Luke-Acts as a manual for mentoring an Apollos

 

Acts 18:24-26 gives a window into leadership mentoring, a window into an important biblical theme, and perhaps a window into the intended audience and use of Luke-Acts.

Mentoring

Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, able in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in [the] spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. (Acts 18:24-25)

There is a lot of potential here.

• He knows his Bible
• He’s been catechised in the way of Christ
• He is fervent – literally boiling – passionate, fearless, committed, all in 
• He does a good job of teaching people Jesus

That is a hugely promising profile. That’s the sort of profile of knowledge, heart and ministry instinct we need to be looking for to encourage into church leadership. He's not previously know to the disciples in Ephesus. He's just arrived from northern Africa. But he's not dismissed or treated with suspicion. He's got the stamp of the Spirit and the basics of apostolic ministry. There is only one point of deficiency noted and it's theological – ‘he knew only the baptism of John.’

He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they welcomed him and explained to him the way of God more accurately. (Acts 18:26)

Again we see Apollos' fervency – speaking boldly. Priscilla and Aquila listen and think – he’s really good but we can help him get even better. ‘More accurately’ is a rare, intensive form of the word in v25. Apollos taught accurately but he needed to teach even more accurately. So this working class married couple welcomed Apollos into their home as they had welcomed Paul (Acts 18:3) and they seek to do him theological good.

When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. (Acts 18:27)

• Notice the fact that there are other ‘brothers and sisters’ involved in Apollos’ life and ministry development. Priscilla and Aquila are key but they do not have an exclusive relationship with Apollos. Other people are around him. Other people are speaking into his life and encouraging him.
• Notice the willingness to release / commend / ‘export’. Even though Priscilla and Aquila (and likely many others) have invested a lot of time in Apollos. Even though he could clearly be very valuable in Ephesus, they warmly encourage him in his desire to serve overseas in nurturing a new church on the needy continent of Europe.

Are there challenges here already for our normal patterns of leadership mentoring?

The Way

What might Priscilla and Aquila’s mentoring curriculum for Apollos have looked like? What exactly was it about his teaching that made them think – yes but? When they sought to supply what was lacking in his faith, what was that lack? It wasn’t misuse of the Bible – he’s competent in the Scriptures. It wasn’t basic gospel doctrine – he’s been catechised. It wasn’t Christology – he teaches about Jesus accurately.

I think an important clue to answering that is the repeated reference in this passage to ‘The Way’. What might Priscilla and Aquila might have wanted to help Apollos understand more accurately about ‘the way’?

• Biblical Theology – Apollos knows the Scriptures (Acts 18:24) and he teaches about Jesus (Acts 18:25) but maybe he hasn’t put those two together, or at least not very well. It’s interesting that it’s after his meetings with Priscilla and Aquila that he is able to refute his Jewish opponents ‘proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ’ (Acts 18:28) – like Peter, Philip and Paul. So maybe his mentors showed Apollos how Christ was patterned, predicted, present/absent in the Old Testament. They might have showed him how the OT Exodus ("Way out") patterned the New Exodus (Luke 9:31). Perhaps they showed him how ‘the way of the Lord’ is actually ancient (Gen. 18:19; Deut. 9:16; Judges 2:22; Prov. 22:19 LXX; Isaiah 2:3; 35:8; 40:3; Luke 20:21) and argued, as Paul did to Felix (Acts 24), that ‘the Way’ was not a ‘sect’ (an offshoot departing from Judaism) but rather it was the mainstream way of promise in absolute continuity with the Law and the Prophets (the way from which the Jewish opponents were actually departing).
• Ethnicity – Apollos is a diaspora Jew (like the apostle Paul). In Acts 18:26 he is preaching in the synagogue. Nothing wrong with that. It was always Paul’s pattern to start in the synagogue until they threw him out. But it’s interesting that after time with Priscilla and Aquila Apollos is keen to go to Achaia – to be of help to the largely Gentile church in Corinth. Could it be that Priscilla and Aquila (fellow diaspora Jews) helped Apollos to widen his vision and grasp what God was doing in gathering people from all nations? You can imagine them saying, ‘It took us a while to get our heads around this and open our hearts to this but you need to know that this is far wider than just us Jews.'
• The Spirit – The only deficiency in Apollos that’s explicitly mentioned is him only knowing the baptism of John. The following story (Acts 19:1-7) is about some ‘disciples’ who only know John’s baptism and have not even heard there is a Holy Spirit. We don’t know whether Apollos was in the same state as those guys. But it is likely that his preaching betrayed an inadequate appreciation of the Trinity. So Priscilla and Aquila would have taught him about the baptism of Jesus – both the time when Jesus was baptised and the veil was torn back to reveal the Father, Son and Spirit relating to one another, and also the time when Jesus baptised his church with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost – the exalted King Jesus, receiving from the Father and pouring out on his people what they desperately need to walk the way – God himself. 
• Suffering – It’s interesting that almost all the references to ‘the Way’ in Acts come in contexts of persecution (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22). Perhaps Priscilla and Aquila heard something that Apollos said or sensed something in his tone which made them think – this young man is a bit wet behind the ears, he hasn’t suffered much, he isn’t ready for it himself or he’s not preparing others for it. They would surely have shared with Apollos their traumatic experiences in Corinth (Acts 18:12-17). How they had risked their necks for Paul and the gospel (Rom. 16:4). They would have warned him that we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God. Just as they persecuted the prophets, so they will persecute you.
• Life – The Way is a way of life to walk. It is the highway of holiness (Isaiah 35:8). It is the Way of Salvation (Acts 16:17) and it’s also a way to walk along. The Way is Jesus himself (John 14:6) and it is also the way of following him, yoked to him, becoming more like him. Perhaps Priscilla and Aquila heard Apollos tending towards either legalism or antinomianism. Perhaps there was something in the tone and spirit that was a bit off. And so, as good mentors, they would help him to see how gospel and law fit together and are neither conflated nor separated. They would help him see the recurrent biblical picture of a tree and its fruit. Nature comes before fruit. But a changed nature always produces new fruit. And that fruit is organically related to the tree and its root. And beyond the conceptual they would surely have also helped Apollos to see what walking along the way would specifically mean for him in practice. They would have walked beside him on the way, helping him to see the specific ways he might be straying off, the particular fruit that he needed to cultivate.

Luke-Acts as a manual for mentoring an Apollos

So wouldn’t Luke-Acts be the perfect book to take someone like Apollos through? Of course it wasn’t available to Priscilla and Aquila to use with Apollos (some of the source material would have been available to them) but the point is that Luke-Acts seems perfectly suited to the leadership development of a Jewish-background believer who has been well taught but needs to be sharpened up and given certainty about the things he’s been taught (Luke 1:4). Specifically:

• The Way – As all the commentaries note, this is a hugely important theme for Luke. He refers to ‘the way’ throughout Luke-Acts and it actually structures his narrative. Much of Luke is Jesus on his way to Jerusalem (to accomplish the New Exodus). Much of Acts is the apostles on their way from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. As Paul Borgman has shown, the two volume work is ‘The Way According to Luke’. If you wanted to clarify ‘the way of God’ for someone like Apollos– this would be your go-to book.
• Biblical theology – Fulfilment is extremely important for Luke. From the first sentence (Luke 1:1), through the songs of the birth narrative, the climax of the gospel with Luke 24, through the preaching of the apostles in Acts (which is often a Bible overview), to the preaching of Paul in Rome (Acts 28:23) – it is all about how the covenant of Abraham is being fulfilled, how the new Exodus has been accomplished in Christ, how Joel, Amos and Isaiah are being fulfilled. This would all be particularly powerful for someone from a more conservative, Pharisaic background, growing up soaked in the Scriptures, trusting their inerrancy, believing in angels, the resurrection and Messianic hope (NB the positive references to Pharisees versus Sadducees at Luke 20:27-39; Acts 5:34; 22:3; 23:6-9).  
• Ethnicity – Gentile inclusion is another huge theme in Luke, strongly connected to the fulfilment of Scripture. Luke is the only Gospel writer to extend the Isaiah 40 quote from ‘Prepare the Way’ to include ‘All flesh will see.’ The centre of Jesus’ journey narrative is the feast thrown open to all nations (Luke 13:29). The Samaritan is the true Jew (Luke 10:37; 17:18). The gospel going out to all nations is the climax of Luke (24:47), the Launchpad and structure of Acts (1:8) and its dramatic close (28:28). A huge amount of the drama and debate is about crossing cultural boundaries and the terms on which Gentiles are coming in. That would be of great help to a African-born Jew like Apollos.
• The Spirit – Yet another huge theme in Luke-Acts. 17 x in Luke. 56 x in Acts. Some of the richest material on the Spirit in the whole New Testament. The first book launches from Jesus’ baptism by John. The second book launches from Jesus’ baptism of the disciples. This would be a key place to go to show, particularly someone with a good familiarity with the Scriptures, the eschatological, soteriological and missiological significance of the Spirit.
• Suffering – In Luke, Jesus walks The Way to crucifixion. In Acts, the apostles walk The Way and they suffer very similarly to their Lord, often on trial before the same accusers. When Paul passes on the apostolic pattern of ministry to the elders in Ephesus a key mark is suffering. Luke-Acts provides repeated narrative and exhortatory passages clarifying The Way as the way of the cross. The cost of following on that way is very clear (Luke 9:57-62; 14;25-34).
• Life – Luke, perhaps more than any of the other Gospel writers, even Matthew, gives us the ethical dimension of The Way of the Lord.  The theme of social reversal runs from Luke 1:51-53 onwards. There is a strong, sustained emphasis on producing ‘fruit in keeping with repentance’ and, as Jesus walks to Jerusalem, he spells out the specifics – often in terms of wealth and welcome (e.g. Luke 14, 16, 18, 19).

Finally, here's one more suggestion that might not be right but would strengthen this idea that Luke-Acts is a mentoring manual for an Apollos:

Richard Fellows has argued that ‘Theophilus’ to whom Luke-Acts is addressed is not a birth name but a given name (lover of God) in a similar way to Simon was named Peter (rock) and Joseph became Barnabus (son of encouragement). Fellows argues that Theophilus was probably renamed by Paul as he seems to have a track record of renaming co-workers and church planters with appropriate Greek names – e.g. Jason becoming Aristarchus (best leader). I think it’s a strong argument. I’m not sure I go with the idea that Theophilus is necessarily a Roman official who was a financial benefactor to the Philippian church. That’s quite possible and most commentators go with that – i.e. Theophilus is a Roman official like Felix (Acts 24:3, 22). I think it’s also quite possible that Theophilus is a diaspora Jew who was directly involved in gospel ministry – like Jason/Aristarchus. It’s interesting that Theophilus comes in a list of elders at Corinth in a second century source – not a particularly reliable source but an indication that it was a name that would sound quite natural in a list of early church elders. ‘Most excellent’ could simply be an expression of warmth and respect similar to the ‘aristos‘ (best) in Arist-archus.

So could it be that Theophilus was a diaspora Jew in church ministry - very similar to Apollos? Could he have been one of the leaders of the church in Philippi? Could it be that Luke, during his 4 years in Philippi, formed a very close mentoring relation with Theophilus, very similar to the one Priscilla and Aquila had with Apollos and Paul with Timothy? Could it be that Luke-Acts was his way of mentoring this leader? That’s certainly what it sounds like in Luke 1:3-4.

Could that be why the book of Acts has been so popular as a resource in training generations of church planters and church leaders? Because that is precisely what it is for. Let’s not forget the first volume – Luke’s Gospel – and let's follow the mentoring pattern of Priscilla and Aquila, and Luke - sharing the great narrative of The Way with a present day Apollos or Theophilus.