Is Acts a Missionary Manual? How the Apostles’ Practice Shapes Our Own – Matt Bennett

ABSTRACT: How does the book of Acts apply to modern missions? By examining first what Acts is (theological narrative history) and what it is for (to encourage the church in bearing witness to the gospel in the whole world), we see that Acts does not offer a missionary manual, but it does provide principles and patterns that inform how the church pursues its mission. Among other principles, Acts reveals that the gospel must be defined by Scripture, the work of missions aims at God’s glory in local churches, and the scope of the task is global.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Matt Bennett (PhD, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary), associate professor of missions and theology at Cedarville University, to explain how the book of Acts informs contemporary missions practice.

In both the academy and among practitioners, discussion abounds concerning how to apply the book of Acts to modern missions. One of the most common ways Acts is used in missional discussions is to cite biblical examples — at times presenting them as biblical commands — and use them to endorse certain methodologies.1 An understandable desire to see many “added to their number day by day” has led some missionary communities to read Acts to discover ministry patterns that might unlock the same type of fruitfulness today.2 However, using citations of Acts to bolster claims related to methodology is different from understanding what Acts intends to tell us.

In this essay, I hope to draw together the scholarly and practical discussions to answer a question many missionaries ask: What role does Acts play in charting a course for contemporary missionaries? In short, I will attempt to argue that Acts is not primarily given to us for the purpose of providing a missionary playbook or model.3 However, this does not mean that Acts does not contribute to our understanding of the missionary task. Acts offers patterns and precedents (elsewhere reinforced by teaching and command) that can inform contemporary missionaries on the core aspects of their task. These patterns and precedents can then shape the methods and strategies we produce.

Admittedly, it is an ambitious task to address this question in a single essay. Acknowledging the limitations of scope and my own expertise, I gratefully draw on the work of many other scholars who have helpfully worked through the many knotty questions that Acts presents to contemporary readers. We will consider some of the exegetical questions that provide an orientation to Acts prior to addressing what can be learned for contemporary missions strategy.

1. Understanding Acts as Christian Scripture

All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for equipping us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16–17). As Scripture, Acts forms part of God’s revelation for the purpose of knowing him and being equipped to live before him in his world. To understand how Acts contributes to this purpose, we need to consider how it fits within the canon of Scripture and what it is intended to teach us.

One of the first issues that many commentaries on Acts rightly wrestle with is the book’s genre and purpose. The nature of the book should shape how we interpret and use it. Robert Plummer summarizes this exegetical principle: “The accurate determination of the genre of a work is essential to its proper interpretation.”4 Kevin Vanhoozer puts an even sharper point on this claim, warning that if interpreters fail to consider the genre, we are likely to read our own presuppositions into the text:

Genres are communicative practices, rule-governed literary forms that authors employ to engage reality and interact intelligibly with others. Interpreters who want to do more than read their own ideas into the text do well to discover the conventions that govern a particular literary practice.5

Therefore, as we seek to understand the book of Acts, we begin our interpretive work not only by affirming that it is Scripture but by determining what type of Scripture it is.

Scholarship on Acts places the book in a diversity of genres, from ecclesiastical history6 to Hellenistic intellectual biography7 to historical fiction8 to apologetic historiography.9 Furthermore, the diverse manner in which missionaries come to utilize Acts demonstrates an underlying disagreement relative to the book’s genre and purpose in the discipline of applied theology and missions.10 We would do well to familiarize ourselves with some of the controversy prior to making our own assessment of what kind of a book Acts proves to be.

Genre: A Contested Question

While few agree on the fine-grained points of Luke’s purpose and genre, this does not mean the genre and purpose are undetectable.11 We can learn about Luke’s compositional habits from his two-volume work in order to discern what kind of material he understands himself to be writing and what he is most concerned to say.12

In fact, the intentional binding together of Luke and Acts is most obvious within the introductions of both books. Apparently commissioned by a benefactor named Theophilus, Luke reports that he has written two volumes chronicling the history of Jesus’s ministry. He identifies the first volume as his record of “an orderly account” of what Christ accomplished amid many witnesses (Luke 1:1–4). The second volume, Acts, continues in the genre of historical narrative, recording what Jesus continues to do and teach through the church and his Spirit-filled disciples (Acts 1:1–3).13 Assessing both books under Luke’s clear purpose statement helps answer the question about what type of book Acts is: an orderly account to confirm what Theophilus has been taught about Christ and redemptive history.

This means that, at the general level, Acts is self-consciously historical and confessional; thus, it belongs to the genre of theological narrative history.14 But if we are to take the next step to understanding why Luke has written his history in the way he did, we need to consider how he has constructed it.

Purpose: Textual and Thematic Clues

When interpreting both Luke and Acts as Scripture in the genre of theological narrative history, we must take note of how Luke has constructed his orderly account. Commentators have pointed out that the parallel arrangement of material between the volumes seems intentionally designed to demonstrate Christ’s ministry and then echo it in the work of his witnesses — specifically Peter and Paul.15 In so doing, Luke seems keen to argue that redemptive history marches on in ways that fulfill and extend God’s covenant promises established within the Hebrew Bible.

Both volumes clearly demonstrate both that the gospel is the climax of the mission of Israel’s God and that the church bearing witness to the gospel continues that mission (cf. Luke 24:25–27, 44–49; Acts 2:14–36; 7:1–53). This intentionality is declared in speeches and demonstrated through common citations of Scripture. For instance, in Luke 2:32, Jesus is portrayed as being the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that God would provide a light to the Gentiles and bring salvation to the ends of the earth (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6). Luke applies the same passage to Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:47). Likewise, Jesus’s citation of Psalm 31:5 from the cross, entrusting his Spirit to the Father, is echoed by Stephen at his death as he commits his spirit into Christ’s hands (Luke 23:46; Acts 7:59). The similarities, of course, should not blur the lines between the divine Lord and his disciples.16 Still, there is direct, intentional correlation between what Christ accomplished and his ongoing ministry through the apostles.

In addition to these textual parallels, there is also a parallel between Jesus’s focus on the ends of the earth at the beginning and conclusion of Luke (Luke 2:32; 24:47), the commission of Acts (Acts 1:8), and Paul’s argument that the Gentiles will hear at the end of Acts (Acts 28:28).17 Not only does the “end of the earth” signal the geographic scope of the church’s mission; it also clearly indicates the transcultural nature of a global gospel that includes believing Jews and Gentiles (see Acts 10, 11, 15).

Structure: Speeches as Structural Explanation

In addition to these thematic parallels, Luke provides some of the most important structural clues to his purpose by embedding explanatory speeches throughout Acts.18 This feature is highlighted by Michael Shepherd, who writes, “The major speeches in the book of Acts function like the poems of the Pentateuch, the speeches of the Former Prophets, and the discourses of Matthew to explain the narratives they accompany.”19 By using speeches to interpret narrative, Luke employs a common literary technique used in Greek and Roman histories to interject clarifying insight from the perspective of the figures within their historical accounts.20

These speeches — constituting nearly thirty percent of the text of Acts — are where Luke includes “the theological meat of Acts.”21 Consistently, the speeches demonstrate that Israel’s Scriptures are fulfilled in the person and work of Christ and in his people, who are now gathered in local churches of believers.22 Because most of the significant speeches are directed to primarily Jewish audiences, I. Howard Marshall concludes that Luke’s aim “is to show how the church, composed of Jews and Gentiles, stands in continuity with Judaism.”23 Of course, part of the demonstration of this claim is the expansion of this message to the ends of the earth. And that is both what Luke details in his account and where he leaves Paul, preaching the gospel unhindered in Acts 28:30–31.24

Conclusion: Exegetically Defended, Church-Shaped Theological History

Summing up what we have seen, we may conclude that Acts is theological narrative history structured around Christ’s promise to make his apostles his witnesses to all peoples in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. By its intentional references to Israel’s story and Scriptures interpreted in Christ and extended through the church, Acts celebrates God’s sovereign faithfulness to fulfill Christ’s promise (Acts 1:8) and command (Matthew 28:18–20) both geographically and across the Jew-Gentile line of division.

Having established what Acts is, we are now prepared to address the question that contemporary missionaries rightly ask: How does Acts, as Christian Scripture, serve me in my responsibility to pursue missions until Christ returns?

2. Using Acts in Christian Ministry

These questions related to the genre and purpose of Acts are not merely academic curiosities. They shape how we interpret and use Acts today.25 We cannot be satisfied to cite a proof-text from Acts and declare our proposal to be biblical if we have not attended to Luke’s authorial purpose, which is at least in part determined by the genre and structure of the book as a whole. Indeed, the book itself confirms that aspects of its reports are not to be normative, expected, and extended into the practice of later church life.26 Yet there remains disagreement on what should be expected as normative and what is reported as description of unique events.27 So, how should contemporary readers interpret and understand Acts?

We have seen that Acts reports real history for the purpose of demonstrating that the new-covenant people composed of all nations continue the story and promises contained in the Hebrew Scriptures. As Acts advances the storyline of Scripture, it serves the New Testament in ways not dissimilar to how Joshua advances the teaching of the Old Testament. Whereas the Pentateuch was given to establish God’s people, God’s law, and God’s land of promise, Joshua provides a narrative chock-full of evidence that the God who promised this land would also deliver it. It narrates clearly unrepeatable events, such as the taking of Jericho and the defeat of the Amorites under a stand-still sun, to emphasize the sovereign and providential fulfillment of God’s covenant promises. And it emphasizes ways that the people lived out their covenant expectations (Joshua 1:16–18; 3:5–17; 6:15–21; 11:23) and ways that they failed (Joshua 7:16–26; 16:10). As historical narrative, it does not present itself as a book to be studied and applied as a manual for warfare techniques or leadership principles. Instead, it is clearly tethered to the Pentateuch and its covenant demands, blessings, and curses, showing that what God said he would do is in fact what he has done.

Acts provides a similar connection to the rest of the New Testament. Bridging the fourfold Gospel account and the letters of the New Testament, Acts provides a historical narrative interlaced with exegetical defense of the fact that God sovereignly directs the fulfillment of his promises.28 As a continuation of the four Gospels, it extends the historical narrative about the Messiah into the post-ascension stage of his ongoing ministry in the church by the Spirit. Luke validates this ministry through parallels with Jesus’s ministry and exegetical defense of the church as the inheritors of God’s mission and covenant promises.29

In answer to our question posed above, then, there is no internal reason for us to receive Acts as if it is intended to be a missionary handbook. The question remains, however, whether it is still legitimate to read Acts as a manual for missions after having recognized Luke’s primary intent. Our final section will seek to address this question briefly.

3. How Does Acts Inform Modern Missions?

Acknowledging that Luke gives no indication that he is self-consciously writing a playbook for modern missions does not automatically mean it cannot be used as such. However, upon closer inspection, there are multiple reasons why reading Acts as such cannot be done consistently. We might demonstrate this by considering whether Paul’s ministry is recorded as a model for subsequent missionaries to follow.

Paul’s Variegated Ministry

Since Paul is the apostle most clearly associated with mission among the Gentiles, and since his ministry seems to cover the greatest geographical expanse, it is understandable that missionary readers of Acts would wonder if his ministry offers the model for ours. Yet upon reading about Paul’s ministry (Acts 9–28), it becomes apparent that Luke intends to record what Paul did more than to prescribe what we should do. I will restrict myself to three observations.30

First, the fact that Paul is an apostle, called into this specific service by Christ, who appeared to him and authorized him to be his messenger to the Gentiles, sets him apart from contemporary missionaries.31 He also serves as an apostle in a transitional and non-normative time in the life of the church.32

Second, Paul’s responses to various circumstances are not uniform enough to detect a universal methodology. For example, in some places Paul seeks to remain despite persecution and imprisonment; in others, he departs to escape it (cf. Acts 14:19–22; 16:16–40; 17:1–15). Sometimes he evangelizes where the gospel has not been proclaimed; other times he explicitly chooses to move on from an open door among the unreached (2 Corinthians 2:12–13).33 Likewise, while Paul preaches in some of the cities he travels through (Acts 13:51–14:7), he passes by others without stopping (Acts 14:24; 16:8). Sometimes he leaves his traveling companions behind (Acts 17:14); other times he brings coworkers on his forward journey (Acts 18:18). There are many details of Paul’s ministry that are not patterned or even mutually exclusive. This variety reinforces the idea that Luke is not writing his account with a view to leaving his readers missionary instructions.

Third, one of the most important strategic decisions missionaries make is how long to remain in a specific location. One needs to know when disciples and churches are not yet mature enough to stand on their own and when departure is wise and beneficial for their development. However, when we look to Paul, we do not have many indications of what he would have considered “enough time” in a specific location because he was almost always forced out by persecution.34 Therefore, to make statements related to an ideal pace for contemporary missions based on Paul’s ministry seems quite misguided.35

Acts is not a missionary manual, and Luke does not present Paul as the model missionary whose tactics can be extracted from the narrative and employed in contemporary missions. As Vickers argues, “Reading the narrative of Acts is more — far more — than a stripping away of the historical events in Luke’s stories in order to find a kernel of eternal truth or abstract points of theology and practice.”36

Does Luke’s Record Provide Patterns We Can Follow?

Despite this, we need not conclude that there is nothing contemporary missionaries can glean from Acts and apply to their ministry. There are commonalities that are reinforced both by Luke’s structure and by Paul’s pattern that can provide key insights into the missionary task in general. Indeed, Paul puts forward elements of his life as a pattern for ministry as he instructs the Corinthians to follow him as he follows Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1; cf. Philippians 4:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:4–6).

Eckhard Schnabel indicates his confidence that, in observing Paul’s ministry, we might not detect a well-defined strategy that we are supposed to employ today, but we can discern “a flexible modus operandi” that can inform our understanding of the missionary task.37 Schnabel highlights several overarching patterns that inform Paul’s ministry. Perhaps more important than observing these patterns in Acts, however, one can demonstrate through Paul’s letters that these patterns are intentionally taught or instructed. I will restrict myself to three observations as an invitation to observe and connect others.

THE GOSPEL PROCLAIMED IS DEFINED BY THE SCRIPTURES

First, Paul and the others we see serving as witnesses in Acts regularly ground their teaching in the biblical material of the Hebrew Bible.38 Even among those who were predominantly Gentiles, the gospel proclamation was saturated with biblical themes and drove toward biblical content.39 As Schnabel concludes, despite the contextual pre-evangelism Paul employed in various scenarios, “he did not allow his audiences to determine the terms in which he proclaims the gospel. . . . The paradigm and the principles of Paul’s missionary preaching suggest that the question is not what people want but what God has revealed in Jesus Christ.”40

The speeches throughout Acts especially highlight how the Hebrew Scriptures were fulfilled in Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. This reinforces both the hermeneutical intent of the book and establishes a pattern where the gospel is to be delivered in accordance with the Scriptures (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:1–5). For modern-day missionaries, the proclamation of the one true gospel, grounded in the old-covenant promises that are fulfilled in Christ, must be central to their ministry if it is to follow the biblical precedent, description, and command (cf. Galatians 1:6–9).41

THE AIM OF THE TASK IS GOD’S GLORY IN LOCAL CHURCHES

Second, church planting and strengthening defines the missionary work of Paul and his companions. Acts reports that the evangelism of the apostles resulted in disciples who were gathered into local churches for continued growth and development toward maturity (e.g., Acts 14:23; 15:41; 16:5; 20:17–35). Paul’s epistles reinforce this church-shaped mission (1 Timothy 3:14–15; Titus 1:5; Ephesians 3:20–21). The local church, composed of believers from both Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds, is the locus of God’s revelation of his manifold wisdom (Ephesians 3:10).

For Paul, local churches are a substantive display of the power of the gospel not only to create but also to mature disciples in unity. Again, Schnabel comments that, following Paul, contemporary church planting should not cater to human preferences by creating homogeneous pockets of culturally comfortable and accommodated believers.

For Paul the reality of authentic communities of followers of Jesus is not governed by the perceived needs of seekers that need to be met by activities they choose for themselves at the time of their convenience. The concept of the unity of the local church, so emphatically emphasized by Paul as a nonnegotiable principle (1 Corinthians 12:12–26; Ephesians 2:11–22), is also formulated as a rule (1 Corinthians 1:10; Philippians 2:2, 5; 3:15) that exposes such suggestions as destructive.42

In other words, the goal of missionary labor is to gather new converts into churches that will not merely highlight the norms or cultural customs of their context but will create a unifying set of core beliefs, practices, and ethics aimed at glorifying God. This leads to a third principle we see characterized in the pattern of ministry in Acts and reinforced by direct injunction in the Epistles: unity across diversity.

THE SCOPE OF THE TASK IS UNIVERSAL

As Acts ends with Paul in prison, we see that the gospel continues to go forward. In fact, the last word Luke records in his two-volume account invites us to see that the word will advance “unhindered” (Acts 28:31). As Jeremy Kimble and Ched Spellman state, “Acts is designed to convince readers that though Paul is under house arrest in Rome, the gospel message will continue across geographic, ethnic, and temporal boundaries.”43

The geographic boundaries set by Acts 1:8 have been demonstrably overcome; the remainder of the world will prove no more impermeable. In addition, Paul’s labors across the Jew-Gentile barrier have also proven fruitful as the church at large has recognized that Jewish and Gentile believers are rightly brothers in Christ (cf. Acts 15:23). When the gospel is believed, converted sinners are joined inextricably to the universal church and naturally belong in local churches irrespective of the former cultural barriers that threatened to separate them (Galatians 2:1–21). Therefore, Acts and the rest of the New Testament demonstrate the belief that the missionary task is unhindered by geographical and cultural boundaries as it continues to the end of the age through the planting of churches composed of believers of all backgrounds.44

Patterns, Not Playbook

As we conclude our thoughts on Luke’s second volume to Theophilus and the church, we do well to remind ourselves that we need to hear him saying what he intends to say and how he intends to say it. We can conclude with Vickers that “there is plenty of eternal truth, theology, and practical teaching in Acts, but we need to respect that in Acts, God willed to give us a story. If God thought it right to give us a story, who are we to argue?”45

Let us not treat Acts as if God gave us a story ill-suited to its purpose as a playbook. Let us not try to disassemble this glorious testament to God’s providential work in redemptive history in order to justify our methods or treat God’s word as if it came to us in a form unfit to its purpose. Rather, practicing care in the reading, interpretation, and application of God’s word, may we take up the task given by our risen Lord to his disciples in every age: “Be my witnesses . . . to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

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