Acts 16:16- 40 – The Strategic Advantage of Orthodoxy

Paul remains in Philippi and as part of his usual activity of going to the place of prayer by the river just outside the city, Paul encounters a fortune-telling slave girl. After the Paul gets annoyed enough, he casts a demon out of the girl, and the slave girl’s owners get mad. This poor girl was a source of income for the slave owners.

The owners drag Paul and Silas in front of the magistrates and say, “they are creating a disturbance in our city. They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.”

I find it fascinating that the slave owners don’t use loss of income as the means for prosecution, but they go straight for the teachings of Paul and Silas. They accuse Paul of advocating for unacceptable customs.

‘Advocate’ is the key word here. In the Greek the word is kataggéllṓ̄, meaning to tell or declare. In this context to declare plainly, openly, or aloud.

This phrase feels like it is still alive and well in the 21^st Century. I can almost hear the world saying, “The Church advocates customs that are not acceptable for Westerners.”

Indeed, a 2016 study by Barna showed that nearly half of non-religious adults in America perceive Christianity to be extremist.

80% of adults considered one aspect of what it means to be “very” or “somewhat” extreme as refusing to serve someone because the customer’s lifestyle conflicts with their beliefs. This brings to mind the 2014 Case in Northern Ireland where a Bakery declined an order from a gay rights activist.

More striking however is that between 50 and 79% of people believed activities such as “attempting to convert others to your faith”, “praying out loud for a stranger” or “believing that sexual relationships between people of the same sex being morally wrong” are also signs of extremism.

This study shows the activities people do, but from this passage in Acts, we know that the world sees what we do as a reflection of what we’ve been taught.

What do you teach?

The things that people in the Barna study described as extremism is in line with orthodoxy, that is, adhering to the doctrines believed by the early Christians. Sharing your faith, praying for strangers and a rejection of homosexual behaviour all fit under the category of orthodoxy.

However, when we consider this passage in Acts, should we be surprised?

Orthodoxy is a narrow road to walk, and even the Apostle Paul wound up in trouble for it. I think there is a strong temptation in our churches to water down what we believe in order to make ourselves or palatable to the people we seek to reach.

However, this is a mistake.

Consider this chart below. This reflects the churches growth compared to its belief in Same Sex Marriage (SSM).

Source: Churchmodel.org.uk

The orthodox position stands opposed to SSM and as you can see, all churches growing are opposed to it, whereas churches that have considered or have adopted SSM are in decline. Is this correlation or causation? I don’t think that a view on SSM is the cause of church decline, however, I do believe that churches holding to a broad orthodox position is something that is a cause of church growth.

Why would I suggest that? When the church looks, acts, and believes like the world, we don’t stand out. We become an ‘unholy’ church. I use the word ‘unholy’ in the sense of being ‘set apart’. The church was supposed to be different. It was supposed to believe different things to the world. And the fact is that the world sees it as well.

Historian Tom Holland put it well in a tweet from 2020, “The problem for the churches is that in a way they've been too successful. Their doctrines of compassion for the sick & poor have been nationalised. As a result, unless they focus on the weird stuff that is their USP but which they seem embarrassed by, they face redundancy.”

What we believe is weird compared to the world, it is extreme… so let’s own it. Not in a way that is violent or hate-filled, but in a way that Paul the Apostle would be proud of. Let’s let our teaching be overt so that it even causes uproar. Why not? What’s the alternative? Mediocrity? Redundancy? The slow descent of decline and eventual death of the church?

Church strategy has too long focused on how we can make things less weird, but the strategy of Acts was to “advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.” It was seen as weird, but we know that the church, including in Philippi, grew exponentially. So much so that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire 264 years after the events in this passage.

We hold to orthodoxy first and foremost because it is true. But at the same time, perhaps it’s our greatest strategic advantage?