How to Start a Riot by Jonathan Storment

How to Start a Riot by Jonathan Storment

If you ask most people at least Western people what they think about Christianity, they will probably give you a pretty domesticated vision of church. Indeed, almost half of Americans think that religion is at best irrelevant and obsolete, and at worst a way of making the world a worse place.

But what if church was more than just a place to get a bulletin so you can get 10% off at lunch? What if we tried to get back to what the earliest Christians did? Even if it was unpopular, even if it started a riot?

This is why Acts of the Apostles is so important. The four Gospels are followed by a book about what the people of God did. Because the gospel leads to action. It leads to a different kind of people embodying a different way of life. And as Western Christianity becomes more assimilated into Western culture, it is good for us to notice not just what the earliest Christians said and thought, but what they did. Acts is a manifesto of a people who went all over the known world proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and that God is doing a new thing that is available for anyone.