Complex Culture and the Roman Empire

Let me describe to you a world in which communication has been standardized and one language has become common in doing business across almost all international boundaries. Transportation has made the world much smaller. Goods, services, and people are able to be moved in larger quantities much more quickly than in the past. One dominant currency, relative peace, and safety have made world trade and unprecedented prosperity possible. All of this has made it possible for people from all over the world to move anywhere. Ethnic diversity has become an increasing phenomenon in the big cities.

I just described the Roman Empire of the first century. The world of the Early Church was anything but homogeneous. Religious pluralism, poverty, moral perversion, greed, ethnic and racial diversity, and much, much more was the context in which Paul, John, Peter, and the rest of the early church fathers ministered. Our place of ministry today has much more in common with them, than at almost any time in history since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Robert Linthicum expresses this thought in the following way:

"The biblical people of God were themselves urban people. David was king of Jerusalem as well as an empire. Isaiah and Jeremiah were both prophets committed to Jerusalem. Daniel was appointed mayor of the city of Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. Nehemiah was a city planner, a community organizer and governor over Jerusalem… John could only envision God's ultimate plans for humanity as an indescribably beautiful city."

"Most of Paul's letters were written to city churches giving instructions on how the church should act and minister effectively in a city. The Psalter is filled with songs about "Mount Zion" – Jerusalem – the city of God's dwelling” (Linthicum, 1989: 2-3).

If the ministry context of the New Testament is very similar to ours, the question becomes, “How were they successful?”

There were many reasons for their success. One was their missionary zeal. Paul was sent with Barnabas on their first missionary trip from the city of Antioch (Acts 13), by a multi-cultural church board. Paul used various urban strategies to start churches wherever he went. Here are a few of them:

1. He was on the leadership team in Antioch, the third largest city in the Roman Empire. This church had members from three continents and several ethnicities.
2. In Philippi, a Roman Garrison city, he planted the first European congregation. Luke tells us that Lydia, a woman of the upper class was the founding and leading member. The church also included a slave, and a jailor who was probably a freeman, or middle class. It became a classless house church.
3. Elsewhere, Paul describes church membership as being from all social strata.
4. He often began his ministry in the synagogue among the Jewish population and God-fearing Gentiles. After he was told to leave, he continued in a home or a rented hall (house churches). Because they included Jews and Gentiles, those congregations were multicultural as well.
5. In Athens, he went to Mars Hill to speak with the Athenian philosophers about their “unknown god.” We have here an example of how He was able to contextualize the gospel message to his audience.
6. Sometimes he stayed in a city for a few months and left for the next city.
7. He also stayed in Ephesus for three years. Paul used the city of Ephesus as a megaphone to preach the gospel. During that time, others took the message into the interior of Asia Minor.
8. As a prisoner in Rome, Paul sent out Tychicus, Epaphroditus, Aristarchus, Lukas, Demas, and Markus to minister in the streets of Rome. They would bring the new converts to him for discipling while he was in chains.

The bottom line here is that in different situations, Paul used different strategies and varied structures to plant the Church. They all exemplified Paul’s statement, “In Christ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

Is it okay for the Church today to be structured in more than one way?

Is it too radical an idea to think of local church leadership as being inter-cultural?