Church Ministry: Best of Times, Worst of Times

The main theme of Acts is unstoppable advance, and Paul's time in Ephesus (ch. 19) develops this theme by showing that the most challenging times are often the most productive times. To use Charles Dickens famous description, Paul's time in Ephesus was "the best of times" and "the worst of times." The account we read shows that the most strategic church in the first generation of the Roman world gets planted while Paul is busy to the point of exhaustion, while people who claim to know the Scriptures are constantly deficient in understanding, while he is deeply discouraged over the problems of the church in Corinth, and while he's facing opposition to the point that he thought he was going to die. Put simply, the most stable and strategic congregation in Asia is planted during the hardest of times. Ministry for Jesus is usually like that.