Last Night's Conversation

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Last night we ventured to Starbucks in Hermitage for our weekly conversation. Instead of revealing the conclusions (which are still sometimes questions) that we arrived at throughout the discussion, today I will instead only post the questions. We continued our discussion through the book of Acts with chapter 13 being the focus of the evening. Here we have Paul and Barnabas "set apart" and "sent off" from the church at Antioch. The first brief topic of convo was the reason for setting them apart. What does this mean? Hasn't Christ already done that? Why need man to do it also?

Moving on from there, we began to chew on the reality that this chapter is the very first time that Saul was called Paul. From hence forth in the Bible, he is referred to as Paul. Thus the million dollar questions is raised--why? If that single word question is to broad for your taste, then try this one. Throughout the epic story of God's relation to humans, why does He see it necessary to change people's names who have interacted with Him? Now no, it is not stated whether or not God was the one who changed Paul's name, but it remains a possibility.

The rest of the evening was spent encouraging and exhorting as we bestowed new names on each other. This was a little outside our western box since we don't value the name and genealogy of a person like eastern cultures do, but nevertheless, it proved to be very intimate. So I make the same charge to the readers of this feelble attempt to chronicle God's work in one community of faith in Mt. Juliet, TN as was made to us sojourners in the conversation last night: may you encourage one another to continue in the grace of the Lord Jesus as He reveals to us all what our true names are.