The City in Acts: The Relevance of Paul’s Urban Mission for Luke's Purpose in Writing Acts

Abstract

In recent church planting movements, an emphasis on urban ministry has been justified in part by the claim that the missionary strategy of the early church, as exemplified in Paul's ministry in Acts, was to target large urban centres. This article tests the validity of that claim by exploring Luke's purposes in Acts and how his depictions of the cities in which Paul ministers relate to these ends. Luke's declared purpose is to provide certainty for the dedicatee, Theophilus (and, by extension, his predominantly urban, Gentile-background, Christian readers) regarding the Christian faith. Through an analysis of Luke's account of the ministry in Thessalonica it can be seen that Luke particularly emphasises the city as the locus of trial and persecution for believers, and as illustrative of a universal salvation given by God to the Jew first and also to the Greek. While it is likely that the time Paul spent in the cities he visited would have had a strategic value owing to their function as economic, cultural and political centres, Luke's interest does not lie primarily in this fact. The primary focus in his accounts of Paul's ministries in the various cities that he visited is rather on the way that the narrative of social-political conflict in response to the gospel and the inclusion of both Jews and Gentiles into one faith community would serve to provide certainty and assurance for his audience who may very well have been facing such trial and questioning their place in a religion with roots in Judaism.