In Front | The Spread of Early Christianity

According to a common early Christian understanding, in the distant past what later came to be called the “Great Commission” had already been carried out by ordinary Christians who continued [the spread of the Church].

Ordinary Christians—they were the key. (With few exceptions) it was anonymous Christians, not the officially constituted leaders of the Christian communities, who were primarily responsible for Christianity’s spread. Lay Christians traveled to new areas and established churches. What caused ordinary Christians to get involved in this? Often it was work. Christians followed their business opportunities or the imperatives of their jobs by moving from their home areas to new areas as merchants, artisans, doctors, prisoners, slaves and (by the third century) soldiers. As they traveled, they often moved in existing networks of family, profession and faith …. Taking their faith with them, in new places they founded Christian cells. One scholar has called this process “migration mission.”