in our first examination into the history of missional movements we're going to begin where i always love beginning church history lectures and classes in acts 2. and in many ways acts 2 the day of pentecost is the birth of the church where we should begin putting our historian thinking hat on and thinking about how the start of this church um set the pattern trajectory of everything else flowing from that for the next two thousand years so i'll just begin by reading a portion of acts two and i'm gonna ask some historical questions we often read acts 2 as scripture which it is but for now we're going to read it as history we're going to think about the historical questions not just the spiritual or theological questions or mission questions we're going to ask historical questions about the start of the early church we're actually going to walk through several episodes in acts to help us understand our first mission that i'll introduce in just a second so let's look at acts 2 we'll go 1 through 12 then we'll skip down to verse 40. when the day of pentecost had arrived keep in mind this is this is 50 days right after passover they were all together in one place and suddenly there came from having a sound like a mighty rushing wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each of them and they were all filled with the holy spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance now they were dwelling in jerusalem jews devout men from every nation under heaven and at this sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language and they were amazed and astonished saying are not all these who are speaking galileans and how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language parthians and medes and elamites and residents of mesopotamia judea cappadocia pontus in asia phrygia and pamphilia egypt in the parts of libya belonging to cyrene and visitors from rome both jews and proselytes cretans and arabs we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of god and all were amazed and perplexed saying to wonder what does this mean and as we all know peter then steps up and explains what this means in the sermon where he quotes the prophet joel and he preaches the gospel in many ways for the first time after the resurrection and we'll skip down to verse 40 where he's just finished making his call and he exhorts them to repent and in verse 41 it says this so those who received his word were baptized and they were added that day about 3 000 souls keep that in mind they're added that day about 3 000 souls and then the the famous verses about the early church the name is the first description of the early church and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers and awe came upon every soul and many signs and wonders were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing all the proceeds to all as they as any had need and day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes they received their food with glad and generous hearts praising god and having favor with all the people and the lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved so this is a very familiar passage we preach on it teach on it refer to it all the time when there's a lot there but there are a few things historically that that i actually hadn't noticed when i read it sort of devotionally or even preached on this text but when we analyze the early church and analyze the book of acts with the kinds of questions that historians ask we end up seeing a missional movement that we may have missed when we read our bible and missed in other versions of church history so let me ask just a few historical questions that we're going to answer throughout this lecture first geographically how does the early christian movement spread from jerusalem to the ends of the earth but how do we get from this small group in this small uh city in a backwater of the roman empire to spreading all over the world if you've taken which you should the leadership of dean church history class you understand right how quickly and how far the gospel spreads in just the first few centuries we'll reference that we won't do the full comprehensive history the textbook again will fill in the gaps but geographically how does it spread from jerusalem to the end of the earth second numerically right how does the movement of jesus jewish jesus followers start go from 12 right in the gospels to we find in acts 1 there's 120 after three years is 120 okay and then on the day of pentecost they go from 120 it says to 3 000. okay so we understand three years 12 to 120. one big day 120 to 3 000. but let's skip ahead of several centuries by most estimates whether you're talking about the archaeological evidence the demographic data most scholars believe there are about five to six million christians by the year 300 okay so prior to christianity becoming legal in roman empires when it's still illegal there are 5 to six million christians in the roman empire that doesn't include beyond but let's just say five or six million christians so how do you go from around 3 000 believers right in 33 a.d to 5 million believers by the year 300. how do you how does that happen numerically right uh rodney stark of sociology of religion argues that in order to do that you have to have a 40 growth rate every decade for those 250 years one more question right historian kind of question demographically what was the ethno-linguistic composition of this movement who exactly are we talking about when we're imagining this group that grows from 3 000 to 5 million over a few generations who is getting saved right we have some references in acts 2 that kind of tip us off for the early composition and then finally connected to this sociologically right how does the gospel spread from person to person group to group community to community region region how does it actually what are the networks across which the gospel spread how is this happening and i'll just give you some of the common assumptions we have the things we just assumed to be the case then i'll tell you why they're all wrong which is what historians love to do or i'll complicate them the first assumption we have right is that well the spread of the gospel after acts 2 was just miraculous right people just get saved it happens cross-culturally like this guy's from this country and he's from this country and they just talk and it spreads like wildfire wildfire in this sort of um uncontrollable way we kind of think about almost the way viruses spread uh it's just people connect with people and it just goes everywhere and you know in some sense this is true right that it it it's spread in ways that are hard to predict and hard to understand but there's more detail and there's more explanation that we can actually unpack from looking at the facts and second of all we assume that the spread happened among gentiles and this is key right because we see right in acts 2 we see kind of this this move toward the world right when cornelius becomes a christian acts 10 we go oh yeah things are really going on when basically by acts 15 most of what luke covers right it's the spread of the gospel among the gentiles and you the sense that the jews have rejected christianity the gentiles are the way of the future and in our minds right after acts 10 the jews are out of the picture right the christian movement is a gentile movement and it's spreading among gentiles and that's it the jews are kind of the enemy in many ways or the jews are the antagonist you see this happening actually throughout the book of acts the reality is that cross-cultural mission did happen in the early church but it wasn't exactly how we imagined it to be and second luke does give the impression of the book of acts right that the jews are not as important to his story but that doesn't mean that that is the entire history of how things happen right luke has a specific theological purpose in the book of acts and his framework right is set up in acts 1 8 jerusalem judea samaria and the ends of the earth so if you actually look at the way acts progresses he's showing how the gospel spreads in judea in jerusalem then judea then samaria then the ends of the earth it's not that it's not still happening among the jews it's that he's interested theologically and showing how it's going everywhere else ultimately rome so there's a lot we can learn from the book of acts but we shouldn't think that that's the only accounting of everything that happened right it talks about the gospel mainly spreading on the mediterranean but we know the gospel spread also into what's modern day iraq and iran and afghanistan luke doesn't talk about it doesn't mean it didn't happen it just means that we have other sources to know how it happened so you may say well what's so complicated what's the problem with just assuming it was all cross-cultural missionaries all gentiles here is the argument i'm making and it frames this first missional movement that we're gonna look at and again it's one of those things we're sort of looking at something has always been under our noses but we never really saw it or i never really saw it until i reread acts with these historical questions in mind here's the argument early christian growth and expansion in the first two to three centuries was fueled by the jewish diaspora around the world the first missionary movement was fueled by jews in their diaspora communities around the world let me explain what i mean quick definition for diaspora some may be familiar maybe not diasporas are communities of people who are living in a nation that's not their native nation right i think filipinos living in california right think the chinese community in london right or the indian community in new york city those are diaspora communities certain nations or people groups have larger diasporas than others often diasporas are caused by human tragedy war famine economic opportunity there are many diasporas throughout history around the world the jews are one of the original diasporas and actually the the our english word for diaspora comes from the greek referring to the dispersion of jews around the world and what i'm arguing is although we often think that basically after the jews reject paul that the jews are no longer involved in mission the jews are no longer really in the picture what i'm arguing is that the first and most influential missional movement in the first two centuries of christianity were diasporic jews it was jews who brought the gospel all over the world through their diasporic networks and communities not only in the mediterranean but also in the indian ocean and across the eastern east of palestine and really this helps answer our questions we'll return to them at the end right how does it spread geographically uh demographically how how do sort of the connections work sociologically the jewish astronaut answers these questions that we don't otherwise have answers for so let's look at acts 2 and think a little bit about geography and how this works right in acts 2 verse 9 we're going to re-read this with new eyes because whenever i read acts 2 i always thought that what you had was you had jews who were having this pentecostal moment then there are all these foreigners like gentile foreigners who happened to be in jerusalem and they heard the gospel in their own language we thought it was a pure it was a jew to gentile kind of relationship but actually what we learn right if you read it carefully right in verse 5 it says now they were dwelling in jerusalem jews but it says devout men from every nation under heaven what it's referring to is the fact that there was a large jewish diaspora community that lived outside of jerusalem actually very far outside jerusalem but many of them would often come to jerusalem for religious festivals this is pentecost right some of them may have been there left over from passover others may have been there for pentecost some would often later in life move back to israel and kind of have a time in the holy land to kind of retire there whether they were visitors or their residents what it's implying is is that the people from every nation under heaven were actually jews they are diaspora jews in jerusalem at the time so when when you get this list right of all these places what luke is doing is he's referring to he's doing sort of doing these hand he's not giving you a detailed accounting of everyone's nationalities he's giving you this sort of snapshot and if you notice first he looks east he says parthians means this is sort of iran iraq even perhaps as far east as afghanistan these are jewish diaspora folks from there then he looks north pontus and asia this is sort of modern day turkey then he looks south talks about egypt and libya right then he looks west so he basically describes jews the diaspora from the east the north the south the west he's saying that they're diaspora jews all over but it's important to point out right when they talk about the language thing what this is gesturing to is the fact that jews who were diaspora jews were bi-cultural people their native language wasn't hebrew their native language wasn't even aramaic like that jesus and the other disciples spoke they spoke whatever the native language was where they were raised where they grew up for many that was greek they're from sort of the greco-roman world but if you're from sort of the more the babylonian world it would have been air it would have been a another dialect of aramaic and in further far farther field place it would have been other languages as well so you have this group that so when we reimagine acts 2 we're not talking about um we're not talking about disciples jewish disciples and then people from from other nations who weren't jewish they're actually jews that's an important thing to point out and just so you know get a sense of the demographics that's sort of the geography right you want to get a sense of the demographics there are probably eight million jews in the first century in the greco-roman world and maybe one million of them lived in the holy land right so seven out of eight jews don't live in israel most of the world's jews live somewhere else meaning they live in all these other cities just to give you a sense of kind of the dispersion right one of the earliest jewish diasporas was in sort of modern day iraq and iran right they were taken as exiles you remember in the old testament to assyria and then to babylon and many of them stayed most of them in fact stayed so you have these massive jewish communities for many centuries in what's now modern day iraq in sort of the city of babylon they believe in the first century there are probably a million jews living in that region next you think further north right you have whether it's asia minor or particular city of antioch you have tens of thousands in the jewish community there in this greek city right if you think further south in egypt there are probably a hundred thousand jews in the city alexandria uh and it was it was a significant place for sort of greek jewish and uh you might say neolotic african culture all met in this one city but it's important to keep his mind and then to the west you have a significant jewish population in rome right and that's primarily because of the influence of the roman empire often when there's a large empire people whether it's willingly or unwilling or brought into the capital right often as slaves or prisoners of war uh or servants but this is an important thing to keep in mind when you think about sort of the geography we all you know we often imagine jews live in israel no actually most of them don't right we often think that the people who are mentioned from other places right are not jewish actually most time in acts and you see someone who's from some other place they actually are jewish you have there's certain ways you have to read the words and look for certain signals and then finally um another key point to understand is that all of these jews had connections between jerusalem and their homeland there are these significant back and forth connections whether it's a pilgrimage or a family or maybe you maybe you live in jerusalem now if you had cousins in egypt right or maybe you lived in tarsus like paul but you travel to jerusalem regularly there are lots of connections between these and when you think about the implications right of of this sort of world that's right at the start of the church uh most jews don't live in the holy land and most jews that we read about are bicultural they're multilingual they kind of live in two worlds their ethnic religious world is jewish but perhaps their cultural or even sort of their citizenship is something where paul was a roman citizen next right there are these these uh very unique networks of travel and trade and family where for a jew to go from jerusalem to spain wasn't a big deal right because there might have been family there's a lot of connections in that world and then finally an important institutional peace that will come up in recur in acts is the formation of synagogues we think synagogues just say well jesus jesus taught in synagogues yeah but the whole formation of synagogues came when jews were exiled when jews leave israel they need a place to pray they need a place to study scripture they need a place to gather as a community so synagogues form the in several centuries before the uh before the era of jesus by they're formed by jewish communities that are not in israel they can't regularly go to the temple to worship they can't fulfill the religious duties they want to fulfill so they form these institutions where it's sort of the community center of the jewish community wherever they happen to be right often the way you kind of study jewish communities in the ancient world to find where the synagogue was and that was the heart of the community but it's crucial to understand right geographically demographically how things are set up because when we read acts things begin to look a little bit different and there's one more thing we need to think about when we as we dive back into a few more acts episodes when you think about the ethnography or sort of the the ethnic makeup of these groups we often just think in a really simple binary of jew and gentile right well they were jews they were the first followers of jesus and then they reached a few gentiles like cornelius and then most christians henceforth were gentiles right it's just this very very cross-cultural it's these guys and these guys and on the one hand that's true in some senses uh paul actually in his epistles often goes on this binary of jew versus gentile you're really all one let's not fight and that's fine paul was making a theological point speaking to certain churches that had jews and gentiles in them but it was actually much more complicated than that let me break it down a little bit further right when you read acts you find out there are actually not two groups but five groups you need to be aware of and they kind of fall along the spectrum the first group are jews or what we would call hebrew jews they're the ones who actually lived in the holy land think peter andrew james john right the original apostles they're often called galileans because that's the province they're from but the hebrew jews it's important to know they were jews who lived in the homeland born raised and they probably spoke aramaic and probably studied some hebrew so they could read the old testament and they knew a little bit of greek next they were hellenists right we see this referred to specifically in acts 6 but also gestured at next to hellenists were jews who lived in the diaspora in the greco-roman world meaning they were ethnically and religiously jewish but culturally and linguistically they were greek people when you think about acts right paul was a hellenist timothy was a hellenist stephen was a hellenist and these were jews who were would spend time in jerusalem but didn't live in jerusalem typically and had connections elsewhere they had homes families networks and other places around the greco-roman world so there's hellenist next there are prosecutes right these are gentiles who have become jewish often through marriage but also curiosity there's not a huge group they're actually mentioned there's one mentioned in acts 6 one of the first deacons right meaning he was a complete pagan becomes a becomes a full-blown jews and they become a believer next there are god fears there's a really interesting category they're mentioned several times in acts a god fear is someone who basically embraced judaic genetic monotheism embraced sort of the jewish community but they did not fully convert mostly because they had objections to circumcision or to dietary laws right so often god fears would attend the synagogue they'd be deeply connected in the jewish community they read the hebrew they would read the jewish scriptures probably in greek usually uh but they didn't convert all the way they're often connected through marriage one example this is cornelius is actually a god fear and we'll talk a little more a little bit more about that and then finally there's the full-blown gentile right the gentile who knows nothing about the jews knows nothing about jesus they're just the straight-up pagan we often only imagine peter and john and then straight up pagans and they just reached a radical cross-cultural uh significant gap but we'll finally look at acts that most of the significant conversions only happen by one degree right jews reach hellenists that's happening in acts 2 right hellenists reach god fears we'll talk about an episode of that in acts 8 and acts 10 right and then god fears reach gentiles right because they're all they all if you consider those concentric circles right of sort of the five different groups you find in acts they you always have a significant commonality with sort of the group just next to you but if you jump like three groups you're pretty far apart sometimes that's commonalities of language or culture some of that commonality is ethnicity and religion uh some of that commonality is family but it's important to recognize i know we're getting kind of in the weeds sort of sort of a sociological analysis of how this work this is important to help us understand now we're going to look at just two episodes where we see if we have this lens right thinking about okay most jews don't live in the holy land most jews are those who they're part of the dispersion they're bicultural they're connected to all these other parts of the world and even if they're in jerusalem they're usually not at home in jerusalem they're kind of traveling through and most of the ministry that happens even in the cross-cultural ministry is happening kind of within degrees of whether you're a hellenist or a god fear they all become believers and followers of jesus but right it was such a hard thing for peter to even just eat with cornelius because he was like a classic hebrew jew and he never spent time with gentiles but you consider a hellenist they had spent lots of time with gentiles because mostly they lived in gentile cities and had very small jewish communities of course they had to eat with and spend time with gentiles so i know i'm getting in in the in the detail here but let's look now at acts 8 and kind of re-examine the story of the ethiopian eunuch i'm going to read the passage and we'll unpack it and kind of look and we're going to do one from acts 18 and think about how how it is possible that god used jews right and diaspora jews particular to spread the gospel all around the world so if we look at acts 8 verse 26 and it's a it's one of for me it's been always one of those really intriguing stories in the bible because it seems so out there right you have this ethiopian guy riding a cherry in the desert and philip just shows up and something crazy happens right we often imagine it to be this radical cross-cultural you meet a guy from another nation you give them the god test and they're christian and on the one hand that is kind of what's happening but let's look at it a little bit closer acts 8 26 now an angel of the lord said to philip rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from jerusalem to gaza this is a desert place and he arose and went and there was an ethiopian a eunuch a court official of candace the queen of the ethiopians who was in charge of all her treasure he had come to jerusalem to worship and was returning seated in his chariot and he was reading the prophet isaiah and the spirit said to philip go over and join his chariot so philip ran to him and heard him reading isaiah the prophet and asked do you understand what you're reading he said how can i understand unless someone guides me and he invited philip to come up and sit with him now the passage of the scripture he was reading was this like a sheep he was led to the slaughter like a lamb before it shear is silent so he opens not his mouth in his humiliation justice was denied him who can describe his generation for his life is taken away from the earth and the eunuch said to philip about whom i ask you does the prophet say this about himself or someone else then philip opened his mouth and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news about jesus and as we know at some point the eunuch stop says let's just get baptized there's water here let me do this right now and there's a remarkable story i'm glad luke included it but here's something i want us to think about philip we learn in acts 6 was not just a random jew he was a hellenist jew one of the early hellenist jewish leaders in the church we don't know a lot about his background but what this means right is that he was not born and raised in the holy land and he was primarily culturally and linguistically greek this is very important so keep that in mind right and we learn also right in this chapter previously philip had taken the gospel he's the one who fulfills that second command and write jerusalem judea samaria philip is the one who takes the gospel to the samaritans so god's using a hellenist you sort of break beyond right because the hebrew jews and the samaritans were enemies right but but the hellenist jews less less taken with the ethnic tensions of the region but then you find this situation where spirits through an angel speaks to him he starts going this road he sees an ethiopian an official and just to note ethiopians he may not have been from what's modern ethiopia ethiopian men basically any black african who lives south of egypt and he sees him and he so so keep in mind philip is one actor who's a hellenist so he's in that second concentric circle but then we have this ec open and at first we think gosh this is so far afield he is like way from left field this is a crazy cross-cultural meeting on the road to gaza but is it really right it says he had come to jerusalem to worship why on earth would he do that what kind of ethiopian court official would go to jerusalem to worship the only explanation that scholars say is that he was a god fear right meaning that he had embraced the god of the jews right he had embraced their monotheism he had embraced their scriptures he had accessed the prophet isaiah right this is crazy but but is it really because we know that there are jewish aspect communities in right south of egypt probably in his region we know he had connections at least with jews in alexandria so before this ever happened he had been in close contact with the jewish community had functionally but not fully converted because he wasn't circumcised he wasn't fully in right but ultimately he worshipped the god of the hebrews and he read their scriptures and he actually made a pilgrimage to jerusalem to worship so he's not this out of nowhere pagan from africa he's actually a god fear kind of like cornelius he's almost in the jewish circle or very tightly knit in the jewish circle but the only reason why philip was able to reach the ethiopian eunuch was because both of them spoke greek right philip was a hellenist he spoke greek it notice it says here and i'm i'm speculating but it's you know keener speculates the same thing so we're good right it says this it says he heard him reading isaiah the prophet how would philip know that the ethiopian was reading isaiah the prophet unless he was reading it right in a language he understood which presumably was probably greek right you say well how does ethiopia know greek if he did any business for the queen alexander he would have had to know greeks right they had a common language right so they were sort of adjacent sociological groups and in this encounter right philip is able to share with him that the fulfillment of the prophecy he's reading in isaiah is jesus a man he had never heard of so there's still a significant presentation of the gospel there's still a cross-cultural thing they're not the same person but you see the the the sociological factors set up philip to be able to reach the ethiopian eunuch in a way that if we if we don't pay attention to details we think it's just this miraculous encounter it is miraculous but there are certain uh sociological factors mainly you know along the jewish diasporic sort of um the the features of the jewish diaspora that made this possible let's look at one more and let's think about acts 18. this is a really interesting passage we have a lot of figures show up but again read it with some of these historical questions in mind when we're in acts 18 because it begins to make sense how something like this could actually happen right how paul's ministry could actually work in such a way where these far-flung jews are getting pulled in gentiles are getting saved well let's look over at acts 18 let's look uh and this is putting a pause on one of the missionary journeys he's going to courthouse and it says this in verse 1. after this paul left corinth athens and went to corinth he found a jew named aquila a native of pontus recently come from italy with his wife priscilla because claudius commanded all the jews to leave rome so right off the bat we find paul a diaspora drew from tarsus who's been sent from antioch to corinth right he goes from athens to coins and then he meets jews there who are originally from asia minor but they lived in rome you notice sort of they're all moving between jewish centers priscilla and aquila and as we know they become eventually become really really important partners of paul in ministry right they go to other places then let's go further right to verse 4 it says and he reasoned with them in the synagogue every sabbath and tried to persuade jews and greeks if you go to verse five it says when silas and timothy arrive from macedonia these are also hellenist jews paul was occupied with the word testifying to the jews that jesus was the christ so here we find a pattern that paul does repeatedly when you read through acts paul goes to the synagogue and it wasn't like he just invaded the synagogue he was invited back every week right and he's trying to reach and it says jews and greeks but what they're actually referring to right is the hellenist jews that are there it's still part of the jewish community or the god fears who may be sitting in the audience so paul's ministry and current threat is to these concentric circles that are connected with the jewish community even though he's in a what you might say gentile town paul brings siles in timothy or also diaspora jews right and then it says you go further down in verse 7 he left there went to the house of a man named tidious justice a worshiper of god his house was next door to the synagogue okay this is a signal to say this is a gentile but he's a god fear right he's like cornelius he's like the ethiopian they're deeply and intimately connected with the jewish community but they're not fully converted because they're not they're not circumcised he lives next to the synagogue so you see all these players and there's one more who comes down when you scroll down to verse 18 right you find or verse 24 you find after paul separates from priscilla and aquila they go to ephesus and you find there's it says now in verse 24 a jew named apollos a native alexandria came to ephesus he was an eloquent man compton in the scriptures he had been instructed in the way of the lord being fervent in spirit he spoke and taught accurate of things cringe concerning jesus though he knew only the baptism of john he began to speak boldly in the synagogue again the synagogue shows up but when priscilla and aquila heard him they took him aside and explained to him the way of god more accurately so we have another person come in again another jew of the diaspora who's from alexandria so we have people from rome alexandria asia minor but they're all jews paul is working with a group this mission this missionary movement is all these jews because they bounce around from the city they're all becoming disciples and right who are they connecting with other jews in the synagogue perhaps hellenist and then god fears right people who are close to the community but they're they're saying yes that monotheistic god of the jews who you worship you can't fully embrace because you're not circumcised he's been manifested in the incarnate in the incarnation through jesus and he is the lord we are worshiping you have to be circumcised right you follow him by faith so when we think about this story and we think about um what's going on we kind of reanalyze acts 8 and acts 18 with the jewish diaspora in mind but we realize that these people are moving around quite freely around the roman world because they're part of a community that is in some sense rootless yes they have roots in their native land yes they have homes but they have a little bit of a lighter footprint where they go and they kind of bounce from jewish community jewish community throughout the roman empire and secondly they're using the synagogue as this launch point right synagogues are kind of the central connecting points of the jewish community all over not only the roman world but also in sort of the region of that in sort of the babylonian era and jews were used to traveling jews coming and teaching in their synagogue that was just a normal thing so the way the gospel spread the way the church spread was going city to city but they were jewish communities they were going to they would go to the synagogue first and right the first gentiles they reached were not random strangers off the street we often think about paul going to mars hill but right where was he first when he was in athens right he was at the synagogue and then people ask him hey can you come speak here so i want us to think about when we think about this very first missionary movement kind of the the movement of the gospel from jerusalem to the ends of the earth the movement from 120 people to 3 000 people to 5 million people right in a matter of centuries a matter of generations is that god had perfectly positioned the jewish diaspora and the jewish people to be his vehicles of spreading the gospel right they weren't the afterthought they weren't the people who had to be overcome yes paul does have oppositions from some jews right also most of his partners in ministry were jews right he had he reached out to gentiles and there was they were sort of mixed gentile jewish churches but it was not just this well the jews were left behind they didn't get on the boat they missed the train to kind of put a bow on the kind of thinking beyond acts kind of what happened we often think right about when we imagine the apostles going to the ends of the earth kind of during the time of acts and even beyond after it we think of right paul talked about going to spain we don't know if he ever got to spain but that's pretty darn far that is like the western ends of the earth in the minds of anyone in that time but we find out right historically there was a jewish community in spain he wasn't just going to some random pagan barbarians in spain there's a jewish community there he was going to right there is a connection we think about thomas going the opposite direction really far east tradition tells us to southern india we also go gosh that's really darn far uh he must have just showed up and you know i don't know what he did actually there's evidence that as early as the first century maybe even earlier there was a jewish trading community in southern india so evening the farthest flung places we can possibly imagine the apostles or the early generations of missionaries going they almost never went beyond where the jewish diaspora was they always went to those places when we think about the major apostolic churches and cities in those first few centuries would have been jerusalem antioch alexandria and rome these are all these all map on perfectly the major centers of jewish diaspora life you have major jewish communities sort of major sort of that your your most likely pockets of conversion to christianity are these communities and particularly those that are outside and they're sort of these bi-cultural folks who once they're converted end up becoming your major vehicles of going cross-cultural right because they have friends maybe family members uh maybe business associates who are sort of beyond that community so when we think about the spread of the early church and in many ways we don't have a lot of you know historical data for the years 80 to 180. right a lot of it's fragmentary a lot of it is we just learned bits and pieces here and there in your textbook you read how kind of they put some of the pieces together in the in one of the other readings i signed they'll kind of extrapolate certain things from acts but the reality is when we imagine the geographic spread of christianity we need to think about we need to have on in our mind the map of the jewish asparagus network when we think about the numeric spread of christianity we need to understand that most the converts we see in the book of acts most of the converts refining early centuries are actually jews finding their messiah and when we look right at the cross-cultural nature of the gospel going beyond the jewish community to the rest of the world yes there are sort of radical cross-cultural jump but most of the time it's a matter of sort of small degrees there's sort of these bi-cultural bridges that god and his providence put in place and they're typically diaspora people people who are from one place but live in another place people whose parents live in that city and they are born in that city they live in this city now people like priscilla and aquila who are from modern-day turkey but lived in rome then became missionaries to greece with paul those are the kind of people right who god positioned to spread it it's jews who of the diaspora who spread the gospel in the first two centuries so when we want to think about what we can learn and in the case study session we'll talk more about what we can learn and kind of go to the present i'll just say three points before we pray what can we learn from this jewish diaspora missionary movement the one that we often forget existed the one that we often neglect in churches the one that we don't realize had this massive impact growing from 3 000 to 5 million in just a few generations going from jerusalem quite literally to the ends of the earth first god has divine purposes in the scattering of peoples much of the jewish legacy and lament in their history is that they're not where they want to be whether you're reading it in the psalms whether you whether you sort of see it throughout jewish history there's this lament that most jews aren't home in the holy land and i think every diasporic people in world history right is typically scattered in circumstances that are less than ideal and we have to recognize the injustice and the tragedy of of of human diasporas but the reality is god has divine intention and purpose in scattering peoples around the world and you think about the jewish aspect in this moment was any people more prepared to spread the gospel across the world than the jews they had a diaspora all the way into the babylonian empire and aspera in the roman empire both east and west they had diaspora in the north and in the south there's no people perhaps in the first century we think well they're kind of small and powerless and they're not an empire but there are no people who are more evenly spread and well poised to bring the gospel everywhere and had people in sort of bicultural positions and this leads us to our second point right diasporic peoples can serve as intercultural bridge builders like almost no one else yes there's a great thing for someone who grew up in rural indiana to go be a missionary in india that's fantastic you know william carey was born and raised in london and then he becomes a missionary in calcutta god does those kinds of crazy things where there's just like you skip seven cultures and time zones and languages and you just gut it out god does that but most of the most effective fruitful movements are done through bicultural people where sort of there's these degrees of relationship that god is using to spread the gospel that's how the gospel spreads rapidly that's how the gospel spreads in sort of movemental kind of ways finally it's important that god uses ordinary people we know hardly any of the names of these early jewish diaspora missionaries we know the names of people in acts but even right luke records the history and acts but if you read paul's epistles he mentions many more he'll list names especially i think romans 16 he's listing names of people who are working with him who are with him right and it's this fascinating thing where there's all these nameless people it's because right many of them were just doing the kinds of things and traveling the kinds of places right priscilla and aquila were not professional missionaries they were tempt makers right people sometimes they weren't moving to plant a church they're moving back to see their mom right they weren't priscilla and aquila didn't go to corinth because they had a particular vision from god they got kicked out of rome because they weren't native residents of rome god uses very ordinary people often of the diaspora who don't have the roots and don't have the ability to stay where they want to stay and go where they want to go and god spreads the gospel the same way that seeds are spread often by the wind it's interesting that we don't know who founded the church in rome we don't know a founder of the church in antioch to the most important church in the history of christianity because it was ordinary jews of the dispersion who went in the next video we're going to look at every nation's history and map on this idea of diaspora mission on the history of every nation's early church planting and some of its unique missionary movements that have come in every nation and we're going to think about the implications of diaspora missions for global emissions in our context in the future so let me close in prayer lord i thank you for your providence i thank you for the way that you ordain the movements of peoples you ordain the spread the dispersion of peoples when you ordain those who will come to believe as you send disciples all to all parts of the world to preach the gospel to make disciples but i pray that as we analyze acts and i pray that as we analyze the past and the present what i pray that we would learn from these nameless ordinary diaspora missionaries of the jewish diaspora but i pray that we'll be inspired by the risk-taking faith or by their sacrificial faithfulness lord but also by the unique strategies and opportunities there are for diaspora mission in our present day jesus name amen [Music]