Br. Jamie Nelson

Acts 18:23-28

Today’s reading from the eighteenth chapter of Acts paints a vivid picture of the networks of relationship by which early Christian communities grew and developed, and invites us to think about how we embody that growth today.

It is easy for us present-day humans to get access to basically everything we might want to know about being Christian. We have Bibles at our fingertips, which collect the teachings of Jesus and stories about his early followers. We can easily look up the history of the Christian tradition and find out what two millennia of scholars have taught about matters of doctrine.

That was not so for the early followers of Jesus. Their growth in faith came out of relationships, not from mass-market published books or YouTube videos by popular influencers. It was person-to-person human connection and mentorship that fed the growth of first-century Christianity.

We see this play out in Acts 18, where we meet Apollos, a man of passionate faith and a desire to preach in the Christian gatherings of the city of Ephesus. Apollos is mentioned briefly in the New Testament, both here and in Paul’s letters. However, we never hear from him in his own words.

Originally from the Jewish community of Alexandria, somewhere along Apollos’s journey from Mediterranean city to city he had learned about Jesus of Nazareth and come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He had also learned about the baptisms that John conducted in the Jordan River, perhaps even having undergone the ritual himself.

However, he had not learned about something that other Christians in Ephesus knew about, even if they had not been present when it first happened: the day of Pentecost and the enduring power of the Holy Spirit. I do not blame Apollos. He did not have issues of Christianity Today to read, or a monastery ordo to ground him in the traditions of the church year. He just had his own life experience of following Jesus to preach from, and by all accounts he did a good job at it.

So Paul’s colleagues Priscilla and Aquila took him aside. They privately shared with him the miraculous events at the harvest festival of Pentecost in Jerusalem, when the Holy Spirit had descended upon a group of Jesus’s followers with a sound like a mighty wind, with divided tongues of fire resting on each person, enabling them to preach the gospel in many languages.

Priscilla and Aquila did not shame Apollos or tell people not to listen to him because he had not heard the whole story. They recognized his giftedness and his potential and were committed to his growth and development as an evangelist. They saw Apollos as someone to mentor, not as their competition or an upstart to put in his place.

And we do not hear about any pushback from Apollos. He does not seem to have been defensive or threatened by learning that his message was incomplete, and he definitely does not quit preaching the gospel.

Instead, after receiving guidance, he is sent to preach in another region, Achaea, three hundred miles away by sea, with the full support of the Ephesian church. We hear that his work there made a considerable impact in those churches, which the Apostle Paul later summed up by saying, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6).

In our modern-day context, we often feel pressure in our work lives to appear polished, certain, and fully informed. But today’s reading reminds us that it does not have to be that way in our lives of faith.

We can be talented, effective, and still have many things to learn. We do not need to have it all perfectly figured out to begin. Instead, we can remain open to learning and growing, and look for God’s grace to be revealed through networks of relationship.