GROUP FELLOWSHIP NOTES     SUMMER 2006    MAY 2/4

‘THE SPREADING FLAME -  How they brought the Good News...to Rome’

(7.) ACTS 17.1-15:    THE FLAME SPREADS....TO THESSALONICA and BEREA

• I. 17.1-10:     GOSPEL FIRES IN THESSALONICA 1.   PERSUASION and CONVERSION:  17.1-4
•  A CUSTOM MAINTAINED:
• 
  What are we told Paul’s custom was?  (Compare Jesus: Luke 4.16) What motivated this custom... the desire to worship or to witness?
• Worship in the synagogue:  Any one ever attended a Synagogue service? What was the attitude of the earliest Jewish Christians to Jewish worship? (Acts 2.46-47; 3.1)
• What do you think Christians like Paul and Silas felt attending Jewish services?
• Witness in the synagogue: How did Paul set about evangelising those there?
• A CHURCH FOUNDED: The TIME it took to found a church: What impression do you get from the passage about how long Paul was in Thessalonica and how long it took to establish the church there?
• The MEANS used and MESSAGE proclaimed in planting the church: How would you go about ‘planting a church’?  How did Paul?
• What it takes to win a person to Christ: What were the ‘big issues’ in the minds of the sort of people present in the synagogue?
• How did Paul consciously set out to address those issues? What was the content of Paul’s message to those attending the synagogue? What are the ‘big issues’ in the minds of people today that we need to address?
• What do you think are the best ways of addressing them today?
• ‘Some... WERE PERSUADED’: Is being ‘persuaded’ and coming to faith a matter of:
•    intellectual conviction?    or      spiritual experience?
• 
  Do we get any clues about this from the way ‘Acts’ describes Paul’s approach in preaching?    See 17.3  ‘....reasoning.....explaining....proving...’ What do these imply? What did it take to win Paul himself?
• What did it take in your own case?
• 2. PERSECUTION:  17.5-10 Talk about the persecution at Thessalonica: What tactics were used? How do you suppose they managed to rouse feelings against Paul and Co.?
• What (misunderstandings??) rouse(s) people today against Christians?
• What do you think of the tactics Jewish/ religious people used? Do ends ever justify means??
• Who ‘caught the flak’ of the persecution at Thessalonica?  How do you think they felt? How do you think Paul and Silas felt?

II.  17.10-15:       GOSPEL FIRES IN BEREA

• PERSUASION and PERSECUTION: What was the same and what was different about the experience in Berea? about the methods, the response, the outcome, the persecution
• Any thoughts about why the Jews of Berea were so different???
• What was so commendable about the behaviour of the Jews of the synagogue of Berea? And why is the attitude they had so vital? Is it a common attitude today?
• What attitude characterises your non-Christian friends?