{"id":40474,"date":"2021-10-25T10:15:16","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T15:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=40474"},"modified":"2021-10-25T10:35:08","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T15:35:08","slug":"friendship-the-foundation-of-pauls-global-ministry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=40474","title":{"rendered":"Friendship: The Foundation of Paul\u2019s Global Ministry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Political satirist PJ O\u2019Rourke once quipped, \u201cEverybody wants to save the earth, nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.\u201d<a href=\"applewebdata:\/\/B3274D40-8D82-4F16-9102-26B53174C0DA#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Every Christian leader I know aspires to change the world in some way. They want to effect meaningful, significant, and sizeable spiritual change. And, like aspiring world-changers everywhere, they\u2014we\u2014are instinctually suspicious of \u201cdoing the dishes.\u201d After all, all those unseen, quiet acts of service that have to be done all over again tomorrow just don\u2019t appear very powerful.<\/p>\n<p>In my city alone, there are millions of people who don\u2019t know Christ, and only a handful of churches. There are simply too many lost people for us to settle for simple solutions. We need big, national or international movements, not just one or two more believers! We need powerful solutions now, not just churches that might finally be healthy ten years from now!<\/p>\n<p>Spurred on by this urgent desperation, Christians often look to the book of Acts. They want to find the apostle Paul\u2019s secret sauce. How did he get the gospel to go forward? What can we learn from him? Which methods are we applying incorrectly? Which methods would produce the harvest we pray for?<\/p>\n<p>But Paul\u2019s actions in Acts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of Paul\u2019s most consistent values may surprise us: friendship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[327],"class_list":["post-40474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-life-together","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40474"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40476,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40474\/revisions\/40476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}