The apostle Paul's missionary methods

Thank you, heavenly Father, for your living word. Teach us from it, and make us teachable, by the deep work of your Spirit among us and within us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Today is Pentecost, and we’re reminding ourselves of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the disciples. What was it for? The risen Jesus made that clear when he said to them before he ascended (this is Acts 1.8):

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

But how? One book that’s had quite an impact on me is by Roland Allen. It’s called Missionary Methods: St Paul’s or Ours? And that’s what we’re thinking about this evening. Our passage is Acts 18.18-28. Please have that open in front of you – it’s on p 927 in the Bibles. And first I want us to see Paul’s purpose in practice – strengthening all the disciples. And then secondly, we can see Paul’s team in action – training for more effective gospel ministry. And the question each one of us needs to ask is: Where do I fit into God’s plan? Because he has a place and a purpose for each one of us.

1. Paul’s purpose in practice: strengthening all the disciples

Take a look at Acts 18.18-23. Here they are (Acts 18.18):

After this, Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila. At Cenchreae he had cut his hair, for he was under a vow.

Just to say this apostolic haircut is fascinating, and almost certainly related to a Nazirite vow (you can look at that in Numbers 6) and an example of Paul being culturally accommodating without compromise – but I don’t want to take time on that here. On to Acts 18.19-23:

And they came to Ephesus, and he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills”, and he set sail from Ephesus.When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and then went down to Antioch. After spending some time there, he departed and went from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.

What’s Paul doing here? Well, it’s right there at the end of Acts 18.23: he’s strengthening all the disciples. That’s the follow up work to all the evangelism and church planting that he’s been doing on his first two missionary journeys. We’re all missionaries (in all kinds of different ways) so we all need to be engaged together in this work of strengthening the disciples. There’s something for all of us to do. We could sum up the options in four words: pray, serve, give, go. We can all pray, serve and give to different degrees and in different ways as the Lord has equipped us to do. Some of us should also be adding that fourth element: go - as the Lord leads.

Now, I’d like us to notice seven characteristics of how Paul goes about strengthening the disciples here. They give us an insight into his missionary methods.

i). He kept his focus. When he’s clear what God wants him to do and where God wants him to go, he doesn’t let himself get distracted – even by good alternative possibilities. So in Acts 18.20, when he’s been working to persuade the Jews that Jesus is their Messiah:

When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined.

Not that it wouldn’t have been a good thing, but because he was clear in his own mind that at this point this would be a distraction from his wider work of strengthening the disciples. This needs spiritual discernment and guidance. But when we get clear about God’s calling on our lives, we mustn’t allow anything to turn us away from it. Keep your focus.

ii). He submitted to God’s will. Acts 18.21:

But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills”, and he set sail from Ephesus.

For all his focus, he well knew that God’s plans were what mattered, and that they weren’t necessarily the same as his plans. So everything he did was in the knowledge that though he wouldn’t let distractions redirect him, God might redirect him at any time. We have to hold those two things together in our lives; a focus that closes our eyes to distractions, and a submission that opens our eyes to God’s plans that might end up being different to what we had intended. And that needs to be a glad submission, not a resentful one. It has to come from the knowledge, in other words, that God knows better than us.

iii). He used technology. That’s a bit left-field, perhaps, but it’s important. So Acts 18.18:

After this, Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria…

He used all the technological means at his disposal to further his mission – in this case, a ship to get him where he wanted to go. Nothing Christian about the technological culture that produced it. But nonetheless, it was a God-given tool that he was very ready to use. Likewise we should be unapologetic, and indeed thankful to God, for things like this microphone, these screens, and the livestreaming that our own technological culture has enabled. We need to take full advantage of technology for the cause of the Kingdom, and not simply leave it in the hands of the enemies of God.

iv). He was persuasive. He used his mind, and sought to engage the brains of his hearers. He didn’t just contradict people, he reasoned with them, to help them see the reasonableness of the gospel message. Acts 18.19:

And they came to Ephesus, and he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.

Effective evangelism and communication of God’s word is not just a matter of who talks the loudest – the methodology of the Twitterati, you might say. It’s respectfully engaging with people, to help them to see (as the apostle Peter put it in 1 Peter 3.15) the reason for the hope that is in you.

v). He worked with a team. Paul was always heavily into teamwork. The make-up of his team kept changing depending on who was available and who was needed where, but he always tried to make sure he had a good team around him – of both men and women, working together. Priscilla and Aquila here are a wonderful example of that. Acts 18.18 again:

After this, Paul stayed many days longer and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila.

We were introduced to this committed couple back in Acts 18.1-3. Look back to the start of this chapter:

After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.

So Paul recruited this committed missionary couple on to his team. They bonded over their needles as they sewed the seams in their tents. That was a God-given providence if ever there was. Aquila came originally from Pontus on the southern shore of the Black Sea. He settled in Rome and maybe met Priscilla there. Clearly they became Christians. Then they had to leave Rome (probably because of their faith) and moved on to Corinth, where they met Paul. He moved them on again, this time with him to Ephesus. But then Paul moved on, leaving Priscilla and Aquila behind. He obviously came to value them very highly, because later on he wrote a beautiful note about them in his Letter to the Romans. So in Romans 16.3-4 he says:

Greet [Priscilla] and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house.

So it seems their tent business was profitable, they had money, ended up moving back to Rome, and hosted a church that met in their clearly sizable home. They had risked their necks to save Paul’s life. We don’t know the details, but what an example they are to us of entrepreneurial, committed, mobile, team-workers who risked everything to help take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Whether it’s Priscilla or Aquila we identity with, let’s ask God to help us to be like them.

vi). He kept moving on. Because it’s so compressed in Luke’s account here, it’s easy to miss just how much travelling there is in the short space of these verses. First Paul went from Corinth to Ephesus. Then he set sail from there and (Acts 18.22-23):

When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and then went down to Antioch [his original sending church – he was their mission partner, you could say]. After spending some time there, he departed and went from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.

It might not be us personally who is called to do the travelling (though it might be), or it might not be overseas by plane or ship (it might be over a county boundary) but if we’re going to get the gospel to the ends of the earth, then collectively we do need to travel, and we need to keep moving on to the next place, and we need to support those who are on the move.

vii). He planted local churches. That of course is the background to what Paul is doing here. No doubt he’s circling back through the places where he had been instrumental in the planting of churches on his earlier missionary travels – Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe. It’s the disciples in those churches he’s working to strengthen. We too need to take on board that church-planting agenda. If we’re going to win this nation (never mind the world) back for Christ, it’s clear that we need a movement of church revitalisation and church planting that we haven’t seen in this country since the early Middle Ages. Every church was a church plant once. Church planting has to be on our agenda still, as it has been for years. Speaking personally, I don’t yet know where’s next, or when, but I do know that for the sake of our lost world we mustn’t lose sight of that vision. So, let’s together be thinking and praying about church planting, in the footsteps of Paul. Then secondly, what we see here is:

2. Paul’s team in action: training for more effective ministry

That brings us to the fascinating case-study in training for gospel ministry of Apollos. Take a look at Acts 18.24-26. Take a look at those. I’ll read them:

Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

Over the last few years I’ve done a fair amount of work with the Anglican Mission in England helping to assess men who are thinking about ordained ministry and to discern God’s will for them. There are always three key areas we’re looking out for. They all begin with C: character, convictions, and competence. You can see all three of them clearly in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, where Paul sets out the necessary qualifications. What Luke says of Apollos here makes it clear that all three of those ‘Cs’ were there in his life. He was competent. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures and he spoke and taught accurately. He had clear Christian convictions. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus. He was a man of good Christian character. He was fervent in spirit and ready to speak boldly. He was also evidently (and extremely importantly, given what happened next), teachable.

If we (men and women) want to be useful to God in his great plan to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, then those are the three areas of our lives that we need to work on, by the grace of God and with the help of Holy Spirit. Character – that’s the hardest and the most important. Convictions – that comes from learning from the living word of God. And competence – not in everything, but in the areas for which God has gifted us, whatever they may be. All three are developed in us by training. And Apollos, gifted and of good of character as he was, clearly needed more training. So do we all. If you ever get to the point when you think you’ve nothing left to learn, please stop doing Christian ministry immediately. That kind of arrogance would make you a dangerous liability. We all have gaps. And for all his brilliance, Apollos had some big gaps in his understanding. Acts 18.25:

…he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.

What exactly were the implications of that for Apollos’s understanding of the faith is not entirely clear. What is clear is that he had some quite serious shortcomings in his grasp of the faith. That wasn’t his fault. He just hadn’t had the opportunity to learn. Two things came together that meant he could put that right. First, the wisdom of Priscilla and Aquila. They had a deeper grasp of the gospel, and the ability to get alongside Apollos to encourage and teach him. And secondly, the willingness of Apollos to recognise the gaps in his knowledge and to apply himself to learn more. How then was Apollos trained? It was by this couple from Paul’s team – a delightful model of the partnership in ministry between men and women that’s so vital in the life of the church.

They were obviously both well trained themselves – not least, no doubt, by Paul himself. We can imagine the two of them sitting together making tents with Paul and listening to him, in a kind of financially productive intensive series of seminars on Christ, the gospel and the Bible. Wouldn’t it be good if they’d been filmed and made available on YouTube? But then let’s not forget that we have Paul’s teaching here in the Bible, freely available to us in fully portable form. Priscilla and Aquila could see the potential of Apollos. They got alongside him and got him to take some time out from his Bible teaching ministry for a while, for theological training. What they had learned, they passed on. Acts 18.26:

[Apollos] began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

Then once Apollos was better trained they, along with the other believers, encouraged him in his God-given ministry ambitions. Acts 18.27:

And when [Apollos] wished to cross to Achaia [that’s the province Corinth was in], the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him…

And what was the result of all this input into the life of Apollos? Fruitful ministry. Acts 18.27-28:

…When [Apollos] arrived [in Corinth], he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.

Indeed such was his fruitfulness that when Paul later wrote to the church in Corinth, he said (this is 1 Corinthians 3.6):

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

The lessons for us are simple. We should take every opportunity, throughout our lives, to be on the receiving end of training for the ministry to which we believe God has called us. And that’s lifelong. We may already be pretty competent, but there’s always more to learn. We should seek out those who are further along than us, and learn from them. Such is technology nowadays that the opportunities are endless. We should also be alert for God-given opportunities to hand on to others what we have learned, and be ready to take them. That way we can multiply any fruitfulness that God has granted us. So like Priscilla, Aquila and Apollos, let’s all be learners and trainers in the school of Christ. Then we can all play our part in the strengthening of all the disciples. And we can all help to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, thank you that out of your astounding grace you have chosen to use us to serve the growth of the Kingdom of your Son. Thank you that through all the circumstances of our lives you are shaping us to be the boys and girls, men and women you want on your team. Forgive us our failings and our blind spots. Fill in our gaps. Make us fellow workers with one another and with your Spirit as together we bear witness to Jesus to the ends of the earth. In his name we pray, Amen.