Patient Ferment of the Early Church: What We Must Learn Today

Alan Kreider wrote a marvelous history of the early church titled The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, released in 2016. In the book, Kreider documents how patience, possibly unlike any other virtue, shaped the rise of Christianity. 

It is a thick but accessible read. I highly commend it for those who would like to delve deeper into how the early church exploded in growth. Kreider documents four “angles” for explaining the growth of the early church. 

1. Patience. Patience was not a virtue in Greco-Roman culture. Many early Christian writers (Origen, Tertullian, etc.) listed patience as the “highest virtue.” God is patient. Jesus is God, and the cross displayed the height of Jesus’ patience with fallen sinners. God is patient with rebellious sinners, wanting all to be saved by faith in Christ before the Day of Judgement comes. The early church learned from this example and generally exemplified patience. 

2. Habitus. Kreider calls this “reflexive bodily behavior. The early church did not grow because they won debates. It grew because a collective group of people exemplified a new way to live and love, highlighted by their patience with one another and their communities. “Their behavior said what they believed” (p. 2).

3. Catechesis and Worship. Careful formation and teaching preceded baptism of adults. The Greco-Roman pagan did not, naturally, practice Christian virtues. These virtues, such as patience, had to be both taught and caught in Christian community. Prayer and the Eucharist sustained the early believers. 

4. Ferment. Kreider finds it a useful metaphor to describe how patient growth occurred in the first three centuries of early Christianity. It operated reticently, by what theologian Origen called God’s “invisible power.” It was not susceptible to human control, and “its pace could not be sped up.” There was a type of “bottom up inner life” of the Christians that compelled others to join. 

The speed of growth in the early church is debated by various scholars. Most agree that by the early fourth century there were somewhere between five and six million Christians when Constantine took the throne. This is somewhere between 8% to 12% of the Roman empire’s populace. Historian Rodney Stark believes that over the first three hundred years of Christianity it grew by 40% a decade. 

We often forget how surprising this was. No one was ever forced to join the church—they were simply invited. It was completely voluntary. Christianity grew despite unfavorable laws and the threat of persecution prior to Constantine. 

Here is what I found most fascinating in Kreider’s historical account. 

The growth was odd. According to the evidence at our disposal, the expansion of the churches was not organized, the product of some mission program; it simply happened. Further, the growth was not carefully thought through. Early Christian leaders did not engage in debates between rival “mission strategies.” The Christians wrote a lot; according to the classicist Robin Lane Fox, “most of the best Greek and Latin literature which remains from the later second and third centuries is Christian.” And what they wrote is surprising. The Christians wrote treatises on patience - three of them - that we will look at in this book. But they did not write a single treatise on evangelism.

Is anyone else shocked by this? Modern convention would say that the early church fathers were highly concerned with “sharing the Gospel.” Kreider makes the case they were more concerned with living and embodying the Gospel, rather than simply sharing it. They deeply believed that their lives—lives that displayed the fruit of the Holy Spirit—were their most compelling evangelism tool. 

The world would know they were Jesus followers because of their love, lived out in patience. 

I want to grow in patience. The Holy Spirit is helping me. I want to grow in patience for those I disagree with. I want to grow in patience for those who are harder to love. I want to grow in patience for leaders in the LCMS. Honestly, who cares what I want—the Holy Spirit wants this for me. 

I am fervently praying for patience as we head into the 2026 LCMS convention season. There are strong opinions around varying theological and practical topics. These must be discussed and debated. Yet, may they be discussed and debated patiently. 

Our world wars against patience. We want it now. Have it my way—now. Move. Work. Grow. Push. Strive. Go! This drive can impact local churches, leaders, and denominations. Don’t get me wrong, we should have an urgency for sharing the Gospel. The world is in dire need of what only Jesus can offer. Yet, if we offer the Gospel impatiently, it may be a turn off to those whom the Holy Spirit is pursuing. 

I believe embodying the virtue of patience would impact the LCMS in three ways. 

1. Difficult conversations would occur. We would stop our propensity for tribalism, shaming the other side online, and taking victory laps around winning various debates, or being on the “right side.” 

2. Patient Prayer. We would become a people committed to prayer—prayer for our communities, churches, and Synod. Prayer is not quick. God’s ways are not our ways. Prayer requires patience. 

3. The LCMS could grow again. This growth would likely be slow, not fast. We would talk to one another with love, sensitivity, and care. We would put the best construction on others’ motivations. We would live—not just speak—the Gospel. Patience could help us grow again. 

Patience is attractive. I believe it would be attractive to our young people. I believe young adults are starving for substance, a new way to live, in this fast-paced world. Christians can model this new way—the way of Jesus—the way of patience.

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