Thomas J Parlette
“From Maintenance to Mission”
Acts 16: 9-15
5/25/25
“When God closes a door, God opens a window.”
It’s an old saying. Many people remember it from “The Sound of Music” when Maria is leaving the convent to go to work as a nanny for the Von Trapp family. They also assume it’s in the Bible somewhere, like in Proverbs – but no, it’s not in the Bible. It’s one of those inspirational sayings that you may have found to be true in your own life.
The apostle Paul had some experience with those words of wisdom. As a prologue to today’s reading, Paul was traveling with his associates, Timothy and Silas, through the land mass known as Asia Minor – better known today as Turkey. They began in Antioch, located on the Mediterranean, right where present-day Syria and Turkey come together – and worked their way up, in a zig-zag pattern towards the northwest corner.
The church in those Greek colonial cities was growing like nobody’s business. Paul and his companions were confident that they were part of something much bigger than themselves.
But then the old formula stopped working. What they had always done, was not working anymore. No one knows what exactly led them to think this, but their forward progress stopped. Luke simply tells us they’ve “been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.”
Now Asia was not the vast continent that most people think of today. Back then, it was the name of a Roman province that covered the southwestern part of Turkey. That’s it. Not really the size of Asia we think of today.
Before this phase of their journey, Paul and company headed to the region in central Turkey known as Galatia, and from there to the adjacent region of Phrygia. It would seem logical that their next destination should have been the province of Bithynia, which covered the northern coast of Turkey.
But Luke says, “they attempted to go into Bithynia – but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.”
Not allow them? What does that mean? And how did they know it was the Spirit of Jesus? How does the Holy Spirit speak, anyway? Does it mean all three of them got the willies at the same time when they got close to the border? Did someone have a dream or a vision? Did they get to the border, only to find the road was under construction – like what happens almost weekly here in Rochester? Did they run out of money? I don’t know – Nobody knows. The bottom line was that a door had closed, and all they could do was look for an open window.
So, they decided to wait in the port city of Troas on the Aegean Sea, near the site of the ancient city of Troy.
It wasn’t long before the Holy Spirit was back in touch. Paul had a dream in which he saw a man from Macedonia, which is part of northern Greece, urging them to “come over to Macedonia and help us.”
That may sound simple enough, but in that day and age it was anything but. You couldn’t walk from Macedonia to Turkey. You had to get on a ship and cross the sea.
Any voyage at sea was risky. You were at the mercy of the mysterious waters whenever you undertook a journey. Magnetic compasses hadn’t been invented yet and no one had heard of a sextant for measuring precise distancing. Greek and Roman ship captains relied on their experience to make an educated guess when it came to navigation.
If conditions were clear, ship captains could usually find their way. But give them a day or two of fog, overcast skies or storms, and they would often have no idea where they were. Many ships back then set sail never to be heard from again.
So when Paul had this vision of a Macedonian man saying, “Come over and help us,” He, Silas and Timothy did not take the decision lightly. But they go. They go because the Holy Spirit had somehow closed off the land route. And the great commission from Jesus was to go and make disciples of all nations was still ringing in their ears.
In the first verse of today’s text, we learn that Paul and his companions have completed their arduous ocean voyage. They arrived in the port of Philippi, one of the major cities of Macedonia.
In Philippi, Paul changes his usual pattern. In most cities he has visited, he starts his preaching and teaching in the synagogue. A natural destination for a Christian evangelist in that era. The followers of the Way were still part of Judaism. The synagogues were the center of Jewish life. It was there that the Jews worshiped, studied the scriptures and debated questions of faith. It was out of the synagogues that the early Christians formed their first communities.
But instead of the local synagogue, Paul apparently goes somewhere else. Acts tells us that Paul visits a certain spot along the banks of a river – a location described as “a place of prayer.”
What is this place exactly? It appears that it was a gathering place for people who weren’t comfortable in the synagogue or didn’t feel fully welcomed there. These people were known as “God-fearers.”
The God-fearers weren’t born as Jews. Somehow, as adults, they’d developed an interest in the Jewish religion. The God-fearers were Greeks for the most part, but the men among them could never fully convert to Judaism unless they underwent circumcision – a painful and risky procedure for adults. They and their families took an easier path by remaining on the fringes of the Jewish community.
One of those fringes was the place of prayer by the river. The message of Paul and his companions had immediate appeal to the people who habitually gathered in that informal worship place. A great many members of the early church came from this Greek-speaking group. Jesus’ message of love triumphing over legalism spoke to their deepest spiritual yearnings.
In that place by the river, Paul encounters a woman who will prove very important to him. She goes by the Gentile name of Lydia. She comes from Thyatira, a city in the region of northwestern Turkey that Paul has just left. Lydia, it seems, has settled in Philippi as a foreigner living in that city.
Lydia is an independent businesswoman, “a dealer in purple cloth,” as the Book of Acts describes her. Her original home of Thyatira was noted as a center for the manufacture of purple dye. Purple dye was the most expensive color of the day. It came from the lining of a rare seashell and was costly and difficult to produce. Only the wealthy could afford to wear purple clothing. So, we can assume that Lydia was well-connected, both because she could get her hands on purple dye, and she catered to some of the wealthiest people in town. She may have been a member of the wealthy class herself, or at the very least, she was used to trading with the rich and famous.
The equivalent today might be the owner of a Rolls Royce dealership. You don’t need to sell a lot of cars to make a boatload of money – you just need to find and cater to the right people. This made Lydia a very influential person in Philippi.
Paul was pretty shrewd character. He makes Lydia a leader in the Philippian church, knowing she’s got a great list of contacts around town. Lydia responds to Paul’s confidence in her by inviting him and his fellow travelers to take up lodging in her home. That house will soon become the center of the Christian community in Philippi – and it all comes together because Paul goes looking for converts in unusual places. Not in the synagogues, as he usually does, but down along the banks of a river.
Many churches, such as ours, have lovely stained glass windows that fill their sanctuaries with beautiful glowing light. As lovely as they are, there is a problem with stained glass windows – they don’t let you see out.
It’s symbolic of a problem that some long-established churches have. After many years – perhaps even generations – of encountering God within their sanctuary walls, they come to associate spiritual life with this sacred space. They forget what Acts says about the place by the river and the meaningful encounters that happen in that open-air setting. Far from following Jesus’ command to go and make disciples of all nations, too many congregations are more comfortable saying to all nations, “Stop by sometime and join us. The door is open!” Then they sit and wait, wondering why so few who are different from them cross the threshold.
The challenge for today’s congregations is how to move beyond maintenance – simply keeping things as they are – and into mission. Harold Percy, in his book Good News People: An Introduction to Evangelism for Tongue-Tied People, came up with some points of comparison between these two types of churches:
In measuring effectiveness, the maintenance congregation typically asks, “How many pastoral visits are being made? The mission congregation asks, “How many disciples are being made?”
. When contemplating some form of change, the maintenance congregation says, “If this new project proves upsetting to any of our members, we won’t do it.” The mission congregation says, “If this will help us reach someone on the outside, how can we NOT do it.”
3. When thinking about change, the majority of members in a maintenance congregation ask, “How is this change going to affect me?” The majority of members in the mission congregation ask, “Will this change increase our ability to reach those outside our walls?”
4. When trying to articulate its vision for ministry, the maintenance congregation declares, “We have to be faithful to our past.” The mission congregation says, “We have to faithful to our future.”
. When thinking about growth, the maintenance congregation asks, “How many people of our denomination live within 20 minutes of our church.” The mission congregation asks, “How many people that don’t go to church at all live within 20 minutes of our church.
. The maintenance congregation looks at the community and asks, “How can we get these people to support our congregation? The mission congregation asks, “How can the church support these people?”. The maintenance congregation burns a lot of energy thinking about how to save their congregation. The mission congregation spends its energy thinking about how to reach the world. (1)
I know – that’s a challenging list. But that’s what happens when you venture into new territory, like Paul and his traveling buddies did down by the river in Philippi. The new territory before us involves asking the question – “How can we move from maintenance to mission.”
Are we in the Church business, primarily concerned with self-preservation as an institution.
Or are we in the Christianity business – looking to support disciples seeking to grow in their faith.
May God be with us as we seek to answer that question.
Amen.
1. Harold Percy, Good News People: An Introduction to Evangelism for Tongue-Tied People (Forward Movement Publications, 1996.)