"Gazuntite"
In Alan Hirsch’s book, The Forgotten Ways, he talks about how the Gospel spread so quickly in the early church – in the midst of persecution – by making the Gospel “sneezable.”
I’ll be honest; I don’t think the idea of making evangelism or missiology analogous to the action of a bodily discharge has ever crossed my mind. I mean even the phrase bodily discharge sounds really awkward and weird – let alone comparing the apostolic efforts of the early church to something I do when my nose is tickled. But upon further contemplation (and reading a little bit further down the page), I find this analogy to sneezing illuminating just as it is provocative.
Hirsch argues that the early church was able to “sneeze” the Gospel, or in other words “distill” the Gospel (Note: look up the definition of distill. It is a verb that essentially means to condense – not to remove or compromise – but to condense down to its purest and simplest form, without changing it.) because of the great persecution they were under. In other words, these early Christians didn’t exactly have months or years to really explain and unpack the contents of Scripture in a 12 sermon series. More often than not, these guys (and gals) probably only had minutes.
What they essentially “distilled” it down to is this; Jesus is LORD. Hirsch goes into some detail to set up and explain why the proclamation – Jesus is LORD – was so scandalizing and meaningful. We might look at that and think, eh, no big whoop. But to the early persecuted church, affirming or denying those three words was literally a life or death decision. This and other factors helped make this Gospel message spread like an epidemic or infectious disease. It just so happens that many infectious diseases are spread by sneezes. Interesting.
My point in bringing this up isn’t much of a point; it’s more of a question. Maybe two or three questions actually. What if, or what/how would it look like, in a modern post-Christendom culture such as ours, to preach the Gospel in a similar “sneezable” manner, that was so “infectious,” it would cause some freak Jesus epidemic? Is that even plausible in such a comfortable and affluent “Desperate Housewives” suburban society?
Something tells me that there is a lot to learn from the early church, and also examining how the Gospel still manages to spread like wildfire throughout persecution to this day. It will obviously look different, but I think there are definite lessons to be learned and extrapolated to our post-Christendom/post-modernity culture in 2011.
– jessemac
I loved this image of the gospel spreading contagiously, “infecting” everyone who the “sickness holders” (Christ followers) come into contact with! It’s a Missional-incarnational model, spreading through close personal contact.
The early church is such an interesting subject to study! If only we could just spread the Gospel to people by sneezing on them…
Just kidding, that would be gross.
Do you have any specific ideas for infectious ways to spread the Gospel in today’s society?