I was reading this book while in an airport. I had just been told my flight was being canceled. Patience was the last thing on my mind. But after reading Alan Kreider's well-written and impeccably researched text, I realized that patience was perhaps exactly what was called for in my dealings with airport personnel. Kreider's basic thesis is that Christianity's rise in the Roman Empire was not the result of following the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19), or even some sense of mission outreach in which the church was to be engaged. Early Christian preachers assumed that the Apostles had already done the work of the Great Commission. They believed that the Gospel had already reached the ends of the earth as they knew it (10). According to today's standards, they were structured for anything but growth. So what explains Christianity's improbable expansion in the early centuries of its existence? Kreider's answer: Patience—the patience of Christians formed by intensive catechesis and a worship life centered in word and sacrament.

Kreider is a seasoned historian who knows the sources well. There are three primary treatises on patience in the early church; two from the third century are by Tertullian (On Patience) and Cyprian (On the Good of Patience), and one from the fifth century is by Augustine (On Patience). These texts form the skeleton of Kreider's study, although he also has copious citations and examples from other patristic homilies, treatises, and early liturgies, while also noting lacunae in the sources for some aspects of early Christianity. In Part One of the book, “Growth and Patience,” he takes the reader through the early years of Christianity's expansion. What caused the largely pagan population to look for something new? There was the “push” of “dysfunctions, dissonances, and frustrations” with pagan culture that left many dissatisfied, but also the “pull” of attraction of this new religion that promised a deeper engagement with people, that addressed their concerns, and spoke to their longings. The “pull” was strong enough to “overcome the massive disincentives” that becoming a Christian entailed (38–39).

Part Two, “Ferment,” chronicles the early missionary movement of the apostles and the itinerant prophets mentioned in the Didache, but quickly moves on to the daily life of Christian men and women that attracted the new converts. Kreider outlines seven aspects of these distinctive Christian communities that proved attractive to outsiders: (1) patience in business; (2) sexual discipline; (3) inclusion of men, women, and children; (4) manifestations of divine power; (5) care for the poor; (6) prohibitions against taking life; and (7) emphasis on freedom, not compulsion, for those desiring to join the community (99–120). These formed the culture of the Christian community in which the habitus could then be formed.

Part Three, “Forming the Habitus,” looks at the catechesis of the community, highlighting the unhurried but also challenging nature of ancient catechesis. Catechesis could take as long as three years, and was not for the lukewarm convert. Sponsorship ensured accountability. Third-century churches “did not try to grow by making people feel welcome and included. Civic paganism did that. In contrast, the churches were hard to enter” (149). Kreider outlines the various stages of catechesis that took place in preparation for baptism. These stages, with a heavy focus on behavior and habitus, provided the initial formation of the Christian. After baptism, the candidate was introduced to the liturgical life and worship of the church, designed to reinforce the previous spiritual formation. Highly notated with ample references from various liturgical texts, one gets a keen sense of what life in the worshiping community would have been like. Kreider rehearses the background for many early Christian practices, like, for instance, the kiss of peace (214–219) or the delicate matter of how women were baptized, since one disrobed for baptism (237). After the extensive preparation for worship and instruction on how to live what you believed, “the new believers could join in the community's prayer and Eucharist. They emerged as wise doves, ‘helpers of God’ who by intriguing behavior and appropriate words contributed to the church's primary mode of growth—attraction” (241).

Part Four, “The Transformation of Patience,” deals largely with the Constantinian era, which Kreider sees as a move from patience to impatience. Once the church had the advantage of the emperor's favor, it no longer needed to practice a patient lifestyle, and catechesis had to keep up with the large numbers of people coming into the church, not because they were attracted to it, but because it was advantageous to them. The church could use its position of power, rather than patience and humility, in attracting converts. He sees this as largely a failure for the church; one that he notes is, however, often emulated today as contemporary churches favor methods and programs over personal care of congregants and new converts. The book ends with a challenge to return to the patient ferment that offered a deeper and more enduring commitment to the Gospel that was less concerned with numbers and more concerned with character and forming committed Christians.

Kreider freely admits that his own habitus as a Mennonite influences his telling of the story of early Christianity. While this reviewer did notice various places where the pacifist tradition was emphasized perhaps more than warranted, such as in the Lactantius material in Part Four, one cannot argue with the fact that Kreider has presented a tour de force which challenges many of the assumptions on how the early church grew. In our postmodern world, the church would do well to learn from the “patient ferment” of those early years, which inculcated an authenticity and care for the individual that proved more attractive than any program or method of evangelism ever would. I highly recommend this book.