A Message for Every Neighborhood
Though the Jerusalem church accepted (in theory) the idea that God had granted repentance to the Gentiles, a truly multi-ethnic congregation wasn’t formed until the Good News came to the city of Antioch. This was a city with populations of various ethnic groups. Ethnic groups stayed mostly to themselves and tensions ran deep. But the Good News of Jesus began to change all of that. People of various ethnicities began to embrace each other as siblings. Outsiders probably didn’t know what to call this new multi-ethnic group, so they ended up called them “Christians.” (Acts 11:19-26)