When we think of helping others, we often think of various relief ministries and the provision of resources to meet the needs of others. Such activities should certainly be part of any biblical theology of “help.”
Yet a theology of help should extend beyond social ministries to include disciple making and church planting.
This point comes into focus midway through the book of Acts. As the Apostle Paul and his co-laborers were traveling throughout Asia Minor on Paul’s second missionary journey, the Holy Spirit twice prevented them from ministering in certain areas. According to Acts 16:6, “They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” They encountered a similar closed door not too long afterward. Acts 16:7 explains, “And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.”
This winding road led to a remarkable vision. After then passing on from Mysia, Paul and his companions landed in Troas, where “a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us’” (Acts 16:9, emphasis added).
This vision was a call for help. Therefore, what Paul and his co-laborers do in response to this call sheds valuable light on the notion of help in biblical perspective.
Paul and company concluded that “God had called us to preach the gospel to them” (Acts 16:10). The rest of the chapter then narrates their travel to Macedonia and their work of evangelism, discipleship, and church planting there.
Paul and his team thus connected the notion of helping others with the work of leading people to faith and establishing churches. Recognition of this connection might help balance contemporary perspectives in missiology which tend to view the notion of helping others through the lens of relief ministries. While such ministries are valuable, needed, and biblical, they do not comprise the sum total of “help.” A biblical view of help must account for both temporal and eternal needs.
Acts 16 therefore helps us broaden our understanding of what it means to provide help. Although we do not often consider disciple-making under the rubric of helping others, this passage demonstrates that any theology of help must ultimately include the missional work of proclaiming the gospel and gathering believers into local churches, which, in God’s economy, are (or at least should be) the most potent force for transformation on earth.
