When the Gospel Was Forced to Move
How disruption, not strategy, carried the Gospel into the world
This reflection follows on from yesterday’s reading on Stephen. Together, they trace how the early church was forced beyond its comfort zone. Not through strategy or confidence, but through disruption, loss, and God’s refusal to abandon the story.
I wrote about Stephen and his death yesterday. It is often treated as a tragic but isolated episode. The Church remembers him as its first martyr, honours his courage, and then quietly turns the page.
But the Book of Acts includes him for an important reason.
Luke places Stephen’s death at a decisive point in the story, not as a conclusion but as a catalyst. What happens next only makes sense if we understand Stephen not as the end of something, but as the moment when the Church is finally forced out of its comfort zone.
If you read Acts quickly, it can feel like a triumphal march. The Spirit descends. The church explodes into life. The Gospel spreads from Jerusalem to Rome in a matter of pages.
But if you slow down, a different story emerges.
The early church does not surge confidently into the world. It hesitates. It stays put. It over-legislates. It clings to what is familiar far longer than the command of Jesus would seem to allow.
When it finally moves, it is not because it planned to, but because it had to.
