Ordinary Time

Ordinary Time offers a setting for following the long, developing story of Acts: a season in which congregations can attend to the movement’s changing practices, contested decisions, and witness rather than encounter them only as isolated episodes. The book suggests that a series of readings from Paul’s missionary journeys could be arranged in sequence during Ordinary Time, making the church’s growth and its challenges visible over time.

A Season for Following the Story

The book proposes departing from the lectionary’s sparse and scattered treatment of Paul’s journeys. Although those stories are among the best-known narratives in early Christian tradition beyond the stories of Jesus, the lectionary includes only four passages from the journeys, distributed across its three-year cycle. A preacher could choose one journey, divide it into meaningful passages, and present them in sequence over several Sundays in Ordinary Time. The texts could be added as supplementary readings or used in place of epistle readings. The arrangement makes the season a practical framework for sustained attention to the narrative, not merely a collection of disconnected readings.

Mission, Resistance, and Community

A sequence through the journeys can trace how the witness expands and what that expansion costs. In Iconium, residents threaten Paul and Barnabas with stoning; in Lystra, Paul is stoned and dragged outside the city, presumed dead. Their declaration that entry into the Realm of God comes through many persecutions frames resistance as part of the mission’s lived circumstances. Read across several Sundays, these episodes give a congregation room to consider what it means to persist in witness rather than reducing the journey to a report of successful travel.

Acts also depicts the movement negotiating how its common life should work. The appointment of seven people in response to the community’s failure to provide equally for widows is presented not simply as the creation of permanent church offices, but as a mission-focused response intended to embody the Realm’s care for all. Later, the council’s extended debate about gentile participation shows the community weighing experience, Scripture, reason, and the Holy Spirit. These episodes make a sustained reading of Acts attentive both to outward mission and to the internal decisions that shape who belongs and how members support one another.

Reading Carefully and Critically

The book cautions that vivid narrative does not make every detail a transparent record of historical events. Many scholars understand the speeches in Acts as expressions of Luke’s theology more than recoveries of the exact words spoken by historical figures. Likewise, scholars commonly distinguish Luke’s literary portrait of Paul from the historical Paul known through his letters; preachers should compare the accounts rather than use one casually to explain the other. A series in Ordinary Time can therefore follow the story while also asking how the narrator shapes it.

That care matters especially when Acts describes conflict between Jewish and gentile participants. At Antioch of Pisidia, Paul’s language about turning to gentiles is strong, and a preacher might ask whether God has abandoned the Jewish people. The book rejects that conclusion: a God who discards the promises to Israel would call into question the integrity of those promises. God’s embrace of gentiles need not require the abandonment of the Jewish community. Ordinary Time can thus provide a sustained setting not only for tracing mission, but for confronting readings that reinforce anti-Jewish attitudes.

From Ancient Narrative to Congregational Witness

The season’s proposed sequence connects Acts’ particular episodes with the congregation’s own practice without collapsing the ancient setting into the present. The book describes leadership roles as emerging in response to the mission’s needs, while warning that later institutional structures can lose their purpose and turn toward preserving officeholders’ power. The story’s episodes invite contemporary communities to examine whether their structures still serve mutual care and witness.

The same movement from narrative to reflection shapes the book’s treatment of Paul’s farewell to the elders from Ephesus. They travel twenty-five miles to meet him at Miletus, where his address summarizes the legacy he hopes to leave and reflects on the elders’ responsibility. Read as part of an extended journey through Acts, such a scene can draw attention to how local leadership, teaching, and endurance sustain a community. Ordinary Time, in this approach, becomes an opportunity to follow the developing witness and consider how a congregation might continue it in its own circumstances.