Invisible success

 This week's verses are on Acts 17:10-15:

The brothers sent Paul and Silas off to Berea at once, during the night. When they arrived, they went to the Jewish synagogue. These Jews were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they eagerly received the message, examining the scriptures carefully every day to see if these things were so. Therefore many of them believed, along with quite a few prominent Greek women and men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica heard that Paul had also proclaimed the word of God in Berea, they came there too, inciting and disturbing the crowds. Then the brothers sent Paul away to the coast at once, but Silas and Timothy remained in Berea. Those who accompanied Paul escorted him as far as Athens, and after receiving an order for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they left.

We read these verses a lot in the context of the good people in Berea who studied their Bibles, but what about the perspective of the church leaders involved in reaching them?

Paul's team had originally been in Thessaloniki trying to reach the Jews there, but they were chased out of town. They left under cover of darkness and arrived at the next city, Berea, where they continued God's work. It seemed like they were pretty successful, until the same close-minded religious people from Thessaloniki caught up with them again. Once again, these troublemakers were causing riots.

Once again Paul had to leave. He even had to send his companions to extract the rest of his church plant team from the situation, probably to save their lives. Two cities attempted, final score: church 0, angry Jews 2. Or so it probably seemed.

How would a modern church handle this situation? If you tried to reach a community in need, and just as you were able to start establishing relationships some Christ-hating organization organized a giant protest and started trashing the neighborhood, how would you feel? What if they were calling you with death threats and beating up your friends? And what if you gave up and tried a different neighborhood, with a bit more initial success, only to have these same people move in and start tearing things up there too?

I'm reminded of a guy I once met who moved across the country to plant a church with a small team who had paid for him to come. He'd lived in the new location a few months, developed some relationships, found a venue, started preaching some sermons. Things were looking good. Then one day he decided to start covering some more difficult topics which contradicted the position of a charismatic preacher most of the congregation admired. Everyone turned on him and started shouting him down so that he couldn't even finish the sermon. He wasn't allowed to preach again, even though he'd planted the church! He got chased out of town by these people who only months before were thrilled to have him. How infuriating that must have been!

It would be hard not to see it as an abject failure. If you were part of some large corporate denomination that was paying you to establish a congregation in those areas, how would you justify the wasted expenses? How could you justify backing down? Would they be likely to send you elsewhere? How many depressing powerpoint slides would you have to create in order to convince them to try again elsewhere? How many armchair evangelists would have been critiquing your ministry, questioning your faith and your calling, and offering unsolicited advice?

And yet God did not give up on Paul's ministry. Paul continued to be sent to different places to reach different people, with varying levels of "success." From the human perspective of progress, where success is measured by salvation numbers, attendance, and finally consistent tithing, these attempts were failures. From a divine perspective of "cast the seeds and nurture what grows," however, they were a success. People found God and encountered the kingdom of God. They learned about Jesus, even amidst the destructive moral outrage of their fellow citizens.

But we never know what God is doing in the hearts of people we share with. And we can't always measure eternal success with popular modern metrics. The important thing is that we go where God sends us and do what we can. By those metrics, anything we do is going to be a success, whether we can see it or not.