A “ruined” people
Note: I wrote this article for the Mountain Bible Church newsletter, but the sentiment is applicable to any church.
Mountain Bible are a “ruined” people
by Mark Adams
When Luke first wrote Theophilus, it was that his “most excellent” reader would “know the truth concerning the things” which he had been taught. What followed was an extended narrative of the life of Jesus Christ. In the second book, that of Acts, he continued the story starting at Christ’s ascension, “after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.” What compelled Luke to write the second book — none of the other evangelists wrote beyond Christ’s resurrection — is something of a mystery.
Some maintain Luke/Acts is a commissioned work, the salutations honoring a patron. Others that the works are a legal defense of Paul’s ministry (the collection does conclude with Paul’s detainment in Rome after the stir in Jerusalem). Others that Luke/Acts constitutes a history, written after the fashion of other Greek histories, that perhaps a third volume was intended.
Whatever the case, it is evident each serves a unique purpose: the gospel, to recount the life and death of Jesus Christ; and “acts,” to recount the movement of the gospel across the world. The Acts of the Apostles, as it is more traditionally known, is fundamentally a missions document. This theme governs the structure, and possibly accounts for its abrupt ending. Luke is more concerned with the transmission of the gospel than with the apostles and evangelists and their lives. He records, not a history of people, but of movement.
Luke traces the movement of the church through John and Peter (the Jerusalem ministry and Peter’s encounter with the first gentile converts), through Philip, who brought the gospel to the Samaritans and the Ethiopian, and, finally, through Paul, who preached to the entire world, perhaps as far as Spain. Luke’s concern is principally with movement, and not personalities.
Luke’s Acts is by no means exhaustive. He does not speak of Thomas’s mission to India, which we know from other sources; he does not speak of the African ministry; nor does he speak of James’s ministry in the final days of the Jerusalem before the fall of that great city in 70 A.D. Nor could he be exhaustive.
The story of the movement of the gospel to the far reaches of the world is unending. It includes a little congregation in the Santa Cruz mountains, an assembly which has sent or supported short-term missionaries to several nations, either corporately (Guatemala and Bolivia) or individually (the Philippines and Eastern Europe). For the last several years, this congregation has supported a brother in Jamaica, brothers in Africa, Romania and beyond.
In the summer of 2007, Mountain Bible Church sent several young men to various camps throughout Northern California. Today, it is contemplating a trip to Africa, principally with these young men, Lord willing.
As I contemplate the “missions program” at Mountain Bible Church, I think of how many people participated in these trips. How many? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? I do not know. But, more importantly, how many lives have we affected? How many were reached for the kingdom?
It’s possibly foolish to count heads, for God looks at the heart. I can’t quantify our missions experience, but I can reckon its effect, for we are a changed people. Rob Panza, one of our elders, often quotes Todd Brown, saying, “Missions will ruin you for the world.” This is an apt saying.
As youth pastor of Mountain Bible Church, I can say my experience has “ruined” me for the world and even ministry. There is something much larger than mere programs, something grander than our conceptions of the ministry. God is at work in our lives.
I have twice put “missions program” in quotations because Mountain Bible Church does not have a, how shall I say it?, a scripted program. Rather, we are going through a process. Had we mapped out a ten-year program, would we have met our brothers* in Africa? Would we have sent Todd Brown to Jamaica (probably! but with different expectations)? Would we have looked for the personal relations formed after short-term trips?
As I examine Acts, I discover a church that didn’t know where to go. The Gentile mission caught them off guard. The Holy Spirit physically prevented the apostles from visiting certain cities, instead directing them elsewhere. And the saints grieved when it was known Paul would preach the gospel in Rome in chains.
The book of Acts records a series of unexpected actions.
Some scholars contend the Acts of the Apostles should be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit. If so, then our own story should be called, not a “missions program,” but the “awesome work of the Holy Spirit” in our lives.
But if a program, then an extensive program. All people should experience the work of the Holy Spirit, either through fellowship with brothers and sisters working abroad, or else on our own journeys to those places. God, I believe, wants to “ruin” us for regular life.
* Names withheld for security purposes, this is more a concern for Internet publication than print.
Podcast code: 003RA
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