{"id":943,"date":"2006-05-04T05:36:22","date_gmt":"2006-05-04T05:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2006\/05\/emerging-evangelism-the-earlie.html"},"modified":"2006-05-04T05:36:22","modified_gmt":"2006-05-04T05:36:22","slug":"emerging-evangelism-the-earlie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/05\/emerging-evangelism-the-earlie.html","title":{"rendered":"Emerging Evangelism: The earliest churches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who takes the Story of the New Testament seriously will include the earliest chapters of Acts in any serious discussion of the missional life of the first Christians. What was a missional life like for them? Any thoughts? You need not be restricted to these chapters in Acts. <!--more|inline--><br \/>\n1. It was <em>empowered by God&#8217;s Spirit<\/em> who democratically distributed gifts and power to one and all: Acts 2:17-21. (By the way, I think the theme of &#8220;justification&#8221; is established in Acts 2:17-21&#8217;s quotation of Joel: these verses declare who is in the people of God and it does so by setting the word of the Lord against the unjust rulers.)<br \/>\n2. It was <em>ecclesial incorporation<\/em>: 2:42-47 etc. The missional shape of the earliest Christians was to create fellowships and incorporate others.<br \/>\n3. It was <em>socio-ecclesial reformation and vision-establishing<\/em>: 2:42-47. Again, this community embodied what Jesus taught. It became the nucleus of a society in which God&#8217;s will was being established.<br \/>\n4. It was <em>inclusive <\/em>of others, esp Gentiles: read Acts 8, 10, and 15.<br \/>\n5. It was <em>empowered by Jesus Christ<\/em>: cf. 3:6.<br \/>\n6. It was <em>prophetic critique <\/em>of unjust society: Acts 4 and 5.<br \/>\n7. It was <em>dynamic exploration<\/em> of new themes, new words, new groups, and new situations: this is how I see Paul&#8217;s mission &#8212; exploration of what the redemptive work of God might look like in new contexts (Acts 8&#8211;28).<br \/>\n8. It involved <em>creative adaptation<\/em>: Acts 17, at the Areopagus. Paul tries a new rhetoric.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who takes the Story of the New Testament seriously will include the earliest chapters of Acts in any serious discussion of the missional life of the first Christians. What was a missional life like for them? Any thoughts? You need not be restricted to these chapters in Acts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-movement","category-missional"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Emerging Evangelism: The earliest churches - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/05\/emerging-evangelism-the-earlie.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Emerging Evangelism: The earliest churches - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Anyone who takes the Story of the New Testament seriously will include the earliest chapters of Acts in any serious discussion of the missional life of the first Christians. What was a missional life like for them? Any thoughts? 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