Category Archives: Ministry

How many Christians do you think there were in the year AD 100?

I am reading a book at the moment by Alan Hirsch called “The Forgotten Ways”. Alan is the co author of an excellent book on missional learning for the established church as it faces the challenges of the twenty-first century its called “The Shape of Things to Come”. In the forgotten ways Hirsch asks a question “How many Christians do you think there were in the year AD 100?” He then asked, “How many Christians do you think there were just before Constantine came on the scene, say AD 310?

You may be somewhat surprised by the answer.

In AD 100, there were as few as 25,000 Christians in the world.

By AD 310, just before Constantine came on the scene there were up to 20,000,000 Christians in the world.

He then asked the question: “How did they do this?” How did they grow from being a small movement to the most significant religious force in the Roman Empire in Just two centuries? So here is the same question for you to think about “How did the early Christians do it? Let me know what you think.

Phil