21 After all this had happened, Paul decided to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. “After I have been there,” he said, “I must visit Rome also.” 22 He sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, while he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer. Acts 19:21-22

It’s clear in texts like this that Paul was a driven man. He had passion and fire. Perhaps it was because he had to make up for lost time during his “persecute the Believers” years. The most logical reason is the most obvious one: he wanted to see Christ proclaimed in as many cities as humanly possible.

As he trained more people to lead the churches, he could go elsewhere while the churches grew. In other epistles we see where he corrected and disciplined church leaders for their actions, but he still had a passion to preach where Christ had never been proclaimed before. That would be fairly easy to do since the Church was still in its first generation.

Even though there are many places in the West where there are two or three churches on every city block, the Church is not growing. The culture seems to have overwhelmed the Church in a variety of issues.

Pray for your Pastors and church leaders. They have a daunting task of formulating strategies to reach the next generation of Believers while continuing to nurture this generation. Pray for both boldness and compassion where it’s needed.