For better or for worse, our missionary methodology rests, in part, on how we perceive the book of Acts. No other book of the New Testament presents such a detailed historical account of the early church’s mission. Some practitioners and missiologists look to that narrative to discern normative patterns for missionary practice today. Others, for various reasons and to varying degrees, disregard Acts when considering what contemporary missionary work should look like.
While Acts is complex in its style and aims, one particular literary device in the narrative provides strong support for the contemporary applicability of the book of Acts for missionary methodology. That device comes at the very end of the narrative.
Abrupt Ending of Acts
The book of Acts ends abruptly, seemingly without a proper conclusion. After narrating Paul’s journey to Rome while awaiting trial, it concludes by noting, “He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:30–31).
A plot that began with a bang and developed through intense episodes of miraculous events, bold proclamations, brazen murder, systemic persecution, religious upheaval, political unrest, and the widespread growth of the church appears, here in Acts 28, to go out with a whimper. These inconclusive last sentences hardly seem fitting or appropriate to the intense plot that precedes them.
Narrative Suspension of Acts
Such a non-ending, however, was likely intentional. According to New Testament scholar Daniel Marguerat, this inconclusive way of ending a narrative in ancient literature is called narrative suspension. He explains, “Narrative suspension is a literary device whereby the author, by failing to bring certain narrative data to their resolution, hinders the closure of the narrative world for the reader.”[i] Marguerat cites the Odyssey, Aeneid, and Herodotus as examples of literary works/authors that employed such narrative suspension.
Regarding the effect of narrative suspension, Marguerat asserts, “The closure effect must be achieved by the reader, who, in order to satisfy the need for completion, is tempted to finish the story in consonance with its plot.”[ii] In other words, authors employing this literary device invite readers to join the narrative as an extension of the actors and work therein; they must continue the plot and bring the story to a proper conclusion.
New Testament scholar William Kurz contends, “Ending Acts with Paul preaching the Gospel boldly and unhindered avoids the excessive closure that Paul’s death would have given, and moves the narrative toward the future time of the intended readers. The open ending of Acts hints that the kind of proclamation carried on by Paul continues to the present of the time of writing and even the time of reading.”[iii] In short, “The lack of closure invites continuation.”[iv]
Ongoing Applicability of Acts
It appears that Acts is thus intentionally inconclusive, which renders the entire narrative significant for missionary methodology today. By suspending its ending, the book of Acts invites us to continue the same mission it narrates. Thus, the missionary activities of the disciples within Acts are not immaterial, irrelevant features of a strictly historical narrative, but serve as methodological guideposts for missionaries today.
In other words, if we are to “finish the story in consonance with its plot,”[v] then we should pay careful attention to the recurring missionary activities that dominate that plot. Such activities—which include direct evangelism, discipleship, and church planting—become exemplary for us today. The book of Acts provides more than generic motivation for missions (however conceived); it seeks to shape and guide our missionary methodology—the activities to which we continually give ourselves.
The narrative suspension of Acts thus serves as an implicit call to continue the missionary patterns of the early disciples in order to carry on the mission entrusted to them and, by extension, to us.[vi]
[i] Daniel Marguerat, “The End of Acts (28:16–31) and the Rhetoric of Silence,” in Rhetoric and the New Testament: Essays from the 1992 Heidelberg Conference, eds. S. E. Porter and T. H. Olbricht (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1993), 81.
[ii] Marguerat, “End of Acts,” 81.
[iii] William S. Kurz, “The Open-Ended Nature of Luke and Acts as Inviting Canonical Actualisation,” Neotestamentica 31.2 (1997): 293.
[iv] Kurz, “Open-Ended Nature of Luke and Acts,” 294.
[v] Marguerat, “End of Acts,” 81.
[vi] The call to continue the recurring missionary activities in Acts does not entail disregard for changes in context across time and cultures. Missionary activity always transpires within culturally specific times and places, a reality for which missionaries should account as they seek to communicate the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches cross-culturally. However, our central missiological tasks and aims must always derive from the Scriptures, not our reading of cultures and needs therein.
