Reading through the first five chapters of Acts recently I took note of some of the repeated themes and concepts…
-prayer
-Scripture
-the Kingdom of God
-the resurrection of Jesus
-commonality/generosity among the believers
-a call to repentance
-addition of numbers
-teaching (mostly spontaneous)
-courage and boldness
But the most repeated words/concepts were:
-Holy Spirit (a gift of)
-Witness(es)
-Jesus
-chaos (i.e. words such bewildered, amazed, awe, astonised, perplexed, wonder, questions, great fear, etc)
It makes me wonder: are these repeated words, themes and concepts in my own life? my leadership? my preaching? our faith community? If not, it most certainly should be…
I have been particularly struck by the concept of chaos and surprise in the first church, rather than order and predictability. Hmmmmm…. I am not sure what to make of it.
More on this on a future blog post…