Friday, June 11, 2010

The Early Church and Missions

I am reading Justo Gonzalez's The Story of Christianity

He writes,

Another surprising fact about the early expansion of Christianity is that, after the new Testament, very little is said of any missionaries going from place to place, like Paul and Barnabas had done. It is clear that the enormous spread of the Gospel in those first few centuries was not due to full-time missionaries, but rather to the many Christians who traveled for other reasons—slaves, merchants, exiles condemned to work in the mines, and the like.


The real work of missions has always been the lay people.