Be Berean
In his second missionary journey, Paul made a sudden detour to Berea after the fledgling Christian church in Thessalonica was violently threatened. While Paul’s plan may have been disrupted, his pattern of ministry was not: in Berea, he continued his established method of reasoning from the Scriptures in the synagogues with Jews and other God-fearers. There is not a lot told to us about the people of Berea except that they were “nobler than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Luke clearly admired their enthusiasm for the Word, and Christians for centuries after have admired the same. To this day, it is not odd to find their name adopted by congregations. In my own city, we have a Berean Baptist Church. Colleges have taken on these Berean Jews as their namesake, and settlers in Kentucky hundreds of years ago named their small village Berea—now it’s the fastest-growing ci...