Acts 8

Acts 8 shows the early Christian movement moving out from Jerusalem. Did everyone notice what got the Church moving from complacency? Persecution. God uses our discomfort to get us moving to where he wants us. With the great successes of Pentecost and the terrific fellowship of the Jerusalem the early church could easily have fallen into a nice little bless me party. Peter Wagner calls this "koininitis" a condition where the church gets so enamored with being together it forgets its mission. The death of Stephen and Saul's work to drag believers off to prison serves to move the church away from Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria (remember Acts 1:8). The first non Jewish convert (Samaritans) the first not Semitic convert (the Ethiopian) are in this chapter all of it because the church was scattered away from their home base. What will it take the 21st Century church to leave its complacency and move back out into mission?