Transforming Acts. Bruce G. Epperly

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      I believe that Acts of the Apostles provides a fluid, open-spirited, and holistic faith for twenty-first century people as well as a vision for congregational transformation and renewal. Anything can happen to those who follow Jesus. Life is adventurous, surprising, and interesting. Worship leads to mission and mission challenges narrow-mindedness and self-imposed limitations. For those who embrace the spirit of Acts of the Apostles, worship will never be boring and every day will be a holy adventure.

      Acts As A Twenty-First Century Gospel

      As I turn the pages of Acts of the Apostles, I am tempted to exclaim “It’s déjà vu all over again!” The world of the twenty-first century and the world of the first century look surprisingly similar. The author of Acts, most likely the author of the Gospel of Luke, was a keen observer of the spiritual landscape of his own time. As he pondered writing the sequel to his gospel account of Jesus’ life and ministry, I imagine that he saw God’s presence in the adventures of Jesus’ first followers as they journeyed into the Mediterranean world. I suspect that he experienced first-hand the pluralism, uncertainty, relativism, and change that characterized the first decades of the Jesus movement. He had been touched by Jesus and God’s Spirit in a way that joined Jewish wisdom, global mission, and mystical experience. He believed that God was alive and moving through our lives, guiding people through dreams, visions, and unexpected ecstatic experiences. He saw God’s hand in the ever-expanding circles of the Jesus movement, beginning at the Jerusalem Pentecost and embracing Rome and beyond. As he penned the manuscript we now know as Acts of the Apostles sometime between 70-80 CE, Luke believed that he was part of a never-ending story of divine call and human response, unhindered by ethnicity, geography, or sociology. He visualized a faith with a moving center, initially revolving around Jerusalem but eventually embracing the whole Earth. He might even have imagined Christians like us, centuries later, telling and retelling the stories of Jesus and he wanted to give us a glimpse of how a small group of people were able to transform the world.

      Luke saw the Jesus movement emerging in his own “postmodern” world, where old spiritual certainties were being challenged and people craved experiences of the divine to help them face the inevitabilities of aging and mortality. Consider the following descriptions of the first century Jesus movement as they relate to our own particular time. Do they seem familiar? Do they describe some of the challenges we face in our own pluralistic age? The technology differs, and so does our understanding of the universe and the nature of global communication, but we may have more in common with Jesus’ first followers than we previously imagined:

These are exciting, but ambiguous times, for active Christians and spiritual seekers alike. The future we planned on thirty years ago, maybe even five years ago, no longer exists – technologically, economically, globally, or spiritually – and we must make plans for surprising and emerging futures, not knowing where the paths ahead will take us. To some observers, we are on the edge of a Great Awakening, the emergence of a global Christianity, integrating the best spiritual practices and philosophical insights of other faith traditions, science, and non-Christian media and literature to form “a new kind of Christianity.” Following Bishop John Shelby Spong, they know that “Christianity must change or die.”2 In fact, there is no alternative: change happens and shapes our lives and faith traditions even when they deny or denounce it. In spite of the challenge and discomfort of change, our sense of disorientation may be good news, for it calls us to honor the past and venture creatively toward the future with Christ as our companion. Beyond disorientation and dislocation, surprises of grace await as we lean forward to new horizons of faithful adventure.

      Living in the Areopagus

In the mid 1970’s, when my teacher John Cobb penned his classic Christ in a Pluralistic Age, his vision of a growing Christianity, inclusive of multiple spiritual and theological paths was revolutionary.3 Today, Cobb’s imaginative vision has become commonplace, especially in urban areas and college communities. Peoples of all faiths and none at all are discovering that they live in a spiritual Areopagus, the marketplace of spiritual practices and competing religious systems. In the age of internet and cable television, this is just as true for Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Bozeman, Montana, Victoria, British Columbia, as it is in Manhattan or Washington DC. Not too long ago, peoples’ religious options were more or less limited to various varieties of Protestant, Catholic, or Jew. Even agnostics and atheists framed their objections to God’s existence in Jewish or Christian terms, and used the language of the Bible and theological reflection to challenge the existence of God and traditional moral standards

      In this second decade of the twenty-first century, many people feel comfortable sampling the varieties of spiritual delicacies available in the spiritual smorgasbord. The possibilities are almost endless for the religious adventurer. There are few signposts to help the pilgrim find her or his way.

      Despite its numerical, political, and historical advantages Christianity no longer can command the sole allegiance of twenty-first century persons but must compete on an even playing field with Scientology, A Course in Miracles, The Secret, the Dalai Lama, and Tai Chi.

      The spiritual landscape is rapidly changing and the congregations and religious institutions that expect to flourish in the future must make it up as they go along, embracing the flow of life and the fluidity of doctrines and spiritual practices while affirming the wisdom of their traditions and founders. Consider the following statistics on North American religion garnered by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: