1. Witnessing to all by all means Sharing Jesus in our Communities
Opportunity Pasifika
Witnessing to all by all means
Sharing Jesus in our Communities
Acts 17:16-23

2. The Big Picture
It’s clear from Scripture that we worship a God who has a mission to redeem his world.
Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Matthew 28;18-20 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

3. ‘The Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of the whole of God’s creation…Mission is not just one of a list of things that the Bible happens to talk about, only a bit more urgently than some. Mission is in that much abused phrase ‘what it’s all about.’”
The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative by Chris Wright
Within God’s mission, we also see clearly in Scripture that God calls a group of people, the church, out of this world in order to join with him on that mission. It’s not that the church has a mission, but rather that God’s mission has a church. The church is “God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9 NRSV) “called out of darkness into his marvellous light” and that they were “once not a people but now… (are) God’s people” (1 Peter 2:9, 10).

4. Three principles from Paul’s practice
Acts 17:16-23
A model for our engagement with our communities as people who can make a world of difference.

5. Acts 17:16-33
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.
A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.

6. Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.  For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.  And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.  God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.  ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.

7. “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member o’f the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

8. 1. The Motive …what do you see
seeing the situation
….he was greatly distressed to see …v 16
and knowing what is available
Remember that at that time you were…without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace. Ephesians 2:12-14

9. Approximate Percentages
Followers of Jesus
Approximate Percentages

10. 2. The Method …what do you do?
We need to be with people to be able to share the hope that Jesus promises.
so he reasoned in the synagogue.. as well as in the marketplace….. a meeting of the Areopagus vs 17, 22
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. John 1:14

11. 3. The message … what do you say
- being sensitive to the others context
I.. looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god….v23
As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, v28
I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. 1 Cor 9:22

12. 3. This encounter guides in contextualising the gospel among people of different religious traditions and spiritualties.
His attitude:
Don’t condemn pagans and their religious and philosophical beliefs; however flawed, they bear the marks of God’s grace. He looks for points of intersection with Christian truth in their religion/philosophy.
His approach:
Careful preparation of the ground – dialoguing with them in the agora or marketplace. His speech begins by affirming common experience (God’s creation and general revelation).
His answer:
They don’t need to worship out of fear or create gods of their own. The definitive answer to their fear, religious ignorance and absence of hope? The gospel of the resurrected Christ.

13. ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
Romans 10:13-15
‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’