This is the ninth session’s Power Point slide show from the ’Using Pauline Studies for Evangelism’ course taught at the Light Project, Chester.

1. The Light Project
Exploring Narrative Models of
Pauline Evangelism in
Acts 5-13: Part 1
Clint Heacock

3. Learning Outcomes
1. To study key representative
passages from Acts 5-13 and apply
the tools of narratology and
rhetorical criticism to these texts.
2. To begin to formulate a view of the
evangelistic efforts of the early
Christians and Paul.
3. To explore the a) methods, b)
message and c) results of the earliest
Christian missiology.

4. • Do the accounts of the methods, message
and results of the early Christians (Acts
2-12) differ from those of Paul on his first
missionary journey (Acts 13-14)?
• How exactly did Paul go about spreading
the gospel on his journey?
• Does Paul employ the same (or similar)
methods and message in different places
and to different people?
• What were some of the results Paul
encountered?
• What sorts of conflicts did the early
Christians encounter?
• Is there a substantial disagreement
between Acts and Paul’s letters regarding
Paul’s mission to the Gentiles?

5. Sergius Paulus Inscription, Cyprus (discovered 1877)

6. Paul’s First Missionary Journey
Acts 13-14

7. The Rhetorical Situation: Acts 14.8-20
• What was the exigence (problem)
(14.11-3)?
• Who was the audience (14.11,14)?
• What were the constraints (rhetorical
strategies) used by the rhetor (speaker) to
persuade the audience to take action and
modify the exigence (11.15-17)?
• Were the speaker’s rhetorical strategies
successful in persuading the Lystrans
(14.18)?
• What was the role did competing rhetors
play in the rhetorical situation (14.19-20)?

8. Conclusions
What do these passages indicate about the following:
• The persecution the early Christians faced? Were
they always spared from it?
• What do the two speeches (Peter and Stephen’s,
Acts 2 and 7) reveal about a confrontational gospel
message?
• What were some of the positive results of the
persecution that started in Acts 8.1?
• How was the early Christians’ understanding of the
gospel reoriented from a gospel aimed at the Jews
to a gospel encompassing the Gentiles?

9. • How was the early Christians’
understanding of the gospel reoriented
from a gospel aimed at the Jews to a
gospel encompassing the Gentiles?
• What can you comment about the role of
the Holy Spirit in Acts 2-14 in terms of:
– Miraculous signs (tongues, healings etc);
– Separating and sending out some for
evangelistic missions;
– The ‘filling of the Holy Spirit,’ in its various
manifestations; and
– The effects/results of the filling of the Spirit
upon their sermons before various crowds?