They did not have formal training of evangelism or how to share the Gospel
- Yet the early church grew and grew and grew.

These are just a few reasons why we can call this growth ‘improbable.’ So how, then, did it grow?

Kreider summarizes part of his thesis in the early pages,

“They proliferated because the faith that these [early Christians] embodied was attractive to people who were dissatisfied with their old and cultural and religious habits, who felt pushed to explore new possibilities, and who then encountered Christians who embodied a new manner of life that pulled them toward what the Christians called ‘rebirth’ into a new life.”

And, importantly, Kreider remarks, “Surprisingly, this happened in a patient manner.”

THE LACK OF PATIENCE AMONG THE MODERN CHURCH
The current ‘church model’ is relatively obsessed with growth. How can we grow? How can we add more numbers? The success of pastors over their churches are largely analyzed through this grid. Behind this hunger is a lack of patience. Getting attendance higher and as quickly as possible is often the consistent narrative behind success stories of churches when we talk about a flourishing church. “We were down in attendance, but after five years we had doubled!”
Of course people matter and attendance matters because people matter. But there is an important nuance behind this modern narrative of ‘successful churches’ that we must address – that Kreider’s book directly addresses – and it is the questions of how we are growing as churches, of what means we are growing, and our understanding of shaping followers of Jesus after they meet him.
For the early church, the answers to these questions were marked by something we’re missing today: patience. Patience. Patience.

THE PATIENT GROWTH OF THE EARLY CHURCH – Evangelism as a way of life
After examining the ministries of many of the early church fathers, we learn that people learned of Christianity not through formal mission or evangelism programs, but through the habits and Jesus-formation of the Christian community. Therefore, witness began by neighbors “brushing shoulders with Christians in the marketplace.” Again there are some contextual things to keep in mind – most people in Rome were very skeptical of the early church. Christians were often persecuted, often accused of secretly having orgies (due to their ‘kiss of peace’ and what they called ‘love feasts’) or even secretly living as cannibals (the Eucharist), and their claim of a single God and their Messiah who was crucified would complicate a straight forward evangelism in the likes of how we think about it today.
Nevertheless, they grew. As the Roman way of life continually left more and more people disenfranchised, more and more people, upon brushing shoulders with Christians and hearing some of the actually true rumors of the new way of life among the early Christians, more people were drew to the Christian Church.
For example, as Kreider points out, it was normal for a wealthy Roman man of the house to have a wife and female servants. Many women, if they were to work, were servants of such men. It was a normal way of Roman life for the man to sleep with all the women in the house, regardless if they consented or not. More so, if one were to get pregnant and it was an unwanted child, the man was free to ‘expose’ the child in the local garbage dump – an ancient form of abortion.
Christians, however, did not do this. This is one reason why, according to archeological finds, there were probably larger amounts of women than men converts in the early church because women were drawn to a community that would not mistreat them or abuse them or expose their children. Naturally, the question for such women trapped in this awful Roman way of life would follow: “Christians, why do you live like this?” Hence the evangelistic process would occur. Many examples follow: classes of the rich and poor serving and loving one another and worshipping together, Christians tending to the sick at the cost of their lives during times of pandemic when no one else was caring for them – this plus more clashed with the Roman way of life, and little by little the disenfranchised were drawn to this way of life and met Jesus in the process. It should remind you of what Jesus once said, that through our way of life and our love of one another that our identity as disciples of Jesus would be exposed (John 13:35).

JESUS-LIKE BEHAVIOR AS IMPORTANT AS RIGHT BELIEF
This is where I feel the conversation becomes even more important for the current evangelical church that I was raised in, trained in, and where I currently pastor. For centuries out of necessity Protestantism has been defined by what we believe, up and against corruptions of proper belief. Protestantism began through Luther’s attempt at doctrinal correction of the Catholic Church – the 95 Thesis.
Ever since we have written untold volumes of correct doctrine. In a largely Christianized Western world, this was welcomed. We had time to argue the finer points of systematic theology because Christianity had been largely embraced. This isn’t a bad thing, of course.
However, like most everything, I believe the pendulum swing needs to be corrected. Kreider sought in his work to find examples of how the early Christians were trained and discipled once they became Christians. In modern times, we’re accustomed to baptism as quickly as possible, citing many examples found in the book of Acts.
Kreider found that in the vast majority of cases, from the 2nd century until Constantine in the early 4th century, unless you were a Jewish convert to Christianity, the baptismal process would last anywhere from six months to two years. He argues that, according to a mostly shared ethical framework between Jews and Christians, the conversion process from Jewish to Christian was a bit easier and mostly focused on points of belief and practice concerning how one was to know God.
However, there was a much larger gap for the Roman pagan convert. After their confession of Jesus and faith in the Good News, they were ushered into a long process of catechism training. Early church documents such as The Apostolic Tradition, the Didache, and others testified to the belief among the early church that “the habit[us] of the Didache’s community was what they did, and the Didache is insistent of the importance of practice” because “the [church leaders knew] that the community must live the gospel if outsiders [were] to find the gospel credible” (pg. 146). He continues, “How could the Christians undercut this approach to mission? By admitting new people too quickly whose behavior compromised the Christian’s distinctive attractiveness” (pg. 149).
I find it interesting, as I went on a following rabit hole, that our current and more modern catechisms of modern times are almost entirely focused on getting doctrine correct (i.e. New City Catechism), whereas Christian behavior (a direct implication of correct doctrine, of course) gets less attention (and for the record, we use the New City Catechism with my kids almost daily). This is in distinction to the best surviving examples of early catechism from the centuries before Constantine, which almost entirely deal with correct Christian behavior.
The process of bringing a convert to baptism was similar, according to Kreider, of a sponsorship to an addict within our 12-step programs. These former pagans needed not just a radical reorientation of doctrinal belief, but training on an entirely new way of life. Kreider finds that the Gospels and the Sermon on the Mount were among the most popular texts quoted continually (and remember, these are pre-printing press days. Memorization by hearing and catechism were among the most accessible way to learn the Scriptures).
I do believe that good doctrine matters. Of course it does. But perhaps for too long we’ve focused on doctrinal minuta and baptized many very quickly while not taking as seriously the consideration of discipleship: are those who confessed Jesus truly embodying the witness of the presence of the Spirit in their lives? Especially in Origen’s ministry, exorcism was a crucial part of the evangelistic process, showing just how strong demonic forces were in controlling these early converts, and stories abound of radical deliverance during the sponsorship process leading up to baptism.

CONCLUSION
I left out much of Kreider’s book, and I highly encourage you to read it. When I think back on how many people the churches I’ve pastored or helped to pastor in the past, and all the people we baptized – and I realize how few of them are actually still to this day still confessing Jesus and find themselves as an active and dependent member of his Church, I wonder – what have we done wrong?
Has the Church been affected by what I like to call the “Amazon effect” – church growth by whatever means we can, baptizing as quickly as we can as soon as someone says the right prayer, and celebrating baptisms as trophies on a shelf to show of our successes? Have we lost the way in which we talk about correct Christian ‘behavior’ in fear of swinging a moral hammer against others who ‘drink and smoke and chew and date girls that do”? I think we need to bring renewal and refreshment to these categories, and begin rethinking how we talk about it all – and live in it.
Recently, a neighbor my wife met remarked in amazement after learning that all of her children were from one man. “How I wish all of my kids were!” with a tear that followed. Alex in compassion stayed and listened to her story. That story has been one we can’t shake as a family as of recent because the emotion involved came as a surprise to Alex. No, she didn’t preach in that moment.
The reality is this: somewhere we must find a modern day witness of the church of embracing and living out the Jesus-way of life without being overly-morally righteous against those around us. Like the early church, we must realize that our increasingly-post Christian will eventually (and I believe, very quickly) potentially leave an entire generation very disenfranchised. What we teach and say must be revealed by how we live. I fear that often times the gap of these two things are very wide in the modern American Church. I think there is much to learn from what Kreider calls the “patient ferment of the early church.” Perhaps it will lead to a quickly, sky-rocketing growth in a church. But it just might lead to more resilient disciples, and a growth that is deep and rich, even if slow. Perhaps something along these lines should be how we think about “church growth” in 2021 and beyond.

[Rev AJBawtree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slow down, God is in control.

How did the early Church grow, and how might we grow today ?
A fascinating glimpse of how things were for those small communities of Christian believers, and an encouragement fir small Christian communities in the 21st century.

[Landon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on the early Church from the great commission to Augustine. The cardinal Christian virtue on patience in the early church made me completely rethink my ideas around evangelism, spiritual formation, and non-violence. Highly recommend!

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an engrossing and fascinating look at the early church, through the lens of their most important virtue - patience. The earliest Christians (prior to Constantine or Augustine) had no missional or evangelism strategy, closed the doors to outsiders when they worshiped, and made it difficult to enter the church. Was this because they didn't care about reaching the gentiles? No, it was because they wanted to protect the witness of the church. Christians should live exemplary lives, and the life of the church was oriented around making sure the lives of Christians lived up to the high standards set for them by Christ.

Christian living is defined by their unique habitus. Habitus, a term coined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, is deeper than our intellectual knowledge. Our habitus is shaped by our knowledge, but also by deeper, more subtle things, such as our table manners, stories, and above all, by our habits. The Christians put much effort into developing a uniquely Christian habitus, which was distinct from pagan habitus. For the Christian, it became reflexive to love our neighbor and our enemy. It became a reflexive habit to bear wrongs done to us, to practice honesty in business. The Christian strove to develop a habitus, through rigorous practice, apprenticeships, and a transformation by the Holy Spirit, that was able to live up to the ideals of the sermon on the mount.

What were the components of the Christians habitus? While we can never full know, we can identify some of the components. The Christian habitus included meeting frequently, standing in prayer with arms raised, praising and thanking God, making the sign of the cross frequently, eating together, giving the kiss of peace, memorizing texts of scripture, visiting the poor, sick, and prisoners, exercising hospitality by welcoming and feeding visitors, putting money in collection boxes, feeding needy people, discerning carefully what to say yes and no to in the surrounding culture, being truthful, abstaining from oaths, maintaining sexual purity, being willing to lose out in arguments, business, and law courts, allowing people to leave the church, and facing death without fear.

Patience was what enabled them to live this way. Patience enabled them to focus on their ways of living instead of worrying about their gentile neighbors. For the early Christians, patience was the preeminent virtue. As God is patient, we too should be patient. God, who is patiently waiting for us to repent, who endures all things, is our model. We consistently see patience modeled by Jesus and the saints, and also taught repeatedly, especially in the sermon on the mount. Love of enemies is only possible for the one who is patient.

The opposite of the patient person is the impatient person. Due to his impatience, Adam fell and ate the forbidden fruit. The impatient person is the one who seeks vengeance for how they were wronged instead of waiting for the final judgement of the Lord. The impatient person tries to force conversions instead of persuading them and waiting patiently. Patience and impatience are opposites, and lead to opposite fruits.

Due to their patient approach, the early Christians top priority was not evangelism. In fact, they didn't have much of an evangelism strategy at all. They didn't write about evangelism or teach people how to evangelize. This was because they trusted that the Lord would draw those who should be part of the church to Himself. And also because they didn't want to rush things and have too many new converts come in at once - for doing such a thing could compromise the exemplary lives they were living. In this way, Alan Kreider, the Anabaptist, wrote a deeply Calvinist book. For it was not due to evangelism or proclamation of the gospel that men and women became Christians, but solely due to God calling them to the church.

The patience of the early church led to the second part of his book - ferment. The patient approach of the early Christians, while seeming to produce few converts initially, eventually led to a significant number of faithful converts. This is what the ferment produced. Bubbling under the surface, invisible to our eyes, the faithful living of the earliest Christians, eventually produced something incredible. Christians went from being an insignificant minority, to enough of a concern of the government to persecute, and eventually numerical enough that when Constantine became empire it was politically advantageous to make Christianity the official religion of the empire.

Through a close reading of early Christian sources and an erudite knowledge of the earliest Christians, Alan Kreider paints a fascinating picture of what the early church could have looked like, how their worship meetings could have been, what the intense catechuminate period (the period prior to becoming a member of the church through baptism) could have looked like, and what their priorities were. I had read enough bits and pieces of the church fathers writings and was familiar enough with early church history to be aware of how different and admirable their lives and worship were. But my understanding was just a bare sketch with many aspects that were too fuzzy to be well understood. Reading The Patient Ferment of the Early Church answered many questions I had, such as why the holy kiss was so prominent, how they went about maintaining discipline and discipleship, and what the worship was like. The Patient Ferment of the Early Church also gave me a much deeper and fleshed out portrait of the early church. The early church, as portrayed in this book felt like a real, living, flesh and blood community, which was simultaneously extremely admirable, flawed, and different than anything existing today.

If we are to learn from the patience of the early church, and I think we ought to, then we do not have an easy road ahead of us. At least in the American context, a patient approach to faith is opposed to our basic thinking. Outside of some Anabaptist communities (who are far more separatist than the early church depicted here), most of us, and I include myself, only know an impatient faith.

We also have the additional challenge given to us by Augustine that our own patience can be merely an excuse for justifying the status quo. This was articulated quite eloquently and powerfully by MLK in his Letter from Birmingham Jail when he said "Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. MLK's words haunt and challenge us. How can the privileged who have never suffered the oppression that MLK articulated call for and live lives filled with patience? Perhaps we first need to once again become a church of the poor and for the poor before we can honestly, without hypocrisy, live the patient lives we are called to. Certainly, the minority churches have much to teach and guide those from the majority (white) traditions.

Even if Augustine was impatient, he did make some good points which we cannot ignore. Scripture doesn't present us with a wholly consistent portrayal of patience. Paul was blinded by force after all, not with a patient persuasion. Augustine pointed this out, and those who adhere to the just war tradition have followed his lead. Even if you think he was mistaken, as do I, we still should not go back to an understanding of the scriptural texts which does not adequately account for the uses of force in both testaments.

Getting back to a patient lifestyle is not easy. There is no straightforward reapplication, especially for the layman. That, after all, would be impatient. No, any attempt to get back to a patient ferment, would require, well, patience.

[Tim Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting book and historical trip through the practices and development of the early church. Alan Kreider reviews the church's early growth, and explains, from his point of view, why the growth was so profound despite occurring within a completely hostile culture. His view: the church grew because patience was its premier virtue.

The author builds his argument in four sections. The first describes Christian patience and examines how the early church exhibited that virtue. The second expands on the first by explaining the "ferment" of patience--how living patiently "fermented" the church and was the primary cause of its growth in hostile terrain. The third and by far longest section described the ways by which the church received, trained and inculturated new believers into this way of living. The final section describes how Emperor Constantine and then Augustine undermined patience as the premier virtue of the church, creating an impatient, conquering mentality in Christianity which the author believes wrongly infects it still.

I confess a poor knowledge of early church history; thus I am not equipped to challenge his interpretation of the time. I wish, however, the author would have wrestled a little with these issues:

First, how much is his view informed by his own ideology and approach to Christianity? He is honest about those in his preface. The strong Mennonite / Anabaptist underpinning of his views are reflected clearly in his argument. Have the colored his thinking? Or is it an impartial presentation of the clear facts? Of course, we are all colored by our own views and ideologies but one wonders whether he sought to understand early Christian practice and found non-violent patience, or whether he started with non-violent patience and wove it into the preeminent attribute of early Christian practice.

Second, the author, in my view, spent insufficient effort explaining why the patient, "non-missional" (I dislike the word) method of the early church was so different from the explosive growth from the energetic spreading of the gospel from town to town in Acts. Nor did he explain why this new norm is the proper norm against the Biblical example. He twice intimated that the "go into all the world and make disciples" command was limited to the apostles and largely fulfilled in their age. This is a difficult position to hold, in my view.

Third, in the very long discussion of the process by which the church incorporated new Christians, it is quite easy for the reader to lose sight of the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration. Instead, the church put new believers (the author calls them "candidates" not "believers") into a long period of "proving out their salvation" by the way that they live, the patience and charity they exhibited and insuring an actual change in habits and lifestyle before administering the rite of baptism and allowing them to receive the Eucharist. It is quite easy to look at this method and conclude the church, not the Holy Spirit, determines who was saved. It also, it seemed to me, laid the foundation for an overbearing church that later developed in Rome that the author criticizes (though without noting the possible contribution of this long method of catechizing new "candidates" to that usurpation of the Holy Spirit's work and authority.)

Finally, the author in his critique of Augustine and Constantine, decries the transformation of the church's work from "patient mystery" to "impatient method". However, the author's description of the early church's catechization of new "candidates" is methodical to the extreme and occurred over a period of years: Step 1-Evangelism, Step 2-Catechism, Step 3-Preparation for Baptism, and finally, Step 4-Baptism, receiving of the Eucharist, and acceptance into the church. This hardly seems "mystery" to me.

Despite those drawbacks, the book is very helpful in describing how to live winsome lives in a culture hostile to Christianity. It also challenges the church in any age on becoming entangled with the state. That makes it definitely worth reading in today's world.