Speaker: Rev Phil Campbell

The travelling Apostle Paul has remarkable success establishing a new church in Corinth… but by the time he writes back to them three years later, there are some serious problems brewing from within. We will do well to learn from their mistakes!

As Paul arrives in Athens, he’s confronted by a bewildering array of options. Temples, idols, and intellectual and philosophical options are everywhere. Paul observes, he reasons, and he debates – but always the same thing remains central. The resurrection of Jesus is the way the one true God has made himself known.

What makes someone a Christian? Do you think you’re one? If you say “Yes”, does it mean you’re arrogant? Do you need to have a mystical experience – or get a passing score in the Ten Commandment Test? This week we’ll get some very exciting answers to those questions as Paul the Apostle writes back fondly to the church he had recently established in the Greek city of Thessalonica.

They say ‘many a true word is spoken in jest,’ and maybe the same applies to words said in anger as well. This week we’re back in the book of Acts, as we pick up Paul’s trail in Thessalonica, where he’s accused of ‘Turning the world upside down’ with the message of King Jesus. Maybe though, he’s actually turning it ‘right way up’?

As we follow Paul’s missionary journey through Macedonia, we pause this week to look at the letter he later writes back to the church in Philippi. Now a prisoner in Rome, Paul writes to reaffirm the lesson he taught them when he visited – when facing opposition for proclaiming Jesus, ‘fight or flight’ are not the best options. Instead, we’re to calmly and constantly look to the best interests of others – even our opponents – as we press forward with the message of Christ.

As Paul and his team come to Philippi, in northern Greece, we meet three very disparate individuals – two women, one man – who are confronted and changed by his message, and gathered into ‘the church.’ But what exactly is it – or more precisely “Who is it” – that lies at the heart of his message? And ‘what must we do… to be saved’?

The Apostle Paul is sometimes accused of inconsistency, and as he sets out on mission through Syria and southern Turkey with his new team, freshly recruited Timothy faces the painful cost of Paul’s apparent pivot, all for the sake of ‘missional compromise.’ What will it look like to be “all things to all people” to reach our world today?

God in his providence can bring good things from bad, even if it involves a sharp disagreement that splits the team of Barnabas and Paul. If there’s one thing to learn from this incident as we resume in the Book of Acts, it’s that God’s mission must go on regardless – now with two teams rather than one.

In this final instalment of our series “Jesus for Gentiles,” Christian leaders from Antioch and Jerusalem meet to debate the important issue of what’s to be expected of non-Jews who turn to Jesus Christ in faith. Are there other entry requirements? Or is “faith alone” enough to ‘open the doors’? It was a tough argument – but the outcome resounds through the centuries, and is just as relevant today. What kind of people are acceptable to God, and why? More pointedly, why are you?