​     Hello again for the third and final Learning Together lesson for this month about Pentecost. The name of our story from The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones is “God Sends Help” found on pages 326-333.
     Children: I would like you to begin this lesson by reading the story out loud or silently to yourself, or you could be like one of Jesus’ helpers and read it aloud to an adult family member or to a brother or sister or cousin.
     There are three important ideas I would like to point out in this last Pentecost lesson.
     The first is, as our book says, that there were lots of people from faraway countries in Jerusalem at that time, and many different languages were spoken. God knew this would be a huge problem when His helpers tried to spread His word anywhere, so once more He came to the rescue. He enabled anyone listening to God’s message to be able to hear it in their own language! It was another game-changer!
     Secondly, at the very end of our story, we learn that one man named Saul was watching the spread of God’s love and becoming more and more upset with the growing number of helpers who were teaching about Jesus and God to anybody they could find. This Saul didn’t believe in God and caused many problems for those who did believe. That is, until God arranged a meeting with Saul and convinced him differently with temporary blindness. After that experience, Saul changed his name to Paul, and he became one of the best helpers ever for spreading God’s wonderful news.
     Thirdly, because of the Bible, we know there were many well-known Jesus helpers as time went on, but the biggest reason that our religion spread is that average, everyday people shared it with their family and friends.
     We can all be a helper of Jesus!
     Adults: The Biblical references for the Pentecost are Acts 1-5 and John 15.
     In this final mention of how Christianity spread throughout the world, let us take a look at a few future numbers. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, there were only an estimated 600 million Christians worldwide in 1910. This figure has increased enormously in more recent years, with an estimated 2.4 billion Christian followers recorded in 2012.
     The research center also predicts that Christianity will remain the world’s largest religion for the next four decades if these trends continue, with a projected 2.9 billion people practicing Christianity worldwide by 2050 and exceeding 3 billion thereafter.
     Christianity is expected to remain the largest religious group throughout North America, Europe, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa, too, with more than 50% of each respective population practicing Christianity.
     The marked spread of Christianity across non-Western countries has significantly altered the distribution of Christians throughout the planet. During the 1900s, Christian faith was most prevalent throughout Europe and the Americas – claiming around 93% of the entire global Christian population. In 2010, however, only 26% of the global Christian population was located in Europe, with 24.4% in Latin America and the Caribbean and 12.3% in North America – a combined total of 62.7%. With the increase in the number of followers of Christianity in the past century has come a significant shift in their geographic distribution.
     Protestantism, in particular, has spread swiftly throughout the continents of Africa, Asia, and Oceania since the early 1900s. A lot of this growth occurred after World War II, during which Africa was decolonized and the strong restrictions against the practicing of Protestantism worldwide were abolished.
This Week’s Prayer: Jesus, bless all the people since the beginning   who have shared God’s message of love and peace with the world! Amen
     This is the last of the three April Learning Together lessons. This coming Sunday, April 28, please join our Sunday School gathering after church services at 11 am for a snack, story reading and discussion, and a fun craft.
Hope to see you soon,
Margo Greer

​     I welcome everyone to the second of three April Learning Together lessons. Our current story is called “God Sends Help” and is found on pages 326-333 of The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones. If you recall, the Pentecost story is the subject of this month’s posting.
     Children: You learned in lesson one why we Christians celebrate the Pentecost and what the Trinity is. It is time to review our story by listening to the “God Sends Help” oral read video once more.
     Now, let’s return to the terrified disciples hiding in their shuttered and locked upstairs room.
     Jesus’ helpers were freaked out for good reason: With the crucifixion of Jesus, they knew how dangerous it was to publicly support Jesus. At the same time, they remembered that Jesus, numerous times, had told them to spread God’s message of hope and love. What to do now?
     Despite the windows shut tight and the door closed and locked, the strong wind that entered their small room came through the walls, but before they could be surprised about that, the flames of light, which did not hurt or burn, appeared just above all their heads!!
     But the CHANGE the disciples felt from INSIDE was the most amazing part of the whole incredible experience. The Holy Spirit, God’s great force, had entered into the hearts of each of them in that room, and suddenly, they knew they had been given the gift of joy and courage and love and determination. Their hearts were now telling them that spreading God’s good news to as many people as possible was their mission in life!
     And so it was. Lots of new helpers and friends began to believe in Jesus and God’s plan to rescue everyone, and those new helpers and friends continued to share the good news with more and more new helpers and friends. The number of people grew, and today people who believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit can be found everywhere around the world.
     Now you know how God sent His help. He can send the same help to YOU whatever your mission is!
     Adults: The Biblical references for the Pentecost is Acts 1-5 and John 15.
     How did Christianity go from a small sect in a corner of the Roman Empire in the first century, to the religion that the emperor converted to in the early fourth century? Its spread was greatly aided by the empire’s political unification and extensive road system, as well as the belief among many Christians that the religion was something anyone could adopt, regardless of regional or religious background.
     Five main reasons follow that explain the spread of Christianity during the Roman Empire days.
1. Everyday Citizens Spread the Word
     Missionaries like Paul, a major figure in the Bible’s New Testament, traveled around the empire with the intention to spread Christianity. However, most of the people who helped spread the religion did so just by talking about it with their neighbors, friends, and family members, says Edward Watts, a history professor at the University of California San Diego and author of The Final Pagan Generation: Rome's Unexpected Path to Christianity. “Missionaries are a part of the story, but most of the story is about regular Christians talking to regular people,” he says. “And that, I think, is the most important reason that Christianity emerges in the way that it does in the Roman world. It’s not mission activity by people like Paul so much as it is people whose names we don’t know.”
2. Early On, Christianity Coexisted With ‘Paganism’
     At the Roman Empire’s height in the second century, it stretched into Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. One key reason Christianity was able to spread throughout this vast empire was that many people viewed the new religion as something they could easily adopt without having to change their existing cultural and religious practices.
     In the first and second centuries, most people in the Roman Empire worshiped multiple gods at once. When they heard about Christianity, they didn’t necessarily think that worshiping Jesus Christ meant they had to stop worshiping their other gods, like Jupiter, Apollo and Venus. Rather, many adopted Christianity by adding Jesus to the group of gods they already worshiped, Watts says.
     The belief that Christianity was compatible with what we now call paganism helped Christianity spread through the Roman Empire. Although some Christians argued there was only one god and Christians shouldn’t worship any others, this wasn't how many people in the Roman Empire understood Christianity at the time, Watts says.
3. Early Christians Didn’t Present Themselves as an Exclusive Club
     Christianity also got a boost from the idea that it was a religion for anyone - not just people in a certain region with a specific religious background. Though some Christians debated this point, missionaries like Paul preached that a person didn’t have to obey Jewish laws around circumcision and kosher food practices to become Christians.“ This is a key change because it makes the bar to entry much lower,” Watts says. “If you are a male who wants to convert to Christianity, and there’s an assumption that first you have to convert to Judaism, it’s literally physically painful and dangerous for you to convert.”
     In addition, the fact that the authors of the Christian gospels wrote them in Koine Greek, a common language version of Greek, made the gospels accessible to more people in the empire. Unlike Aramaic, a regional language in Judea that Jesus spoke, Greek was spoken throughout the Roman Empire.
4. Early Persecution Wasn’t Widespread
     During the first and second centuries, persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was sporadic and regionally - specific rather than empire-wide. The persecution of Christian martyrs like Ignatius of Antioch, who died in the second century, did not represent the experiences of most Christians.
     This didn’t change until the middle of the third century, when the emperors Decius, who ruled from 249 to 251, and Valerian, who ruled from 253 to 260, launched campaigns to promote traditional Roman values and customs like sacrificing animals to pagan gods. Officials documented these sacrifices with papyrus receipts for people to keep as a record of their sacrifice. Those who didn’t have these receipts and refused to sacrifice could be arrested and killed.
     Decius’ campaign didn’t target Christians, specifically, but rather anyone who wasn’t practicing pagan sacrifice. In contrast, Valerian’s campaign targeted Christians more directly. After this, the next major campaign against Christians was the Great Persecution. Beginning in 303 under the Emperor Diocletian, it led to the death of many Christian religious leaders and the seizure of Christian property.
5. An Emperor Converted - and Officially Recognized the Faith
     The Great Persecution was the Roman Empire’s most severe persecution of Christians - and also its last. This is because after this persecution, in 312, Emperor Constantine I became the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. A year later, he helped enact the Edict of Milan, which ended government persecution of Christians and made Christianity a recognized, legal religion within the empire.
     Constantine’s rule didn’t mark an immediate shift in the Roman Empire from pagan to Christian. However, “he starts a process that, by the end of the fourth century, will lead to the explicit restriction of pagan practices and the explicit promotion of Christian practices by the imperial government,” Watts says.
     Christianity continued to spread through the territories of the western Roman Empire after its fall in 476. Over the next several centuries, it became the dominant religion in the city of Rome as well as the European regions over which the Roman Empire had ruled. The Roman Colosseum, once the site of deadly gladiator battles, even became a sacred Christian site.
~This Week’s Prayer: Dear God, I thank you that I am your child and that You love me! Amen
     Next week I will conclude our discussion of the Pentecost story in Lesson 3. Please note in your calendar that Sunday School will meet on April 28th at 11 am.
Until next time,
Margo

​     I hope that you had a blessed Easter! Thanks for joining me for our first lesson for this month of April. There will be two more April weekly lessons posted, and, of course, you are invited to attend our fourth Sunday gathering for Sunday School on April 23 at 11 am after church service. Everyone is welcome to participate.
     Our story this month is called “God Sends Help” and is found on pages 326-333 of The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones. (A copy is available at Resurrection Lutheran Church for free or online with a cost to you.) As always, you along with your whole family are invited to listen and read and create and pray around this selected story about a church celebration called Pentecost.
     Pentecost celebrates Jesus’ crucifixion (when Jesus died on Good Friday), His resurrection (when Jesus rose from the dead three days later on Easter Sunday), and His ascension (when Jesus returned to heaven, about 40 days after His resurrection). Most importantly for our story, it also marks the beginning of the Christian church’s mission of spreading Jesus’ message to the world.
     Children: Make yourself cozy and prepare to hear another amazing bible story. Please listen to the oral reading of this story that has been video-taped and posted above for you. As you listen, use your imagination to see the described scenes unfold in your head. Feel free to create your own illustrations if you like.
     This story tells us how some of Jesus’ helpers, also called His disciples, were given the gift of the Holy Spirit and how it changed their lives - from hiding in locked rooms and being afraid to speak out about Jesus at the beginning of our story to devoting their lives to openly teach anyone about Jesus and God’s love at the end of our story.  
     That is a huge switcharoo in their feelings! So what exactly is this Holy Spirit that the disciples were given? To explain the Holy Spirit, we need to discuss what is called The Trinity, the three forms that God can take. 
     The diagram below explains that the Father (which refers to Jesus’ father), the Son (which refers to Jesus himself), and the Holy Spirit (which refers to the non-physical part of us where our emotions and feelings live). These three are separate entities, but all three exist together in one as God.  I know that sounds very mysterious, but think of it like this: Any person, like myself, can be a daughter, an aunt, or a cousin, just different roles I play. Yet all together those three make one person - myself, Margo. 

​     The Holy Spirit came as the wind that entered the disciples’ locked room and created the flickering flames, which did not hurt or burn, above their heads. The Holy Spirit put love in their hearts for God and for their fellow beings and made them want to share the good news of God’s love.
     Remember, Pastor Steve will respond to any of your questions or comments!
     Adults: The Biblical references for the Pentecost are Acts 1-5 and John 15.
     As a religion, Christianity has been around for millennia. It has changed and transformed throughout time – both in terms of the principles and beliefs, the range of denominations it is comprised of, and the number of religious believers across the globe.
     Christianity certainly isn’t the only prevalent religion in the world, but it might come as a surprise to learn that, amidst Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and all other major religious schools, Christianity is the most popular.
     Global assessments conducted in 2012 revealed that the precise figures pertaining to the most-followed world religions were:

​     Quite clearly, Christianity exceeds the other four major religious/non-religious bodies by a significant proportion of 0.6 billion – overtaking Islam in number of followers by an astounding 9.1% of the global population.
     The figures have varied throughout history, though, and the number and spread of Christians worldwide has changed dramatically in the past century alone. In the next two lessons, our topic will be how Christianity spread throughout the earth.
     Pastor Steve will answer your questions or address your concerns if you submit them via this blog!
~This Week’s Prayer: Dear Lord, I pray that the Holy Spirit lives within my heart. Amen
     Join me again next week for our second lesson about the Holy Spirit and the joy it can create within us.
Enjoy the spring weather,
Margo Greer