Sociologist Rodney Stark analyzed the survival and growth of the early church in the first few centuries. Here is his fascinating summary of the Early Church.

“. . . Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world. . . . Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fire, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services. . . . For what they brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable.”

Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, Princeton University Press, 1996, page 161

Stop here for a moment and ask yourself some questions: How do people look at us? Is the gospel spreading through our city like it did in Rome? Do people say when they are around us that we are the most giving, generous and hospitable people they know? Do people think we are incredibly practical and helpful to others needs? Do they see you and think to themselves “what is working in this person to be so kind and giving at the right time?” Do others look at your life and see it is startling, beautiful, something that causes them to scratch their head and ask “why”? Are you known for your generosity? If not, you’re not like these early Christians.

Years ago I worked as a waiter for Cheesecake Factory in Woodland Hills and the one shift no one wanted to work was Sunday brunch because Christians would flood the restaurant and yet gave the smallest tips and the greatest amount of complaints. You would work twice as hard as any other shift yet make half as much. By the end of your day you were praying for the rapture even if you weren’t a Christian! 72 waiters and waitresses had a negative view of Christians and the church that impacted how they felt about Christianity on their days off. Do we even care about the witness to our city or town? Is it even a thought in our local churches? I ask myself as much as I ask all of us- why?

Could it be that we don’t have the depth of motivation acting upon our hearts and minds that these early Christians did? Perhaps we simply have not really unpacked the Gospel and all that it means for us and those God has connected us to by His Sovereign hand. Perhaps it is that we don’t really don’t believe that Christ became utterly poor that we might become rich in faith. Perhaps we simply do not believe that Christ was exiled and treated like a stranger to this world so that we might come in and be treated with divine hospitality of our Triune God.

Hebrews 13:12-14: “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. 13 Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. 14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.”

Are we willing to bear the reproach he endured? Are willing to lay ourselves out for the sake of the City of Man so that the City of God looks spectacular? Are we willing to suffer shame and ridicule while being abused and used by those we are laboring to reach? If not, then we might as well pack up, buy the limited edition of Your Best Life Now and wait for Hal Lindsey’s 3rd revision of The Late Great Planet Earth while we wait for Star Trek Jesus us to beam us up and out of this nasty place. Or…we could repent and ask our saving God to restore to us the love for His Son that once motivated us to love what He loves. We could ask that God would, by His Spirit, strengthen us to work until our fingers our bleeding from our grip on sinners, our throats are parched from speaking the gospel, our feet are blistered from walking whatever distance it takes to seek the lost, and our knees are calloused from spending our time in prayer for the beautifully-broken image bearers God has called us to love.

Father, please grant to me the humility to see that I am far greater a sinner than any man in San Diego, yet loved and cherished more deeply than I could have ever imagined was possible. Grant me the courage to love like Jesus not Jonah, and the life that makes your Son look intensely attractive. For you glory, not my own, for Christ sake and His name. Amen.