God's people have a calling to be distinct from others while serving as an invitation to them. This is a difficult balance to strike. But we see Paul doing it masterfully during his brief ministry in Athens, where he translates the gospel into language that makes as much sense to the Athenians as possible while…

When Paul shares the good news in the Synagogues in Thessalonica and in Berea, he gets two very different receptions. The Thessalonians reject the message about the suffering messiah and his upside-down kingdom because it doesn't align with their hopes and expectations. The Bereans receive the message, adapting their expectations to the salvation God is…

When Paul is unjustly imprisoned in Philippi, his response to his mistreatment leads his jailer to faith. When the New Life of God's kingdom encounters the Old Life of this world, conflict is often the result. If we respond to that conflict with patient endurance as Jesus did, we can plant the seed of New…

When our experience of faith is confined to a single place or among a group of similar people, we can often start to believe that the way God has worked in our lives is the only way God can work. The downside of this is that when come into contact with others in whom God…

While it may be tempting to assume that if we're obediently following God in mission, things will go according to plan, that's just not usually the case. We are sometimes successful, but often in ways we don't expect. At other times, we encounter opposition, and it may come from places we don't expect. The reception…

Barnabas and Saul are sent by the Spirit on mission to Cyprus, but the Spirit goes with them, opening doors, validating their message with wisdom and power and leading people to repentance. In a similar way, the Spirit works with us as we go into the world.

God is on a mission and he invites his church to join him. In the story about the creation of a church in Antioch, we see in the story of its origin how the Spirit disrupts communities, how it transforms those communities and how the Spirit leads those communities to replicate, and we reflect on…