The Weird World of Acts
My next book will be on Acts as a biblical foundation for movements of disciples and churches. Here’s why…
When we open the book of Acts we enter an unfamiliar world.
We enter a world in which God is actively involved in fulfilling his ancient promises and pursuing his purposes. The Father brings salvation through his Son, the good news spreads from place to place in the power of the Spirit. Despite the troubles that the messengers face, the word keeps advancing and communities of disciples begin springing up everywhere.
For many of us, especially in the western world, that is not our experience and deep down we’re not sure if it’s even possible. We’re stuck and many of us have settled for something less than God intended.
Some have lost confidence in the gospel or abandoned it altogether. Some have thrown themselves into the culture wars and politics thinking they can transform this world without being corrupted by it. Some find comfort in cynicism. Others have retreated into the safety of disengagement from the world’s brokenness and rebellion. It’s hard to stay in the fight when you’ve lost all hope of making a difference.
This is the gap between the reality of our experience and the picture Luke paints of the early Jesus movement out of Jerusalem.
In a speech in 1963, John F Kennedy said, “Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man.” The truth is the opposite: “Our problems are manmade—therefore, they *cannot* be solved by man.” That’s what God is trying to tell us through the book of Acts. Left to ourselves, what we have now is as good as it gets.
Despair is a virtue if it drives us to the sufficiency of God.
When I was young there were a few hundred known believers in the Hindu kingdom of Nepal. Now there are over one million. Iran fell to the Islamic revolution in 1979 and now there are one million believers in that nation. A decade ago researcher Justin Long thought there were around 100 multiplying movements of disciples and churches around the world. By 2017 he’d documented 600 movements. By 2020 he was tracking 1,369 movements globally. That’s 1% of the world’s population. At least 77 million disciples in 4.8 million churches. There are movements of multiplication in China, in India, in the nations of Subsaharan Africa, and in Latin America. Why are they the exception in the west?
Who do you think is more aligned with what we see in the book of Acts—the church of the privileged western world, or the rest?
We have created the problem. We cannot solve it.
That’s why God inspired Luke to write the book of Acts—it’s the way back to what he intended. It’s the way forward to play our part in his plan. Are you desperate? Acts was written for desperate people.
