The new apostolic age

George Hunter III wrote a great book in 1992 that I am currently re-reading. The title is How to Reach Secular People. I didn't fully understand the book when I first read it because I wasn't as aware of postmodernism and its impact on the church as I am now. Fifteen years ago Hunter was explaining to those who could understand that the church had entered a time that closely resembled the first century, and if the church was going to successfully proclaim the gospel to our generation we needed to go back to the techniques the first century church used. Read these insightful words from Hunter:

For the christian movement's first three centuries, the communicators of Christianity had to achieve four objectives: (1) Facing a population with no knowledge of the gospel, the christian movement had to inform people of the story of Jesus, the good news, its claims, and its offer. (2) Facing hostile populations and the persecution of the state, the Church had to "win friends and influence people" to a positive attitude toward the movement. (3) Facing an Empire with several entrenched religions, the Christians had to convince people of Christianity's truth, or at least its plausibility. (4) Since entry into the faith is by an act of the will, Christians had to invite people to adopt this faith and join the messianic community and follow Jesus as Lord...

The early Church was intentional about achieving each of these four objectives. They informed people by creatively communicating and interpreting their gospel in conversations, synagogue presentations, and open-air speaking. They influenced people's attitudes by their changed lives, their ministries of service, their love for one another, and by their love for nonchristians and even their enemies, even in martyrdom. They convinced people by reasoning from the Scriptures and by their common-sense apologetics. They invited responsive people to confess faith and be baptized unto the messianic community. (pp. 35-36)

We often get so caught up in programs and looking for the latest and greatest techniques that I believe we overlook a simple truth. If we are ministering in a time that closely resembles the first century then perhaps we need to simply minister as the early church did. We need to focus on the basics of informing, influencing, convincing, and inviting. We need to model changed lives if we truly want others to believe that a relationship with Jesus Christ changes lives. We need to love others and find ways to minister to them even when they are sometimes hostile to our efforts.

The good news about this for bivocational churches is that such ministry doesn't require a lot of resources or special programs. It only requires that God's people be committed to serving the communities in which God has placed them. It requires that we become missional churches, i.e. churches that are on mission with God reaching out to a world that does not know Him. When we do that we will begin to impact our world in ways we could never have imagined.