Acts 16: 11-15 - Go where you know people are

Paul puts to sea from Troas heading into the unknown of Macedonia. From there he makes his way to Philippi, one of the major cities of the Macedonian region. This tactic of heading to the major cities is something we’ve already seen before. Antioch, the second centre of the church, was the Roman Empire’s third largest city, after Rome and Alexandria. It was thought to have a population of 600,000 in the first century. Jerusalem, on the other hand, was thought to have a population of 70,000. Antioch was 7.5 times bigger than Jerusalem.

That would make Jerusalem seem pretty small, but let’s put that into a modern perspective. The Third largest city in the world today is Shanghai with 25.5 million inhabitants. A comparative sized city to Jerusalem relatively would be a city with about 3.3 million inhabitants. That’s about the size of Tangshan, China. Not a huge city, compared to Shanghai, but still a decently sized city. The reason I link it to Tangshan rather than one in Europe of the same size (like Madrid) is that until I Googled it, I had never heard of Tangshan. And that was similar to Jerusalem. It was an out-of-the-way city in a corner of the empire.

Philippi is smaller again, 29% smaller than Jerusalem at 50,000 inhabitants, with roughly 20% of them being slaves. In today’s world that’s about a city just slightly smaller than modern day Rome. 

What’s the point? The point is that the early church went for the larger, well known population centres first. Philippi was the major city of its region, and it made complete sense that if you’re spreading the Gospel, the major cities are the places to start. Firstly, there’s more people in a concentrated area, that makes it much easier to spread the word quickly. That’s not to say that villages aren’t important, but they’re not densely populated, and cities have a gravitational pull from nearby towns and villages.

This has been echoed with some mega churches in the last few decades where they launch campuses is major cities around the world. It follows the same blueprint. If you’re spreading the Gospel, start in the large cities. If you start in a small city, expand to a large city, like an Antioch. I’m not suggesting that this was the Apostles’ design, and in the case of Antioch, it was organic growth that led to the Antioch church, but the Holy Spirit was orchestrating it, and therefore there must be some credence to it. I’m not suggesting this is always the right thing to do, but it’s a tried and tested method of reaching more people, and the large megachurches have shown this. I think this should at least give us caution before we criticise megachurches planting in big cities, it’s not necessarily ego-driven empire building. 

And this strategy echoes what the early church did in Jerusalem, they met where the crowds gathered, namely the temple. This meant that they were a visible presence in their city. Do you see the plan unfolding? Large urban centres, situated in densely populated areas of that city.

This leads to the second part of this passage. Paul goes outside the gates to the riverside. Why? It was the sabbath and there would be Jews going to pray. Paul immediately looks for a receptive crowd where he can gain momentum. And he gets success, a woman called Lydia.

This is a strange reversal of what you’d expect with setting up a church and reaching a city. What I’d expect is that Paul would go to somewhere where no-one would know God and try and find the hardest to reach people with the Gospel. We often write off trying to reach a receptive crowd as “reaching the faithful” where new churches pop up that reach people from other churches rather than new people. I agree that this can be an issue, but I think this overlooks the principle of momentum. Paul was clever with his strategy of reaching people that he knew would already worship God. This is the starting point that builds a solid base, and momentum grows from there to reach the harder-to-reach people.

I’ve also seen examples of churches starting and only trying to reach unreached people, and often this can stunt growth in the short term. I’ve heard pastors say things like, “We don’t want to reach people already in churches, we’re only for the unchurched.” And it sounds noble, but it’s a costly strategy. Why? You need momentum. It’s harder to get leaders if they’re recent converts, as Paul warns against in 1 Timothy 3:6.

We often underplay the role of momentum in a church. But when a church has momentum, it’s unstoppable. Paul’s moves here are ones that will bring about momentum in Philippi, and therefore the surrounding towns and villages.

Churches aren’t just for the big cities. But I think that there’s a cascading principle at work. Planting churches in larger regional centres will lead to planting in the surrounding towns. Churches planted then in towns will lead to planting in larger villages. It’s a cascading principle of large population centres to small.

So it's fine to reach people who already worship Jesus when you plant a church, that’s not failure. You’ll be helping people who maybe didn’t fit in another church to get plugged in and be effective in your church. Every church needs to get momentum to grow, and that starts with building a strong foundation of people who already worship Jesus.

Is your church lacking momentum? Perhaps you aren’t in the right place in your city? Perhaps you don’t have the foundation of leaders and elders? If that’s the case, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, to help you find momentum. He wants you to be reaching your city or village and beyond, he’ll give you the tools to achieve it.