Discovering Paul – Chapter 5: Paul the Pioneer
5. Paul the Pioneer
I was a newly ordained minister when I invited Henry Chan, an international student, to my home for a meal. He listened very politely to my talking about Jesus and then said: ‘My father does not believe your religion and he has taught me to believe the religions of my ancestors. If what you say about Jesus is true, why didn’t your father or grandfather come and tell my father and my grandfather?’ I explained to him that my father was not a Christian and that the message had needed to be taken to him as well.
Henry then nailed me to the wall: ‘But if your Jesus told you to talk this message to all the peoples in the world why have you been so disobedient all these centuries, and why are you still among your own people when my people have not yet heard about him?’
Henry had touched the Achilles heel of many ministers and most churches. During the latter part of the twentieth century the church has been experiencing a harvest time. The church has been growing at a rate of 63,000 new converts per day, with currently 285,421 full-time Christian workers in Asia, 431,321 in Africa, 253,702 in Latin America and 1,059,742 in Europe. The number of full-time workers producing the Christian harvest around the world is most disproportionately spread. In North America there is one Christian worker for every 1,321 people whereas in Africa the ratio is one worker for 249,278. 1 Many of the 16,750 separate cultural grouping in the world are amongst the 4 billion peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America and many of these groupings have not heard the gospel. Cross-cultural missionary endeavour on a large scale is needed to spread the gospel among the many unreached peoples of the earth.
The nineteenth century was the great era of Christian missions. Throughout that century hundreds of thousands of men and women were motivated to serve in foreign lands or to support overseas missionaries. The nineteenth century was moved when David Livingstone, missionary, explorer and philanthropist, died in the village of a friendly African chief in 1873. The Africans called a conference of all the village men and decided ‘we must take the master back to the coast and across the sea to his own people’, so they set out on a thousand-mile journey by foot carrying his body to the coast from whence it was shipped to England, reaching Westminster Abbey just one year later. This action made a great impression.
The example of missionaries like Livingstone led to a vast number of interdenominational Christian missionary movements. One, the Student Volunteer Movement, saw in the last decade of the nineteenth century 20,000 volunteers go overseas with the message of the gospel. Their one cry was ‘the evangelisation of the world in our generation.’
They took the command of Jesus, known as the great commission – ‘Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples’ – and went out to reach every country on earth with the gospel. Jesus made it quite clear he expected his people to proclaim the gospel, and to make disciples of all nations. That same conviction was carried through in the lives and letters of Paul and Peter and the other New Testament Christians.
The primary task of the missionary effort was to bring individuals to salvation in Christ, so that they might believe and be baptised as a sign of forgiveness of sins, the Lordship of Christ and incorporation into the church. The missionaries also served every kind of human need, creating eighty-five per cent of all schools in Africa, more than 600 hospitals in India, and bringing the benefits of education, medicine and social enlightenment to every country on earth.
That commission of Jesus has never been revoked.
Today we speak of frontier missions: taking the good news to people in other cultures who have not yet responded to the Christian gospel. We also speak of domestic missions: sharing the message among those people of our own culture who have not yet responded. There are no longer just sending churches and receiving churches. Every church needs to be church in mission, both on the domestic and the frontier planes.
In spite of the large numbers not yet reached, the great commission is not an unfinishable task. It can be accomplished if we continue the missionary task of the church as Paul started it.
The book of Acts is the first handbook on domestic and frontier missions. It outlines the practices and principles for each generation of cross-cultural missions. The example of Paul in establishing the missionary outreach of the church is as relevant today as to the first century.
The mission of the church
Christ’s last command, the great commission of Jesus, ‘To all peoples everywhere’, became Paul’s first concern. From the time of his conversion he believed that he had been chosen to take the gospel to all people. 2 To the Roman Christians he said that ‘the truth has been brought out into the open through the writings of the prophets; and by the command of the eternal God it is made known to all nations, so that all may believe and obey.’ 3 In writing this Paul used the same unique Greek phrase that Jesus used in giving the great commission to his disciples.
The failure of Israel as a nation to attract people to God as creator and ruler and her rejection of the messengers of God led ultimately to God sending his only Son. The parable of the vineyard and the introduction to the book of Hebrews are two New Testament points that link the method of the coming of Jesus with that of the fulfillment of Israel’s mission to the world. The church, as the new Israel, was to bear the message of God brought by his Son. Jesus commissioned his people to take that message to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Their task was no less that the evangelisation of the world. It is important to realise that there is no separate theology of mission. It is not an appendix to biblical theology, but part of its very heart. The church was given the task to take the gospel and make it known to all people. However, the limitations of culture, of education and of vision meant none of the eleven original disciples, nor even James, Jesus’ brother, had the dynamism and preparation to fulfil that mission beyond their own culture.
God required a new man with specific training, skills and motivation to launch the Christian missionary thrust. That man was Paul.
The leadership of the Holy Spirit
The disciples had been eyewitness of the great decisive redemptive act of God through Jesus. They believed that what was happening was in complete harmony with the teaching of God’s mission as outlined in the Old Testament. They believed that this was to benefit all of mankind dependent only upon a receptive faith-obedience to the gospel. This teaching is apparent in the following passage: ‘The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from death, after you had killed him by nailing him to a cross. God raised him to his right side as Leader and Saviour, to give the people of Israel the opportunity to repent and have their sins forgiven. We are witnesses to these things – we and the Holy Spirit, who is God’s gift to those who obey him.’ 4
They now had to take this message to everybody who would hear. The commission of Christ was given to them like a pair of sandals. They should now set out upon the road and keep going until all people heard the story of what they had witnessed.
The dynamic that motivated the apostles was the equipping of the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, in a new way, the Spirit of God equipped and empowered the disciples to fulfil their mission to the world. Through the presence of the Holy Spirit the mission of God had a new dynamism. The ‘Come’ of the Old Testament was replaced by the ‘Go’ of the New Testament.
The Holy Spirit was the power that made the men go in mission. On the day of Pentecost Peter preached to many listeners including visitors from Rome and from all the countries around. Many of those who believed and who were baptized must have taken the message of the resurrected Christ back to their homes. Philip went to Samaria and stopped in Caesarea evangelizing the community round about him on the coast. Peter had contact with Simon the Tanner at Joppa, mingling with a believer who handled dead animals which was contrary to the law, surely an amazing enough event for a man who kept the law. Peter met with Cornelius, a Roman army captain who also had the spirit of God and in the remarkable meeting with this Roman Peter came to the following conclusion: ‘I now realize that it is true that God treats everyone on the same basis. Whoever fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him, no matter what race he belongs to.’ 5
Unknown believers who were scattered by the persecution which took place when Stephen was killed, settled in Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch. It was there that the faith expanded and the believers were first called Christians.
The Jewish believers in Jerusalem were quite concerned about what was happening with these Greek-speaking Jews living in Gentile territory. So they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When Barnabas saw that the believers were within the faith and motivated by the Holy Spirit, he went on to Tarsus and after much searching found Saul and brought him back to Antioch where the two of them taught the believers for a whole year. Here we have, for the first time, a church growing outside of Israel.
All of this growth took place under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
Dedicated to the Gentiles
Paul maintained right from the moment of his conversion that he was called to take the message to the Gentiles, a fact he made clear on the occasions when he recounted his conversion. He told Luke who recorded it in the Acts of the Apostles that, when he was stopped by the resurrected Christ on the Damascus road, he was told to go into the city where it would be told to him what he must do. At the same time Ananias said that the Lord had said to him, ‘Go, because I have chosen [ Paul ] to serve me, to make my name known to the Gentiles and kings and to the people of Israel.’ 6
Paul’s primary concern was that of an evangelist, to win as many people to Christ as possible. In order to be an effective missionary evangelist, he adapted to the different peoples he worked amongst.
I make myself everybody’s slave in order to win as many people as possible. While working with the Jews, I live like a Jew in order to win them. In the same way, when working with Gentiles, I live like a Gentile, outside the Jewish law, in order to win Gentiles. This does not mean that I don’t obey God’s law; I am really under Christ’s law. Among the weak in faith I become weak like one of them, in order to win them. So I become all things to all men, that I may save some of them by whatever means are possible. 7
According to Paul’s memory, in this earliest time of his ministry several aspects were clear in his mind:
1. God had chosen him to proclaim his message to all people.
2. He had a special responsibility to travel far distances to proclaim God’s gospel to the Gentiles.
3. He would suffer at the hands of the Gentiles but that God would deliver him from their hands.
4. His ministry would take him to the uttermost parts of the world.
This concern to care for those who are outside the Jewish family found in Paul a man equipped and able. God had chosen well when he took a man born within the Jewish tradition, trained in Greek culture who possessed Roman citizenship, and with some of the best intellectual and philosophical training that the ancient world had to offer. That man was to open up the countries of the Mediterranean to the gospel.
After Barnabas found him ministering in Tarsus, Paul returned for a brief one-year ministry in Antioch. There together they served, helping the first Gentile church in the world develop in faith and strength. That church possessed five leaders, three prophets and two teachers, and the interesting thing was that they came from five countries. It was while these leaders were praying and fasting that the Holy Spirit declared to them: ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul, to do the work to which I have called them.’ 8 After fasting, praying and having hands laid on them in a commissioning to ministry, these two men were sent by the Holy Spirit on the first journey throughout the Mediterranean area, commencing at Cyprus which Barnabas knew so well.
Throughout the rest of his life Paul would contend that he had been called from the time of his conversion to preach the gospel to the Gentiles and commissioned by the leaders of the church at Antioch by the laying on of hands and prayer to that missionary service. For instance, when he wrote to the Christians in Rome he said, ‘I will be bold and speak only about what Christ has done through me to lead the Gentiles to obey God.’ 9
Later when Paul and Barnabas came to Jerusalem for the famous conference with the leaders of the church, there was some discussion about which fields each of the disciples should enter. They recognised that Paul’s gospel was true to their experience of Jesus but that he had a special commission to preach to the Gentiles beyond that of their own general call to take the gospel into the known world. To the farmers and fishermen of Galilee it must have been of some relief to find one who was sophisticated in the ways of the world who was eager to take up this part of the Lord’s great commission. As Paul said, ‘We agreed that Barnabas and I would work among the Gentiles, and they would work among the Jews. All they asked as that we should remember the needy in their group, which is the very thing I have been eager to do.’ 10
While Peter was later to visit some of the Jewish centres in Greece and Rome, he would also visit the Gentile Christians in that area. In the same way while Paul was primarily called to proclaim the truth to the Gentiles, he would also go to the Jewish communities he found in the cities he visited. Hence the demarcation into ministries among Jews and Gentiles was not exclusive but indicated the areas of primary emphasis.
Paul regarded the rest of the world as his area of ministry while leaving the other disciples to evangelise the homeland.
Pioneering in Philippi
One night, while in Troas, Paul had a vision in which he saw a man from Macedonia begging him to ‘come over to Macedonia and help us’ 11 Luke now travelled with them. Although Paul was strongly motivated by the vision in the night, Luke, a young man from Macedonia, probably helped persuade them to take the gospel to his people in Europe.
Paul and his companions, Timothy, Silas and Luke, had favourable winds and crossed over to Neapolis in one day. A few years later, when Paul sailed in the reverse direction, it took him five days to cover the same distance. They then walked the dozen or so kilometers down the Via Egnatia to the township of Philippi, named after Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. This major provincial centre was not only steeped in Greek history but was a significant Roman colony.
It is interesting to see how Paul developed a strategy in a new community.
1. He approached the people openly. He quickly met with the citizens in the community, going first of all to the Jewish people who were willing to accept him as a learned Pharisee able to proclaim the truth.
2. He preached the whole gospel speaking of Jewish history to those who were Jews and moving on to Christ as the fulfilment of the prophecies. The four of them, Paul, Timothy, Silas and Luke, proclaimed the truth in the open air, for apparently the community lacked the ten Jewish males necessary in order to be allowed to build their own synagogue.
3. He was God’s agent in bringing about conversions. Paul met with a smaller group of Jews worshipping by the riverside under the leadership of Lydia, a widow from Thyatira in Central Turkey. The ruins of the Roman bridge over the River Ganga dating from the first century have recently been excavated. It was at this spot about a mile down the Via Egnatia where the Jews would worship. She was a wealthy woman who had a good business dealing in the exclusive purple cloth that came from that district which was worn by leading citizens. It was probably while she was in Thyatira, where there was a large synagogue, that she became a God-fearer, worshipping with the Jewish community. Her business acumen and wealth were probably the reason why four times Paul received gifts during his imprisonments from what was otherwise a very poor church. He proclaimed the gospel in such a way that she believed and was immediately baptised. 12 Lydia invited the four men to her home and there she grew in her faith and into the position of leadership within the church.
A second conversion in Philippi happened that night in the most unusual way. At midnight while singing hymns of praise the prison was shaken by an earthquake and the chains fell off, not only of Paul and Silas, but also of the other prisoners. The Roman gaoler in Roman fashion attempted to kill himself, as he had failed in his duty to keep his prisoners and had instead been asleep. Paul prevented his suicide, took the opportunity to proclaim the faith, and eventually, while they were cleaned up in the gaoler’s own house, baptised him and his family.
It is possible that Euodia, Syntyche and Clement also became Christians at this time. Paul enabled the conversions of a number of people, and by the time he and Silas left there was a good number of believers gathering regularly in Lydia’s house.
4. He worked among all social classes. Among the first converts in Philippi were representatives of different races, different classes and people representing different economic conditions and educational backgrounds. They needed pastoring to build a church that already was multi-cultural. Consequently Luke stayed behind in the city that he knew so well and helped build the church. Perhaps he is the ‘true yoke fellow’ to whom Paul addresses a word of commendation when he wrote a letter to that church some years later. 13
5. He faced opposition. There were the slave owners who were fearful at their loss of revenue. There were the unjust magistrates (praetors) who had Paul beaten by the lictors (who carried their rods of office with an axe bundled together as seen frequently in Roman illustrations).
6. He planned for future church growth. Having established a church in an important provincial centre, Paul moved on to establish further churches at Thessalonica and Berea and onto Athens. Paul saw his ministry as one of planting churches. He then left behind suitable leaders: either young ministers like Timothy or Luke, or else appointed elders to oversee the life of the church. Paul’s concern was to evangelise the large cities (urbes) and then send his travelling ministers into the areas beyond (sub-urbes). This strategy of penetration enabled the whole province to be reached with the gospel while he moved on, establishing new churches in each important centre.
7. He moved on with optimism. Having left Philippi with Luke in charge, Paul moved on to new challenges and hardships. Training young men in leadership he delegated responsibilities while he continued with spirit of the pioneer.
He continued through Greece until he came to Athens. Along the way more adventures, more establishment of churches and more personal opposition. Paul the pioneer was blazing the trail into the whole of Europe. Christianity would now never again be locked within the land of Israel or within the tradition of the Jews. He had broken out of the culture of the people that had given birth to Jesus, and had thrust his faith into the centre of the continent which would be the centre of civilisation for the next two thousand years.
Paul the pioneer was following the example of his Lord Jesus Christ, who was himself the pioneer of our faith. 14
Cross-cultural ministries today
The church is God’s agent for mission. It is to perform for the world the service of being a witness to the kingdom of God which has come and which is coming in Jesus Christ. It is impossible to separate the church from its mission. The church is only the church when it is the church in mission. The church is God’s agent on earth through which God expresses himself to the world, and God has no other redeeming agency. When people are called to come to Christ, they are called to come to his body, the community of believers, to take his message to all others.
The colonial missionary era is over, but the era of world mission has just begun. Both in domestic mission and frontier mission the church has a global responsibility as its primary task. That witness is evangelical and social, private and public, individual and corporate.
The rapid growth of population in countries which have not yet had the gospel clearly presented required that the twentieth century church move into high gear if it is to fulfil the great commission. Here is the new challenge: a church for every people by the bi-millennium! By the year 2,000 it should be our responsibility to see that every separate cultural group on earth has the opportunity to hear the good news personally.
There have been three surges in the church’s missionary movement. The fist, in the eighteenth century, was the denominational missionary societies; the second surge, in the mid-nineteenth century, was the interdenominational societies; a third surge began in the church’s missionary task in the nineteen-fifties. The middle of the twentieth century had begun to reveal the hidden peoples of the earth – those group which are divided from others even within their own country by custom, race, economic and geographic circumstances. These include the large number of Japanese living in the USA, along with several million Koreans and Samoans. Ethnic groups are to be found in most countries. The Moroccans constitute a large people group in France, the Turks are in Germany, the Jamaicans are in London, the Vietnamese are in Sydney and so on. The church now has charted the existence and computerised the strategy to reach every one of the 16,750 hidden groups around the world.
The apostle Paul has given us the example of cross-cultural missionaries. Christians today should ask the following questions to see if they might be called by God to proclaim his message as did the early apostles:
*Do I love the Lord sufficiently to leave my family, friends and the security of my home to take the message to someone else?
*Can I relate to other people of different cultures, races, languages and customs enough to learn their language, eat their food and understand their thought forms?
*Can I communicate adequately my faith with people of my own culture and in my own language, for could I really expect to communicate well with others if I cannot communicate to my own first?
*Am I healthy and able to live a fairly rugged, independent life in spite of hepatitis, typhoid, dysentery, malaria and colitis, which can so easily affect people in the Two-thirds World?
*Am I willing to serve, not counting the cost, being willing to stand periods of isolation and to bear heavy burdens of responsibility without having someone close at hand, or at the end of a telephone, to make decisions for me?
*Do I have some skills, not just in the traditional areas of medicine and education, but in any other field, that might be of help in frontier missions?
*Am I able to survive on my own without becoming depressed or lonely and therefore seeking solace in romance or alcohol, or any of the hundred other ways that could deflect me from my task of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ?
The church today is facing the challenge of having a church available for every people by the bi-millennium!
Paul’s pioneering work is still unfinished, but it is finishable – if enough people go!
Endnotes:
1. These statistics are from David B. Barrett(ed.), World Christian Encyclopedia, OUP, 1982
2. Acts 26:20
3. Romans 16:26
4. Acts 5:30-32
5. Acts 10:34-35
6. Acts 9:15
7. 1 Corinthians 9:19-22
8. Acts 13:2
9. Romans 15:18
10. Galatians 2:6-10
11. Acts 16:10
12. Acts 16:11-15
13. Philippians 4:3
14. Hebrews 12:2
For personal reading
Theme: Spread of the gospel
Monday : The great commission (Matthew 28:16-20 and Acts 1:6-8)
Tuesday : Obedient to the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:1-12)
Wednesday : Courage to preach (Acts 18:5-11)
Thursday : Paul’s calling (Acts 22:17-21 and Galatians 2:6-10)
Friday : Gospel for all nations (Romans 16:24-27 and Romans 10:11-21)
Saturday : Christianity expands (Acts 11:19-30)
Sunday : Zeal in the Lord (1 Corinthians 9:19-22 and 2 Corinthians 1:15-22)
For group study
Topic: Christian message and church growth
1. Jesus gave a missionary command. What is expected of an ordinary Christian disciple?
2. What must be the core of the missionary message? What is mission in today’s context?
3. What is the authority of the evangelist?
4. Paul reached Europe through Asia Minor(Turkey). Can you highlight some of the important events which took place during this part of his missionary outreach?
5. How would you describe Paul’s strategy for growth? Can they be applied today in our own situation?
6. What is meant by cross-cultural ministry? Does God call you to be his witness where you are?
