St. Andrew UMC Podcast

After Jesus’ death, an improbable, seemingly impossible thing happened: a small, despised community of Jesus followers from a small, insignificant corner of Palestine began a movement that, in less than three hundred years, grew to become the dominant faith of the mighty Roman Empire—an empire steeped in fiercely defended pagan religions. The spread of the Christian church in this period is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in history. Christianity was considered by Rome to be an illegal, contemptible religion. Wave after wave of state-sponsored persecution was unleashed to destroy it, which drove the Early Church underground. They had limited resources, no social, economic or political capital, no buildings, no social media, and everywhere they traveled, they were hunted and persecuted. So how did this fledgling movement survive? How did it expand to eventually lay the foundation for all of Western Civilization? What can it teach us that might help us reclaim our own faith and transform our own world?