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The very first Christians in Jerusalem had been instructed by Jesus, assuming the words were from his lips, to be his witnesses ‘to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1.8; cf Matt. 28.18–20). Understanding that the end times had arrived, it would have been natural for them to interpret Jesus’ command as a fulfilment of Isaiah 66.18–21: as the nations came to Jerusalem, some of the gathered were go to the Gentiles and proclaim the risen Lord.

So why did the apostles at first stay in Jerusalem? Richard Bauckham has suggested that it may have been a deliberate strategy to take the gospel to Jews living outside Israel. Jews from far and wide came to Jerusalem not just for Pentecost, but for all the major Jewish festivals. The best way for the apostles to reach the diaspora Jews was by proclaiming the gospel in Jerusalem and encouraging converts to take the message to their synagogues back home. Gentiles would be reached through the God-fearers, who associated with the synagogues without becoming fully Jews. This helps to explain how the gospel reached Egypt, Rome and elsewhere comparatively early. It was an enactment of Isaiah 66 (Bauckham, 2011, pp. 198–9; cf Gehring, 2004, p. 90).

The strategy was undermined by the persecution that scattered the Jerusalem believers across Judaea and Samaria, making Jerusalem a less secure base for mission (Acts 8.1). At the same time, the Holy Spirit provided a series of unexpected experiences that encouraged the church to become more centrifugal in outlook. Some of the Samaritans were converted (Acts 8.4–25). An Ethiopian eunuch became a believer outside Jerusalem (Acts 8.26–39). Philip continued preaching in the towns to Caesarea (Acts 8.40). At Caesarea, Peter witnessed the outpouring of the Spirit on the household of the Gentile Cornelius, an event that had a profound impact on the Apostles’ thinking (Acts 10.9—11.18). Clearly mission did not require staying in Jerusalem!

To cap it all, in an astonishing break with the past, Jewish converts from Cyprus and Cyrene took the gospel to Gentiles in Antioch. They described Jesus not as ‘messiah’ but as ‘Lord’, a term that pagans used for their cult divinities including, notably, Caesar himself. ‘From now on the word about Christ, and the faith of Christ, began to work through the vast complex of Greek and Roman thought’ (Walls, 1996, pp. 52–3).

Paul developed this process of going out to different cultures and immersing the gospel in them. Schnabel has argued that Paul was not a cross-cultural missionary. He was bi-cultural, a Jew who was also at home in Graeco-Roman culture (Schnabel, 2008, pp. 329–31). But this ignores how Paul crossed social boundaries. Ronald Hock has described Paul’s leather-working, which provided financial support during his missionary journeys. It was the work of artisans, whom the elite viewed with hostility and contempt. Hock stresses how difficult this must have been for Paul who by birth came from the elite (Hock, 2007, p. 35). Moreover, as Paul taught from house to house in cosmopolitan centres like Ephesus (Acts 20.20), he would have entered households from a variety of social backgrounds – Roman cities were melting-pots of cultures, classes and ethnic groups.

Paul identified with the contexts he sought to reach. He became all things to all people (1 Cor. 9.22), and allowed the needs (and so cultures) of Jews and Gentiles to inform his behaviour by becoming the slave of his listeners (1 Cor. 9.19). He entered the habits of thought of his audiences and showed what the gospel would look like when it was enacted in their setting. So in Corinth, where people cherished success, sought to climb the social ladder and prized clever rhetoric, Paul had an occupation without status, assumed a servant role and rejected crowd-pleasing rhetoric in favour of standard classical forms (Thiselton, 2006, pp. 6–19). He showed how the gospel was distinctive within a Corinthian way of life.

In identifying with context to be distinctive within it, Paul was imitating Jesus and he expected the small congregations he founded to do the same. Church happened in the midst of the everyday – in the home, which was the centre of day-to-day life. ‘Worship and the daily life of the Christian [were] bound together in the household’ (Becker, 1993, p. 246). John Drane notes that

different social contexts enabled the emergence of many different styles of Christian community, and there was never any guarantee that the church in one place would be the same as the church in a different setting. Indeed, this ability to contextualize itself within such diverse cultures is perhaps the one thing that, above all others, explains the attraction of the Christian gospel. (Drane, 2009, p. 196)

Within these different settings, relationships between members of the new gatherings were entirely transformed (or at least meant to be). Distinctions between Jews and Greeks, masters and slaves, and men and women began to be redefined as members saw themselves as brothers and sisters in Christ. The communities that made up the church were living an incarnational life. Immersed in their contexts, they showed how the Spirit could make their contexts very different. When the gospel went out from Jerusalem, it took a different shape in different settings.

For reflection

The shift from centripetal to centrifugal mission is one of the big stories of Scripture. It is consistent with calls today for the church to adopt a ‘we’ll go to you’ rather than ‘you come to us’ approach to mission. But just as Jesus drew people to himself, so did many of Paul’s new congregations. Presumably, that is why they took root and multiplied. They had an attractional, come-to-us dynamic. In a sense these new communities were ‘little Israels’, attracting people round about, but within a story that had opened an incarnational chapter. Adopting a ‘go’ strategy, Paul and others gave birth to gatherings whose corporate lives also invited ‘come to us’. Has the distinction between ‘come’ and ‘go’ mission sometimes been overdrawn? Perhaps we should think of a cycle: a church goes out when it starts a new church, which attracts people. In time the new chuch goes out to start a further church. ‘Go’ leads to ‘come’, which is followed by ‘go’.