My favorite verse in the Bible is Genesis 50:20. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.“
But my favorite book of the Bible is Acts. Acts is what happens when Jesus finally unleashes the hounds. Peppered through the Gospel narrative is a desire by some disciples to overthrow the government and usher in the new millennium. Acts documents that while the people wanted a full-frontal-assault to destroy the enemies of God, God’s Son unleashed a counter-insurgency of grace, the forgiveness of sins, and the binding of people together in love.
In Acts, Jesus takes Genesis 50:20 and widens the application from me and you as individuals, to entire cities, people groups, and nations!
In a way Jesus re-writes Genesis 50:20 with his very life, “Satan intended to destroy us by pitting us against one another, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
I’ve read Acts upwards of 100 times. I’ve read commentary after commentary on the Luke-Acts narrative. I love how Luke puts things in order. It unleashes my strategic, creative mind. For me, it is full of AHA moments. Even this morning, as I read a big chunk of the narrative again, I’m in awe of how effective they were.
Sitting back and looking at the Luke-Acts books as a whole it makes me hypothesize. Perhaps the reason the Holy Spirit wanted Luke to put the Gospel narrative in sequential order might be so that future generations could pick up on the patterns/agendas/strategies that the Apostles implemented to completely obliterate the strongest empire the world has ever seen without using a single army?
If so, that’s a pretty cool strategy.
Man conquers the body; Jesus conquers the heart
The modern church movement in America largely depends on a single strategy morphed into a thousand different variations. It’s a Field of Dreams strategy: “If you build it, they will come.” A program, a good preacher, a building, on and on.
The weakness with that strategy is that it’s resource dependent. If you don’t have a great program manager you are sunk. You you can’t afford a great building you are sunk. If you don’t have a great preacher you are sunk.
And it all somehow flows back to money. As much as we hate that it’s about money, money lubricates the gears of the modern church machine.
The last 5 years, with the economy crashing down and churches re-thinking everything, has begged the question: Without money, what would church look like?
That’s actually the strategy we see employed in Acts.
Read it for yourself. In one sitting, right now, read Acts 17-20. Come back when you’ve read it. I’ll wait.
Did you see the pattern? The pattern was the opposite of the Field of Dreams strategy. “If you preach it, they’ll beat you up. If you live it, they’ll believe.”
Because Paul wasn’t able to stay in one place for more than a couple of months, the strategy had to be quick, dirty, and adapt to the circumstances of each culture he encountered. It was a strategy that was resource independent. Some places he had a place to stay and people took care of him. Other places he lived in the tents he sold to keep himself going. Some places he had money. Other places he didn’t.
The entire strategy involved leaving trusted people to train indigenous leadership.
They owned no buildings… instead met in borrowed space and homes and synagogues, where programs existed, they were simple programs of feeding the poor and sharing resources with one another. On top of that they probably held long services with no music (or seats or air conditioning or sound system) and a rookie preacher.
Early non-canonical books, like the Didache, document a simple, community-based faith lead and practiced by locals. The concept of buildings, staff, structure, and the programs and money that went along with that… came much, much later.
The New Testament canon closes with that viral strategy largely still in play. The Way infected culture rather than dominated it. The surviving Apostles and their disciples lead a movement that spread like wild fire across the Roman Empire during their lifetime. In response, the Roman emperor treats the virus like an attacking army and tries to squelch it. But each time they try to stamp it out, it just gets stronger.
Within a century, Christianity had penetrated into the very fabric of Roman society, a few generations later it became the official religion of Rome in the 4th century.
Looking back, looking forward
I can’t help but think there is wisdom in a strategy that spreads person to person, house to house, neighborhood to neighborhood. It’s a strategy that transcends the problems of today of budgets, staff, buildings, meetings, programs, and overhead.
Neighbors loving neighbors is always free.
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