The Story of the American Church

Some of the Christian's most treasured documents are the writings of St. Luke. Because of his incredibly meticulous eye and his dedication to finding the truth, his gospel account and his remarkable work reporting the first years of the Christian church are quite key to understanding this movement that is still happening in the present day.

Luke's gospel is profound and strangely detailed, but Acts of the Apostles is unbelievably unique. It is the most linguistically complex document we have through the entire Bible. Much of the Holy Scriptures are well-written, seeing as they were penned by scholars, kings, teachers, prophets, and other educated historians of the time - and then others are written in the barely readable hand of fishermen or uneducated blacksmiths.

Luke is distinct amongst all of these. The original documented language is mind boggling. During my studies in Greek, we championed and translated Mark's account of the gospel, which was difficult for me. However, when Dr. Wheeler took us over in our Greek New Testament's to Luke's account of the first Acts of the Apostles, we were dumbfounded. Rarely do you see such attention to detail; perfect conjugation, excellent consistency, and astounding vocabulary. Many words Luke uses in Acts are not seen anywhere else in the Christian scriptures. In light of this immaculate document, today's scholars tend to think that Acts was actually a legal document used to defend Paul in court later toward the end of his life. Both books (the gospel and Acts) are written to Theophilus, someone we can only speculate about. Dr. Wheeler sat in the camp that Theophilus had to have supported Luke and the early Christian ministry in some way, and perhaps was involved on the legal side of things.

Furthermore, there are strange details about Paul's life that one can notice in his/her English translation. For example, toward the end of the book, in chapter 28, Luke is telling the reader about their journey to Rome. In this, he tells of "a ship that had wintered in the island, a ship of Alexandria, with the twin gods (Castro and Pollux) as a figure head." Later he records the winds of those three days getting to Rome and staying in Puteoli for exactly seven days.

Ok, ok, ok, there are tons of details...but what's the point? Well, firstly, I love coming across these lines in my Bible because it reminds me that these men, and Luke in particular, were not dedicated to starting the next big religion, but they were dedicated to the truth. Luke's writing is like that of an investigative journalist, which he claims himself (Luke 1:1-4). It must be understood that the Bible is not a collection of good ideas, but there lies much history in it. For all of the "extra-biblical" evidence that is out there, it is also important to keep the Bible's authority as a historical document, especially the New Testament, which has remarkable descriptions of first century cities.

Lastly, I can't help but thinking, selfishly perhaps: is my life worth reporting about? Luke was dedicated to following and accounting the life of Jesus Christ and the church that formed after his death because it was worth reporting. Paul, Stephen, Timothy and Titus were all worth writing about to Luke. Their stories were remarkable. They lived lives that were not just exciting, but impacting and culture changing. Paul's last two years were spend just in his house meeting and preaching with people, something Luke reports in Acts 28. Is my life worth reporting about? Certainly we're hearing much on the church in China and Turkey and India and the lengths they're going for the gospel. But what do we have? What is our story or chapter in the history of the church? The fact that we have video campuses? Our amazingly large buildings?

I pray our story changes. I pray that the American church is a story of a group of people who found a way out of consumerism and material items and into the great reaches of the kingdom of God.