The Catholic Accent Podcast

11 - Seeds of Faith: How the Early Church Began to Grow

• Diocese of Greensburg • Season 2 • Episode 1

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The most surprising thing about the early Church isn’t the miracles—it’s the ordinary courage that made miracles believable. We open the doors on a new studio and a bigger soundboard, then go smaller: how a handful of “stunned disciples” became a people who stunned society through prayer, tight-knit community, the Eucharist, and Scripture. No silver or gold, just the charity of presence and the strength to keep showing up.

We walk through life after Pentecost, when the faith was illegal and fear was normal, and explore why pressure didn’t crush the movement. Think drought crops: early scarcity makes deeper roots and a bigger harvest. The same pattern holds for spiritual growth. From synagogue readings to gathering for the Eucharist, the first Christians formed a rhythm—Word and Sacrament—that turned Sundays into a living center for the whole week. Their public witness, unlikely joy, and daily acts of mercy created curiosity: what gives these people strength?

Along the way, we connect ancient practices to modern challenges: privatized religion, AI convenience, and the vanishing habit of neighborliness. We revisit the insula—homes clustered for mutual support—and imagine parish life that doesn’t end at the dismissal: meals shared, names learned, risks taken, courage practiced. If you’ve wondered how to move beyond an hour on Sunday, this conversation offers concrete ways to rebuild an embodied community that grows people—then grows numbers.

Subscribe for more conversations on early Church growth, resilient faith, and practical parish renewal. If this resonated, share it with a friend and leave a review—what pillar do you want to build this week?

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Jordan Whiteko, Father Andrew Hamilton, Father Christopher Pujol, Vincent Reilly, Cliff Gorski, John Zylka, Sarah Hartner

SPEAKER_02:

You're listening to the Catholic Acting Podcast. We discussed the acts that Jesus performed that stunned his disciples. Great to be back, Jordan.

SPEAKER_01:

You don't know us by now, you're never gonna know.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm Jordan Waco here with Father Hamilton and Father Poojil, and we're both stunned. Why don't we get started? We'll jump right in with today's topic is growth in the early church. Now, as you can see, we're in a completely new studio, even newer from the Halloween episode that we did.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. It's great to be here. And I think it's because we're such an award-winning podcast now that our budget's been increased and we're in this new beautiful space. I didn't know we were starting.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's staying in. Um, I mean, we're we're here, we're starting. This is this is it.

SPEAKER_00:

Especially I it's like watching the gallery up here. We've never had so many fans present.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh wow, everybody's uh thank you, thank you up there in the studio. They can hear it, but I'm doing applause right now on the soundboard. We got a bigger budget, folks.

SPEAKER_00:

It's great to be here and be back to continue our Stun Disciples podcast as we take a look at the early church and its growth.

SPEAKER_02:

My friend who listens to the show, an avid listener, uh, he calls us the stunning disciples.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's absolutely true.

SPEAKER_02:

I thought you were gonna say a listener that's your your mother or the friend. Shout out to Jordan's mom. But yeah, so last season we left off with the story of Pentecost and how there were 3,000 baptized in one day. So where are we now? What you know, how how do we continue to grow in the early church?

SPEAKER_01:

The church really had to figure out how it was going to live out the life past the time of Jesus ascending into heaven, the sending forth of the spirit in Pentecost. And a lot of that really formulated itself around being close together, right? Especially in a foreign place. If we ever traveled before, like when you go somewhere and you actually hear somebody speak your language or have similar culture to you or from a similar place, you kind of come together with those people and it provides you a lot of solace in the midst of maybe a foreign feeling and so forth. So what we see is that they really devote themselves to the things that are handed on by the apostles or the authorities after the time of Jesus.

SPEAKER_00:

And we have to remember that just because Jesus has ascended into heaven doesn't mean that he is not continually being active among them. And so that's when we ended with the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost. We have to remember that the Holy Spirit, really that love between the Father and the Son, is now guiding the church and and strengthening the early Christians and the disciples to carry on the mission that Christ began in his earthly ministry.

SPEAKER_01:

But just like any time that you would plant a seed, which is really what God is doing through the church and bringing forth life, you have to continue to water, to even put out things uh to keep the pests away and so on. And that's really what prayer in community does for us. One, our connection to God and the rest of the body of Christ, but accountability comes through community. We know this well from going to seminary. One of the biggest things there is you're held accountable for your actions together. And often it feels more like pruning than growth, maybe. Yeah, but it's not just these great miracles because we could like miracle hunt for like the next big thing that gets us there, right? A lot of the Christian life and for those early stunned disciples was not just miracles happening all the time. There were miracles that helped them. Just like there are yeah, just as there continues to be. But what we hear from Saint Peter in the healing of that lame man with his shadow passing over him is that he says, Neither silver nor gold do I have, but what I have I give to you, which is the spirit of Christ in charity. And so that's an important thing for us to remember today, as continuing as disciples of Christ. Sometimes we might not have every single thing that person wants, but that doesn't mean we still don't give something to them in the charity of our character. For example, a lot of people struggle with homeless people. How do you interact with people asking you for certain things? And maybe they'll misuse this thing, whatever it might be. But what we're always called to do is to give something.

SPEAKER_00:

Even if it's a greeting, a smile. What's your name? And the early church really understood this because now they find themselves without their leader physically present, right? Christ has ascended into heaven. They're still fearful, right? Because they know that that what they're doing is illegal, but they hold nothing back and they continue to go forward. And so in upcoming episodes, when we start talking about the martyrdom of the uh early church, we'll see that uh what they were doing, strengthened by Christ, really allowed that uh ministry and mission of Christ, right, to go forth to all nations and to baptize all people in the name of the Trinity to take root. And we'll see that as those 12 apostles begin to disperse all over the world, really, and and spread the mission of the gospel.

SPEAKER_01:

So, what are like the seeds that started that growth? To be honest, the seed is the seed of the gospel, which is an inversion of the world, it's seeing everything upside down. But because it was from God, it continued even through persecution, difficulty, that the seed became even greater. And in farming, actually, there's a principle that you want a drought crop. So a better crop that brings forth more yield comes from whenever there's actually a drought early on in the life of the plant, and it toughens up and strengthens, and then it actually flourishes even more and gives forth more fruit. So, in that way, how do you know this? Uh, you know, I just do farming in my free time, Catholic Farmville on Facebook, guys.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, growing up in Western Pennsylvania, a lot of farms around.

SPEAKER_02:

So, what are the pillars of the Christian life in the early church?

SPEAKER_01:

You could really see them as being right, prayer community, prayer, yeah, community, prayer, uh, uh Eucharist, especially like on Sunday, and uh the living out of the scriptures and seeing the continuity of Jesus being the Messiah.

SPEAKER_02:

So, how did these four pillars of the Christian life inspire everyone?

SPEAKER_00:

In one sense, I think that this the disciples being stunned leads to the general population being stunned because you have this group that many rejected, they thought they were crazy, they followed this man who said he was God, he gets crucified, he dies. You have one group saying that the body was stolen, you have another group saying that he resurrected from the dead and that he appeared to people, and then he ascends into heaven, and now you have this group of Christians who really are outcasts, but they're living so radically, it their engagement with society begins to stun everyone because what is giving these people the strength to carry out this ministry, the stunned disciples really begin to stun society, and that began to make a fertile ground for the faith really to take root. And and we have to remember in the early church too, in this time, the early Christians were still going to synagogue, right? So they would go to Sabbath and they would celebrate and listen to the readings from scripture and learn from the teachings of the rabbi, but then what they would do is gather separately as Christians and celebrate the Eucharist together. So already in the early church, we begin to see how we have now the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. So from the very early stages, the early church never got away from the scripture, but rather embraced the fulfillment of the Old Testament and as they were living out the New Testament at this time.

SPEAKER_02:

So we know that the church needs to continue to grow. How are we going to implement, you know, these pillars into today's church?

SPEAKER_00:

From the very start, Christ gathered people together. And so that's where we can really live out our faith. The church has never been isolated. There's always been a community. And in that community, when you have that community gathered together, then you have all those extra opportunities for prayer, for Eucharist, for the celebration of Mass. I think here in the Diocese of Greensburg, it's it's evident that we continue to take our lead on how the church grew from the very beginning. So we have many more events scheduled that aren't just simply social events, but opportunities for community to gather together, to pray together, to share a meal together for young people, for families, for older people. And really, when we do that, we see growth in our communities, in our parishes, in our schools.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, people want something real. So even uh Pope Leo the 14th, our new Pope, as he's been see speaking so beautifully about the worries of AI, artificial intelligence, these continual removing from real life into artificial things that'll make be even they could be more comfortable for people and so on and so forth, but they don't provide the same kind of sense of growth for people because we react to one another in community, and that's how we continue to respond and to grow to each other. It's interesting that in the early church, where were they based around? Jerusalem. Jerusalem's a city, it's together. Cities are always the sign of kind of cohesion when properly ordered. A good city when everybody's together and they work together and so forth, it's a beautiful place to live. You know your neighbors, you serve them in charity, and so growth comes forth from that. We see that in heaven, it's a heavenly city. It's not everybody out in their own individual places.

SPEAKER_00:

And all of that really comes from the top down. If you look at any medieval town or European town, the first thing you see on top of the hill is the church, and the community is built around it because that is the perfect mount of life in baptism, first of all, for those people gathered there, but it's also the daily rhythm. So you hear the church bells and know when to pray. And I think in today's world, so often we are removed from that reality that our ancestors had that we have to be very mindful and take the opportunities and make the opportunities to live out that community life of the church.

SPEAKER_01:

And the early church took appropriate risks. People weren't concerned necessarily about like what happens if I'm rejected because I speak the message of the gospel and try to share the charisma of what God has done for me, what Jesus has made alive in me. They they put it out there and saw how the reaction was. So often, I think, in our own culture, especially now, we very much privatize religion. We pull it back kind of from a public space.

SPEAKER_00:

And we don't want to be rejected.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And part of rejection is just growing. Maybe, Jordan, whenever, you know, dating and so forth, you put something out there. And it doesn't always be rejection, but you know. But then you grow from that, and then you continue to have more confidence in the message. I don't have any rejection these days, though.

SPEAKER_00:

Like I don't know, I don't know that's because Jordan's going steady. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I have a girlfriend. So you could stop, you know, telling people to send you those fan letters. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So what you're saying is instead of, you know, like you mentioned earlier, everybody wants to be private, especially like, you know, private with the religion. But we need to, in reality, like the early church, we need to go out and spread that, you know, faith uh amongst the community, amongst everybody to for the church to grow.

SPEAKER_01:

And think about just the reality that people used to just stop by your house. Like that was a reality for my parents and my grandparents. And now everybody's like, when we go back to our own houses, there are castles. Unless I give you a formal invitation to come over, you shouldn't knock on my door.

SPEAKER_00:

How many times do you hear the doorbell go and you hide, right? Yeah, right. And everyone has ring doorbells, so they know who's coming and oh, we're not home. Shut the lights out. Shut the lights out, close the blinds. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

This gives me an interesting point from the time of Jesus called an insula. Okay. This is the way in which that a lot of early Christians and groups would build their houses. This is what we see with the paralytic man that has to be lowered in and to be healed. The reason that they can't get into the house is because these insulas are all these houses uh garnered together for safety, together in a community. And so that's why they have to take the thatched roof off and lower him down to the through. But it was a sign of the importance of community in the midst of a greater difficult world. And so it bonded them ever closer to one another. But what we need to do today, especially as priests and what I see within parish life, is that people come to mass for one hour. They don't really talk to each other, which is good. The celebration of the Eucharist in terms of that worth paying attention to that as a solemn thing. But then we need a warmth on the back end of that for people to stay and to be with one another, like potluck, something afterwards. It can't just be only one hour on a Sunday to have a real authentic community. It needs to be lived out in a few hours of spending together on a Sunday. The early Christians didn't just go to Mass and like, thank God it's done. Back to regular things. Rather, they were there together as a community and spent that day together in solemn worship of God and warmth of community. And that's what spread the church. Thanks for listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

Don't forget to follow, like, and subscribe to our show.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm like, what I have no idea.

SPEAKER_02:

Mine's on I forgot my English. You're gonna start speaking in Latin, like in tongues.

SPEAKER_00:

Shamanama.

SPEAKER_01:

What are you like struggling reading?