Always on the Search for Something New

Acts 17:21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

While in Athens Paul preached to the Athenian Jews in the synagogue.  Verses 17 and 18 describe his conversations with "devout persons" in the synagogue and "some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers."  They wonder what "this babbler" Paul, wishes to say.  He wished to preach the gospel, and that is precisely what he did.  But Luke gives us commentary on the typical behavior of Athenians in verse 21.  We are told they they spent "their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new."  Not complimentary in the least, it gives us a good picture of the culture Paul regularly spoke to.  A twenty-first century Christian is hard-pressed to relate to Paul's ministry of the first.  But this glimpse Luke gives into the minds and attitudes of Paul's hearers shows that not much has changed in 2,000 years.

Modern evangelicalism, with its "5 steps to a better marriage" or "7 guidelines of biblical stewardship" or some of its proponents' incessant need to find "new ways to live the Christian life," shows that the Athenians are alive and well among us, here and now.  Why?  Why do Christians think that we need to rethink everything?  Christ's church has persevered through two-thousand years of war, hatred, persecution, scandals, and endless splits.  And yet it remains.  If she loses her tradition, the church loses her effect, her witness.  And if she is always on the search for something new, she will lose everything she already has.  The importance of tradition is lost in the world of instant coffee and diet pills, and the church has struggled in attempts to relate to that world.  But why must we look for something new?  Why has it become so novel to hold on to the past and use that as a guide for the present and then on into the future?  Let us use the Athenians as a case-study for ineffective ministry. Let us hold on to what we have, and stop the fruitless search for something new.