Evangelism and the Early Church

If you want to read a great book on the how the human authors of the New Testament understood their culture and how the Gospel addressed that culture then please take time to read Evangelism and the Early Church by Michael Green. More thoughts:

A Personal Touch

In Evangelism in the Early Church Michael Green, a man who writes with a pastor’s heart and an intellectual’s mind, I have found a wonderful guide through the documentation of the first and second century Christian writers and through the philosophical and historical background of the two time periods.
As I have read and studied Ancient history and literature, I have had a strong curiosity to better understand exactly who and what the Gospel was speaking to and found that Green’s work gives a more than adequate understanding of the world into which Jesus came. Apart from that aspect of the book, I was delighted to find two other aspects of the book to be very instructive to my understanding of evangelism. The first aspect concerns the biblical basis of tailoring the gospel and the second addresses the concerns and needs of a more rural, less educated, audience.
Michael Green in the section titled Proclamation in the chapter The Evangel carefully lays out evidence from a variety of resources that the gospel has both “a recognizable shape and content”, but not so restrictive to “serve as a strait-jacket, inhibiting all imagination and initiative.” This vitally important section is helping me to see that the structure given is to be used to produce something that is stable but also applicable to the specific time, place and relationships where I find myself. Time, place and relationships that are examples of the outworking of the Lordship of Jesus in all of its infinite variety. It brings to bear that He is Lord over all times, peoples and place and that there is a freedom that comes from admitting that we never really can implement exactly the worship, evangelism, etc. of the past without falling into rituals that are devoid of a the relationship with Jesus Christ that they can represent. It also brings with it a responsibility to hear carefully what the people, both individually and collectively, are saying in order to know how to bring the gospel to them. And more importantly to remember that at whatever point they enter the kingdom, the Holy Spirit is faithful to continue the work.
I was especially delighted to find that Green addresses one of the more rural audiences of the Early Church and to find what I think are parallels to rural areas today. On page 174ff, Green lays out the following characteristics of the common man in the Hellenistic society that we find echoed today: disillusionment with the state cult is paralleled today with a disillusionment with politics of our time and also paralleled by the paying of taxes to prevent disaster on their house!; an affinity for the household and countryside gods, which could be seen as anything from hunting and fishing to hard work and even harder play; and a desire to show piety, which is commendable. But all of this makes for individuals who are very self-sufficient and fiercely independent and “covered with a thin veneer of Christianity” and thus as Green says these are resistant to the gospel to the last. Green’s exposition of the approach of reminding them that the God is the giver of those good things for which they work and play hard was instructive. But undergirding this, as Green emphasizes throughout the book, was the love, fellowship, and moral example of the ordinary Christian. A personal approach that is costly, but obviously effective.