darren rowse reports on the emerging church forge intensive here with some interesting comments from alan hirsch:

The church in 100AD was approximately 25,000 people in number. The Roman Empire at the time was 45 million people.

By 300AD before Constantine the church is estimated to be 27 million people. The Roman Empire was 60 million. Something happened that brought about an explosion in this time.

Alan made a number of observations:

– they had no (or very few) centralized buildings
– they met in small ecclesial units – often based around households
– there was very little in the way of professional clergy
– they were persecuted – their movement was often quite underground
– they grew through multiplication – not through growing large churches