In this third week of our "Startup Faith" series, we explore the concept of developing faith, drawing parallels between the challenges faced by startups and the early church. Just as startups encounter resistance from skeptical investors and market shifts, the early church faced persecution, notably from Saul, who sought to dismantle the movement. However, resistance was not the end; it was a catalyst for growth and transformation. This week, we delve into how the early church responded to adversity and how we can apply these lessons to our own faith journeys.

The lean startup approach, which involves building, measuring, learning, and pivoting, serves as a model for our faith development. When we encounter obstacles or plateaus, it's crucial to pivot—adjusting our strategies to align with God's direction. The early church exemplified this by spreading beyond Jerusalem due to persecution, reaching new communities like Samaria, which they might have otherwise avoided. This pivot not only expanded their reach but also challenged their prejudices, demonstrating the power of God's plan to transcend cultural boundaries.

We also reflect on the transformation of Saul, who became Paul, a pivotal figure in the early church. His dramatic pivot from persecutor to proponent of the faith illustrates the profound change God can bring about in our lives when we are open to His leading. This transformation is akin to the "fail fast and fail forward" mentality in Silicon Valley, where setbacks are seen as opportunities for growth.

In our own lives, we are encouraged to identify areas where we face resistance and consider how God might be calling us to pivot. Whether it's in our personal relationships, professional endeavors, or spiritual practices, God invites us to revise our strategies and embrace new opportunities for growth. By doing so, we can experience the fullness of life that God intends for us and bring hope to those around us.

**Key Takeaways:**

1. **Resistance as a Catalyst for Growth:** Just as startups and the early church faced resistance, we too encounter obstacles in our faith journey. These challenges are not meant to defeat us but to propel us toward growth and transformation. Embracing resistance as an opportunity to pivot can lead to new beginnings and deeper faith. [29:22]

2. **The Power of the Pivot:** The early church's expansion beyond Jerusalem due to persecution illustrates the importance of pivoting in response to changing circumstances. By adjusting our strategies and embracing new opportunities, we can overcome barriers and reach new heights in our spiritual journey. [34:04]

3. **Transformation through Adversity:** Saul's transformation into Paul highlights the profound change that can occur when we are open to God's leading. Even our greatest adversities can become the foundation for a new and vibrant faith if we allow God to guide us through them. [49:09]

4. **Embracing Blue Ocean Strategy in Faith:** Just as startups seek untapped markets, we are called to explore new areas of our lives where God can work. By moving beyond familiar routines and embracing new spiritual practices, we can experience fresh growth and vitality in our faith. [44:56]

5. **Fail Fast and Fail Forward:** In our spiritual journey, setbacks are not failures but opportunities to learn and grow. By adopting a mindset of resilience and openness to change, we can navigate challenges and continue to pursue God's purpose for our lives. [50:48]

**Youtube Chapters:**

- [00:00] - Welcome
- [05:00] - Introduction to Startup Faith Series
- [10:15] - The Lean Startup Approach
- [15:30] - Developing Faith Through Resistance
- [20:45] - The Early Church's Challenges
- [25:00] - The Concept of Pivoting
- [29:22] - Resistance as a Path to Growth
- [34:04] - The Early Church's Expansion
- [39:19] - Personal Story of Overcoming Obstacles
- [44:56] - Blue Ocean Strategy in Faith
- [49:09] - Saul's Transformation to Paul
- [52:56] - Embracing Change in Our Faith
- [56:26] - Closing Prayer and Reflection

**Bible Study Discussion Guide: "Startup Faith - Week 3"**

**Bible Reading:**
- Acts 8:1-8
- Acts 9:1-19

---

**Observation Questions:**

1. What were the circumstances that led to the early church's expansion beyond Jerusalem? How did persecution play a role in this development? [34:04]

2. How did Saul's actions initially impact the early church, and what was his role in the persecution of Christians? [39:19]

3. What was the significance of Philip's mission to Samaria, and how did it challenge the early church's cultural boundaries? [42:02]

4. How does the sermon describe the concept of "pivot" in the context of both startups and the early church? [29:22]

---

**Interpretation Questions:**

1. In what ways did the early church's response to persecution demonstrate resilience and adaptability? How might this be relevant to modern faith communities? [34:04]

2. How does Saul's transformation into Paul illustrate the potential for personal change and redemption? What does this say about the power of faith? [49:09]

3. What lessons can be drawn from the early church's willingness to embrace new communities and challenge existing prejudices? How does this reflect the broader mission of the church? [42:02]

4. How does the concept of "fail fast and fail forward" apply to spiritual growth and overcoming setbacks in one's faith journey? [50:48]

---

**Application Questions:**

1. Reflect on a time when you faced resistance in your personal or spiritual life. How did you respond, and what might you do differently now in light of the early church's example? [39:19]

2. Identify an area in your life where you feel God might be calling you to pivot. What steps can you take to align your strategies with God's direction? [29:22]

3. Consider the cultural or personal prejudices you may hold. How can you actively work to overcome these and embrace new opportunities for growth in your faith? [42:02]

4. Saul's transformation into Paul was a dramatic pivot. Is there an area in your life where you need to allow God to lead you through a significant change? What might that look like? [49:09]

5. The sermon mentions the "blue ocean strategy" in faith. What new spiritual practices or areas of your life could you explore to experience fresh growth and vitality? [44:56]

6. How can you adopt a mindset of resilience and openness to change in your spiritual journey? What practical steps can you take to view setbacks as opportunities for growth? [50:48]

7. Think about a relationship or situation where you have been on autopilot. How can you intentionally seek God's guidance to bring about positive change? [46:59]

Day 1: Resistance as a Pathway to Transformation
In our faith journey, resistance is often perceived as a barrier, but it can be a powerful catalyst for growth and transformation. Just as startups face skepticism and market challenges, the early church encountered persecution, notably from Saul. However, these obstacles did not signify the end; rather, they propelled the church toward expansion and deeper faith. Embracing resistance as an opportunity to pivot can lead to new beginnings and a more profound spiritual journey. By viewing challenges as stepping stones, we can align ourselves with God's transformative plan. [29:22]

Acts 8:1-4 (ESV): "And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word."

Reflection: Identify a current challenge in your life. How might God be using this resistance to guide you toward growth and transformation?


Day 2: The Power of the Pivot
The early church's expansion beyond Jerusalem due to persecution illustrates the importance of pivoting in response to changing circumstances. When faced with obstacles, it's crucial to adjust our strategies to align with God's direction. The early church's pivot not only expanded their reach but also challenged their cultural prejudices, demonstrating the power of God's plan to transcend boundaries. By embracing new opportunities and adjusting our approach, we can overcome barriers and reach new heights in our spiritual journey. [34:04]

Acts 11:19-21 (ESV): "Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord."

Reflection: Consider an area in your life where you feel stuck. How can you pivot your approach to align with God's direction and embrace new opportunities?


Day 3: Transformation through Adversity
Saul's transformation into Paul highlights the profound change that can occur when we are open to God's leading. His dramatic pivot from persecutor to proponent of the faith illustrates how even our greatest adversities can become the foundation for a new and vibrant faith. By allowing God to guide us through challenges, we can experience profound personal transformation and become instruments of His purpose. [49:09]

Galatians 1:13-16 (ESV): "For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone."

Reflection: Reflect on a past adversity that led to personal growth. How can you remain open to God's leading in your current challenges?


Day 4: Embracing Blue Ocean Strategy in Faith
Just as startups seek untapped markets, we are called to explore new areas of our lives where God can work. The early church's expansion into new communities like Samaria exemplifies this approach. By moving beyond familiar routines and embracing new spiritual practices, we can experience fresh growth and vitality in our faith. This openness to new possibilities allows us to witness God's work in unexpected places and ways. [44:56]

Isaiah 43:18-19 (ESV): "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."

Reflection: What new spiritual practice or area of life can you explore to experience fresh growth in your faith?


Day 5: Fail Fast and Fail Forward
In our spiritual journey, setbacks are not failures but opportunities to learn and grow. The "fail fast and fail forward" mentality encourages resilience and openness to change. By adopting this mindset, we can navigate challenges and continue to pursue God's purpose for our lives. Embracing failure as a learning opportunity allows us to refine our faith and align more closely with God's will. [50:48]

Proverbs 24:16 (ESV): "For the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity."

Reflection: Think of a recent setback in your life. How can you view it as an opportunity to learn and grow in your faith?

We can acknowledge that even the aspects of our life that feel the most out of control are within yours. And God, help us to see even the things in our life that we can't see the way around the corner or the way through or the way over. You have already thought up a way for us to grow in you because of them. Would you reveal that to us today? It's in Jesus' name. Amen. [00:28:59] (23 seconds)
Edit Settings for This Clip


But the pivot is a shift in strategy from your original idea because it is either not working or the market has shifted. And something that was working at some point either isn't working anymore, or you can see the writing on the wall that change is coming and you need to pivot as a result. The companies that are household names almost universally are marked by their ability to adjust when competitors, refused to measure, learn, and pivot to develop or redevelop their strategy for changing circumstances. [00:30:50] (35 seconds)
Edit Settings for This Clip


What we'll learn together from the early church is that resistance signals a need for revision and a need for revision. And so, as we look at the early church, we'll learn that resistance not retreat. Sure, it can seem like an easy off-ramp when we face resistance, when we face an obstacle, when we're not sure what to do. It can feel like an easy chance to exit or for some of us put our faith into a comfortable corner in our life that affects our routine on a weekend maybe or the way we have one conversation with one person, but we quarantine it from a whole bunch of areas of our life. [00:33:11] (28 seconds)
Edit Settings for This Clip


And now, because of that, as people face persecution, we see God use that persecution to move the early church beyond Jerusalem. See, so many people had tried to convince Jesus that what he should do is gain and strive for earthly power. But instead of doing that, it feels like he finally got through to them that his followers realized, wait, he was never after earthly power. It was about a different kind of kingdom. And we see the early church learn to not seek personal or political or worldly power for themselves as the church. Instead, they grew more and more comfortable with discomfort. [00:35:49] (37 seconds)
Edit Settings for This Clip


They probably would have stayed in Jerusalem for much longer, but the persecution that Saul was preparing for made it impossible to stay concentrated in the city. They scattered, but they kept preaching the good news of Jesus. As a matter of fact, Luke, he continues our passage by describing that this way. He says, and those who were scattered—remember, this is the church that left just a few verses ago—they were scattered and went about preaching the word. And Philip—and if you're like, did you change this to be your name? No, this was here before me. [00:41:42] (34 seconds)
Edit Settings for This Clip


In one act of resistance and persecution, the early church was forced to face its generational prejudice against the Samaritan people. And it expanded their reach of Jesus beyond the monoculture of the Jewish people and the city of Jerusalem. As I said, God uses pivots like this to bring a massive change in our lives. If we will revise our strategy and not merely retreat into what is known and what is comfortable. [00:45:31] (46 seconds)
Edit Settings for This Clip


At this point in Acts, God has forced the early church to move beyond a single culture or group of people, to develop resilient hope in the midst of persecution, to learn how to develop a pioneer mentality while continually expressing grace through their lives, often to people who want nothing to do with them. And he was just getting started. Remember that guy, Saul, who was persecuting the church, who presided over Stephen's execution, who was going from house to house, ravaging the early church and throwing people in prison? [00:48:35] (35 seconds) Edit Clip


There's an idea in Silicon Valley for this too. It's fail fast and fail forward. Don't just get stuck. Don't let failure be the thing that stops you from learning. Let it be the catalyst that helps you learn. As a matter of fact, Paul could have stubbornly stuck with what wasn't working, but instead he understood the error in his ways. He changed course immediately and dramatically. [00:50:19] (24 seconds)
Edit Settings for This Clip


Imagine if God would use our little bit of faith to keep sparking a movement of faith throughout our region. Faith is contagious, but if we always hold back the call to God, we're going to get stoned to death. Off of our faith, where it shows up and sparks in our life, no one will ever know. There are Saul's everywhere. [00:55:04] (19 seconds)
Edit Settings for This Clip

Well, good morning, Menlo Church, and welcome back to the third week in our series that we're kicking off the new year with, Startup Faith, where we have been hearing stories of God starting or restarting the faith stories of people in our community.

And we're so humbled that you're here. For some of you, you're exploring God and the way of Jesus for the first time or for the first time in a really long time.

Now, we are a multi-site church, which means we are one church in multiple locations with the same mission: to bring hope to everyone by living out our identity in Christ every day. And so wherever you are and whatever brought you here today, welcome. We think that hope is for you.

With all that said, I want to personally welcome our campuses in San Mateo, Mountain View, Menlo Park, Saratoga, and those joining us online. We are so thankful for you. We had lots of people who checked out Discover Menlo last week, which is kind of an environment, like a lunch and party atmosphere we do throughout the year to help people just learn a little bit more about Menlo. And it's so fun to hear about more people connecting at each campus every time we do those.

In this series, we've talked about the aspects of startup culture in our region and how, at its best, those principles can really be applied to how we start or restart our faith. Week one focused on our capacity to dream and the unintentional barriers that sometimes we allow to be created in our life or maybe through the culture that we sort of just swim in every day.

Last week, we dove into the design phase of a startup and a concept called MVP, or minimum viable product, within startup culture that can serve as a model, we talked about, for our faith MVP, about what it means to pursue Jesus through rhythms every day, every week, and each year. Both of those messages are available online, and I would say this: even if I didn't preach them, I think they're worth your time. So if you missed them, go check them out.

Today, we're talking about developing faith in particular. We'll look at how startups develop their products over time, especially when they hit stalls or plateaus, or they face resistance. We'll also return to the story of the early church and see how they responded.

One adversity that felt unshakable came their way as well. And here's the thing: we're talking about startups and the early church. Neither one of them had it easy. Startups deal with skeptical investors, technical hiccups, finicky customers who are always right, even when they're wrong. And the early church faced Saul. Saul was basically a one-man startup killer.

But resistance wasn't the end for them. It was the path to a new beginning. And just like startups and the church, when we press through resistance in our own lives, God can bring incredible growth and progress. And that's maybe what you're missing in your life and what the closer look I hope God provides for you today can provide.

But before we begin, I'm going to pray for us. And if you've never been here before or never heard me speak, before I speak, I pray kneeling. And part of the reason that I do that is this: help that we're talking about, the ability to see God, even in circumstances that don't feel very hopeful or helpful, it starts by humbling ourselves. So no matter where you are in your faith today, would you pray with me?

God, we are so thankful that even when things feel overwhelming, perhaps especially when things feel overwhelming and we're trying to grab for control, we can simply surrender to you. We can acknowledge that even the aspects of our life that feel the most out of control are within yours.

And God, help us to see even the things in our life that we can't see the way around the corner or the way through or the way over. You have already thought up a way for us to grow in you because of them. Would you reveal that to us today? It's in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now, what we're going to discover is that oftentimes developing a strategy looks like redeveloping a strategy. If you were here last week, we talked about this concept that I didn't invent. It's common to Silicon Valley. It's called the lean startup approach.

And where, you know, big tech and legacy companies may have built a product and then kind of had that pretty well isolated and then just ran the play of that product until it ran out of relevance, the lean startup approach says you should always be in this cycle over and over again, building something and then measuring the results of it and then learning from it.

And as you do this, your product becomes more and more effective and can continue to meet the needs of a changing world. Now, here's the thing that I want to make sure we grab a hold of today. As we think about what we do when we reach a plateau or when we hit an obstacle, there's one more element of the lean startup approach that I think we have to learn, which is right here: we add a step, which is the pivot.

Now, I want to name the fact that if you grew up in the 90s and you watched Friends, you are thinking right now of someone saying pivot in a certain way. And every time I say it today, you're going to think about that person saying that. And I'm going to say it a lot. So just so you know, the next time you watch that episode, you'll probably be reminded of this. You're welcome.

But the pivot is a shift in strategy from your original idea because it is either not working or the market has shifted. And something that was working at some point either isn't working anymore, or you can see the writing on the wall that change is coming and you need to pivot as a result.

The companies that are household names almost universally are marked by their ability to adjust when competitors refused to measure, learn, and pivot to develop or redevelop their strategy for changing circumstances. As a matter of fact, the streaming revolution led Netflix to move from mailing DVDs to building the gold standard streaming environment that we know today.

Meanwhile, Blockbuster committed to physical media in their brick-and-mortar stores, downplayed the threat of Netflix, and passed on their chance to purchase Netflix for $50 million back in 2000. And I think $50 million is currently the monthly subscription cost for Netflix, so it feels like they missed out there.

Kodak actually invented the very first digital camera but shelved the idea back in 1975 because they were concerned about how that product would affect their core film business. Instead, competitors like Canon and Nikon grew exponentially. Meanwhile, Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

Do you remember the BlackBerry? It was a smartphone that was so addictive its nickname was a crackberry. Like, you have achieved something as a product when that's your nickname. They experienced the release of the iPhone just like everyone did at the time, but because the iPhone did not have a physical keyboard, they thought they would largely be exempt from the competition it might create.

And as a result of not seeing the market changing with the release of the iPhone, they basically lost their entire market of smartphone users. Maybe you can think about areas in your own life where there needed to be a pivot. Something has changed, but you've been on autopilot for a significant period of time.

And even though there are signs that it needs a pivot or that you should make an adjustment or for a reinvention, you have resisted, even as that thing you keep doing faces resistance that your current approach needs to adjust.

What we'll learn together from the early church is that resistance signals a need for revision and a need for revision. And so, as we look at the early church, we'll learn that resistance, not retreat. Sure, it can seem like an easy off-ramp when we face resistance, when we face an obstacle, when we're not sure what to do.

It can feel like an easy chance to exit or for some of us to put our faith into a comfortable corner in our life that affects our routine on a weekend maybe or the way we have one conversation with one person, but we quarantine it from a whole bunch of areas of our life.

And that type of avoided integration, I think, is one of those things that can hold us back from the kind of hope that God wants to bring into every corner of our life.

We've been walking through a few sections from the book of Acts in the New Testament of the Bible, which is a biography of sorts written by Luke, a physician in the first century who became a follower of Jesus and an integral part of the early church.

In it, we have found some of the same principles to start or restart our faith today. And last week, we left off with the early church growing every single day and expanding its reach beyond the original group of people that followed Jesus or even the hundreds of people that he interacted with after his resurrection.

And now we are in the years that followed his earthly ministry. Before his crucifixion and resurrection, they were following him every day. And now, after he had ascended to heaven, the early church is making strides in the early days.

This week, as the Holy Spirit, God himself, who now lives inside of every follower of Jesus, empowers them to incredible ministry, the early church will face tremendous resistance in the hands of an unlikely villain.

Now, an early leader in the church, Stephen, has just preached an amazing message, an absolutely incredible sermon. In chapter 7 of the book of Acts, you can go back and read it. He walked through the entire story of God's faithfulness to the world through the Jewish people, culminating in the grace of God to send Jesus, his own son, to live upon the earth.

And he walked through the entire story of God's faithfulness to the world through the perfect life in your place, to die the death that we all deserve, and then to come back from the grave, to make a way back for you and me into relationship with God, now and forever, to advance his kingdom forever.

But what he didn't know was that it was a setup. And after he delivered the message, the leaders who were listening and the crowd that they had manipulated petitioned to have Stephen stoned to death.

And where we step in for our passage today about that moment, it says some surprising words. It says, of his execution, Saul, who presided over the area, Saul, who was passionate about the Jewish faith, Saul, who likely presided over many executions like this.

At this point in Saul's life, he viewed followers of Jesus as a threat to eliminate. He understood his lifetime calling as preserving access to the traditions and customs of the Jewish faith from the threat of movements just like this one.

And so the passage continues this way. It says, and there arose on that day great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. And we're going to be introduced to a few different people. We've already been introduced to Saul. We've now been introduced to the church.

It says that they, the church, who are now being persecuted, they scattered as soon as Saul's persecution expanded throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria. This one we're going to see why this is so unique. Except the apostles.

Here's that third group that we find. They were devout men who buried Stephen and then they grieved his loss. But Saul was ravaging the church and entering house after house, dragging off men and women, and committing them to prison.

So when we see this moment in the early church, this is the moment that for lots of movements just like this, it would have ended the very movement. At this point in the early church, people were called followers of the way. It would be some time before they were ever called Christians.

The first group of people that were called Christians, they didn't assign that term themselves. It was assigned to them. They were following the way of Jesus, and they were understood at the time to be a Jewish sect, a group of Judaism that had sort of spun out.

Because nearly everyone in the early church who were followers of the way of Jesus, they had been Jewish previously. Now, this isn't the first time that a sect had shown up like this. Most of the time, spinoffs like this faced this kind of persecution, and then they would disband.

A leader would claim authority and gain a following, oftentimes kind of viewed as either a threat to Judaism or a threat to Roman rule. And either the movement faced persecution or the leader died, and the group blended back into Roman-ruled society. That was sort of the way over and over again that this happened.

But for the followers of Jesus, they were quite different. Jesus had died first and then come back from the dead, and he appeared to hundreds of people while he was alive after coming back from the dead over the course of weeks before ascending to heaven.

And now, because of that, as people face persecution, we see God use that persecution to move the early church beyond Jerusalem. See, so many people had tried to convince Jesus that what he should do is gain and strive for earthly power.

But instead of doing that, it feels like he finally got through to them that his followers realized, wait, he was never after earthly power. It was about a different kind of kingdom. And we see the early church learn to not seek personal or political or worldly power for themselves as the church.

Instead, they grew more and more comfortable with discomfort. They were exiles wherever they went, and God grew them because of that, and they could understand it in a way that they didn't previously.

Now, learning that is still critical for us today. We are still exiles today. When I was considering colleges, I had a major obstacle in my own life because I felt called to be a pastor when I was eight years old. I know it's weird. If you're like not a person of faith, you're like, is that normal? It's not super normal. I'm weird. I probably didn't need to tell you that. You probably figured it out before now.

But in that, I really wasn't sure how that was going to work. In particular, my dad, who for most of his life was not a Christian, made it very clear that he was unwilling to help with college at all if I was going to college to prepare to be in ministry.

And that obstacle felt insurmountable. I wasn't sure how this calling that I felt like God had in my life and the opportunities that were in front of me could ever work together. But that pivot, it forced me to consider the school that I attended.

And I ended up at a school called Moody Bible Institute in downtown Chicago, which prepares people for full-time ministry almost exclusively. And if you're accepted to that school, donors from around the world pay all of your tuition.

And so it was this avenue that I would have never probably thought of. And I was like, if there hadn't been a need to figure that out with that problem. Those were the four most spiritually formative years in my life up to that point where I met my wife and some lifelong friends who are still dear to me today, decades later.

See, resistance, it isn't a surprise to God. He's not trying to figure out what to do with it. He allowed that in your life because he wants you to use it to pivot to where he wants to take you, but you wouldn't go without it.

He may have placed something in your life that you wouldn't want to take, but you wouldn't go without it. To revise your plan, to redevelop your strategy. And if we're not careful, we use it as an excuse to retreat from God.

So how about you? What's something that you're facing in your life right now that God has used for a reason and you've allowed it to be an excuse to retreat from God rather than revise your approach with God?

Is it possible that the barrier you're experiencing at work or at school or in a key relationship, maybe even financially, is actually something that God put in your life, that God allowed in your life because he wanted you to shift your strategy about how you think about or pursue God in a way you wouldn't have been open to otherwise? Just something to think about.

That's exactly what God did in the early church. As unthinkable as it might feel to us, this persecution forced them to do something that these early followers of Jesus would have never done without it, and early movements like this really struggled with. They had to leave Jerusalem.

They couldn't stay in the place or with the people that they knew the best, that they felt the most comfortable with, that they liked and liked them. They couldn't just let it sit here. And that's exactly what God wanted.

They probably would have stayed in Jerusalem for much longer, but the persecution that Saul was preparing for made it impossible to stay concentrated in the city. They scattered, but they kept preaching the good news of Jesus.

As a matter of fact, Luke continues our passage by describing that this way. He says, and those who were scattered—remember, this is the church that left just a few verses ago—they were scattered and went about preaching the word.

And Philip—and if you're like, did you change this to be your name? No, this was here before me—Philip went down to the city of Samaria—again, this is going to be pretty important, we'll see in just a minute—and proclaimed to them the Christ.

Now, this is not Jesus' last name. You've heard Jesus Christ. Christ is not Jesus' last name. It's his title. It's identifying who he is and what he has the authority and power to do.

It says, the crowds, with one accord, totally unified, paid attention to what was being said by Philip. And the reason that they were paying attention is because they heard what he was saying, and it was compelling, and they saw the signs that he was doing.

And it says that for unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. And as a result, it says, so there was much joy in that city.

Now, what we see taking place in just these verses is the miracle of God bringing a pivot to the early church. There are plenty of places where the early church leaders could have ended up in this moment, but certainly Philip ends up in the least likely place. He ends up in Samaria.

People in Samaria were called Samaritans, and they were half Jewish, half Gentile. As a matter of fact, to the Jewish people, they were worse than Gentiles. They were often referred to as half-breeds, and they faced overt racism from people at the time.

Jewish people typically didn't talk to them. They didn't make space for them in religious observance. As a matter of fact, they would travel in a way to avoid the region of Samaria entirely. That's how much they didn't like this group of people.

And the thing that we see behind all of this is that the early church, what God does by the power of the Holy Spirit in Philip, is something that we also see in startup culture, even right now.

See, the saturated market that they left in Jerusalem with lots of religious claims and people that had sort of been pitched a bunch of different ideas, they had sort of dried up that market. And they went to Samaria, where very few people would have ever gone from a Jewish group like this, and they heard about the hope and help of Jesus.

And they went to Samaria, that normally would have never made it to them. In startup world, actually, there's a term for this. It's called blue ocean strategy.

And the idea of it is exactly this. Somebody laugh about this one? The idea of it is that there's this overfished section where we look at a specific market and we go, there's not many fish left, and there's a lot of hooks.

And then there's blue ocean where we go, it's a whole new market. It's a whole new group that may be really receptive to what it is we're trying to offer. And this idea, that the early church probably would have never orchestrated or thought about on their own, is exactly the idea that God pushed them into through the circumstances of their life, through them being willing to refine rather than retreat.

In one act of resistance and persecution, the early church was forced to face its generational prejudice against the Samaritan people. And it expanded their reach of Jesus beyond the monoculture of the Jewish people and the city of Jerusalem.

As I said, God uses pivots like this to bring a massive change in our lives if we will revise our strategy and not merely retreat into what is known and what is comfortable.

We have tons of examples, by the way, of this in Silicon Valley. Back when payment processing with credit cards was much more expensive and largely controlled by massive companies that excluded small businesses and individuals, the payment processor Square created a platform that made credit card payments easy and accessible to those excluded groups.

DoorDash, it actually disrupted the food delivery business by removing the need for individual businesses to create and maintain fleets of delivery drivers and providing an easy platform. They allowed customers to discover and order food and have it delivered to them.

So what about you? I bet that there are areas where you have seen this maybe academically or professionally, this sort of strategy shift from the red ocean that is way overfished to the blue ocean.

But what about in your faith? Have you maybe been doing the same habits for a long time and nobody's told you, but you can feel diminishing returns? For you, there's like a five-minute window in your morning that you've overfished or a 60-minute window on your Sunday each week that you've overfished, but there are big swaths of your life that God's never even had access.

Have you been hoping that just showing up to something like this would reshape your life spiritually all on its own? It can. This is one of the reasons that we host an environment like Menlo Next multiple times throughout the year.

It's a three-week environment where we feed you. We share a little bit about who we believe God's trying to shape you into here at Menlo, and we help you find your people. It's a really important environment. If you want to explore some of the blue ocean thinking of your start or restarted faith this year, it could be a really, really important thing for you to check out.

It begins in just about a week and a half. You can learn more and sign up at menlo.church/connect. There's lots of people in your life and lots of companies and products and organizations that will say to you, hey, we don't have an agenda for you.

I'm so glad you're here. I want to be very clear. We have an agenda for you, but it's not a secret. We want to tell you about it because we think that God has your best interest in mind, and we want to share it with you. So Menlo Next does that. I'd encourage you to check it out if you haven't before.

At this point in Acts, God has forced the early church to move beyond a single culture or group of people, to develop resilient hope in the midst of persecution, to learn how to develop a pioneer mentality while continually expressing grace through their lives, often to people who want nothing to do with them.

And he was just getting started. Remember that guy, Saul, who was persecuting the church, who presided over Stephen's execution, who was going from house to house, ravaging the early church and throwing people in prison?

You maybe don't know that word, Saul. That's his Hebrew name, but you may have recognized, or you may recognize his Roman name, which is Paul. See, Paul, we know, Paul is a man who is a man of God.

He's a man of God. He's a man of God. He's a man of God. As the leader in the early church who saw himself as a missionary to the Gentiles, who wrote nearly half of the documents that make up the New Testament of our Bibles, he started as a persecutor of the church.

And this shift that we see is recorded in both sacred and secular history of the time. That's a pretty massive change. Imagine the pivot that Paul had to make from a life devoted to destroying the early church to a life he would be willing to surrender to help people.

I mean, really? I mean, is he crazy? He didn't want to destroy a church to do anything else. He didn't want to destroy anything else. Jesus. On Saul's way to do more harm, a resurrected Jesus knocked him off of the animal that he was riding, blinded him, and saved him.

Paul, who now understood what Jesus had done, who he had really done all of this for, and the consequences of Paul's well-intentioned actions to persecute the early church, now he went from a life that was committed to persecuting the church to being fully committed to pursuing Jesus and helping other people to do the same.

There's an idea in Silicon Valley for this too. It's fail fast and fail forward. Don't just get stuck. Don't let failure be the thing that stops you from learning. Let it be the catalyst that helps you learn.

As a matter of fact, Paul could have stubbornly stuck with what wasn't working, but instead he understood the error in his ways. He changed course immediately and dramatically.

Some of you are not the same. You are not the same. You are not the same. You are not the same. You are not in the same boat right now, but you have made a different decision.

Rather than revise your approach, you have retreated. You've decided to put your faith in a comfortable spot that is non-threatening to the rest of your life. Maybe no one knows, but your approach isn't working, and rather than getting help, rather than seeking God, rather than taking a step, you have chosen to withdraw.

Or even worse, I think, is to continue in a path that you know isn't working. Last week, I challenged you to consider your faith MVP, what it could look like to have incremental steps of pursuing God.

And today, I want to finish up by challenging you to consider the walls you are hitting in your life and to look for the new approach that God may be asking you to take instead of banging your head against the walls you've discovered.

There's an ancient Chinese proverb that says, when you hit a wall, it's not the wall's fault. But I think sometimes we live like it is.

So I'm going to give you these three questions. We're going to expand on them more in our podcast this in the middle of this week if you want to check it out. But here are three questions to take with you.

Number one, where are you sensing God asking you to push through where you are facing resistance? That God wants you to develop a stick-to-itiveness, a resiliency. God wants you to learn how to press through in your life. For some of you, you know the thing that you're after is the thing that God wants, and the resistance that you face is going to help you grow through it.

Number two, where are you sensing God asking you to change your plan, to pivot where you are facing resistance? Oftentimes, this is for an outcome that we want, but if we process it with fellow followers of Jesus or we process it with God, we know that the thing I want, actually, God wants to change that very thing.

And then number three, where are the blue oceans of your life that you need to let God have control over? The areas of your life, maybe it's how you show up at work. Maybe it's how you show up in that key friendship or relationship. Maybe it's in your relationship with your significant other.

Where are some areas where you just kind of let them be comfortable and cozy? God doesn't get to speak into that, and He's challenging you to let Him. Just take those three questions with you.

I know that we are in a community and in a moment historically where pursuing faith can feel futile. It can feel like there are more obstacles than opportunities. Even if you want to, there are so many reasons, there are so many people, there are that feel like they have hijacked what we just read or studied together.

But I would just challenge you that when we dive in, when we read the scriptures, when we learn what it is that God has for you and me, that we don't lose sight of the truth of who God is and what he's offered to you in the process.

Author and theologian G.K. Chesterton famously put it this way. He said, the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

And I would challenge you that if that's your story, if that's where you are today, it's worth trying and you won't be doing it alone. For some of you, I just say thank you for trying. Thanks for rolling up your sleeves. Thanks for seeking God in your everyday life.

It really does matter, and it matters more than you know it does in your life and through your life. Next week, we are going to finish our series by talking about what we do with all of this and where we can go from here.

But don't wait to start pulling some of those practices and rhythms out of the closet or out of the drawer that they've been sitting with and putting them into action in your life.

Maybe this week, in addition to signing up for Menlo Next, you're going to do something that you've never done before. Try something in your pursuit of Jesus.

Maybe for you this week, you're going to talk with someone that you have unintentionally or intentionally excluded in the past, and you're going to apologize for that.

Maybe God will press you to share some of what he's been teaching you and showing you through the lessons of the early church. Some of you, you actually need to do that. You need to do that. You need to do that. You need to do that. You need to tell your roommates or your spouse or your coworker about the new rhythms of pursuing God that you're trying out in your life.

Is it risky? It is absolutely risky, but I have really good news for you. You are not going to get stoned to death because of it, right? So it might feel risky, but just measure it against the early church. It's worth the risk.

Imagine if God would use our little bit of faith to keep sparking a movement of faith throughout our region. Faith is contagious, but if we always hold back the call to God, we're going to get stoned to death off of our faith, where it shows up and sparks in our life, no one will ever know.

There are Saul's everywhere. Some of them are finding Jesus at Menlo right now. Skeptics and cynics who had made it their job to ridicule and ostracize Christians at school, at work, and their family around the dinner table, who God has just feels like kind of dropped the scales from their eyes as they've pursued in intellectually honest and rigorous ways what it means to know God and who Jesus really is.

And we are watching God keep rescuing people. Let's pray that God does even more of that in the days ahead, as we bring hope everywhere we go, that he's not done. And if you're here, he's not done with you either.

Can I pray for you?

God, we are so thankful. We are so thankful that when we look at a story like this, and we are reminded about the history of the early church, that even when obstacles show up, God, you are still there.

Sometimes, God, the things that we need most in our life, the way that we most need to be redirected, it happens because you allow things we wouldn't ask for.

And so, God, where there are difficult things in our life right now, where we've hit that plateau, where we've hit that wall, help us to look for you. Help us to learn from you.

Those areas that we've said, God, I'll let you in, but no further. God, I'll let you touch this part of my life, but not that part of my life. God, would you help us to surrender every part of our lives to you?

You would bring hope to every part of our lives so that as we learn to walk with you, we would bring every part of our lives that same hope.

God, thank you for these lessons. Thank you for the place we live. I pray that we would be a blessing to it as we bring hope. In Jesus' name, Amen.