AUG 16 2026 | The Book of Acts S1E4 | Priscilla & Aquila

Sea Change Church · The Book of Acts: The Church Has Left the Building S1E4 · "Priscilla & Aquila" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · August 16, 2026 Acts 18:1–4 We are in the final week of a twelve week series called "The Church Has Left the Building." It's a visional series about who we are becoming as a church and what we're calling you as a congregation to engage in: to be in unity, to have an identity rooted in who Jesus and the Bible say you are, to grow in maturity, and then to go and actually change the world in your sphere of influence. We want to be a change the world church, and we don't believe that changing the world happens just by you coming and listening to great worship, sending your kids to children's ministry, hearing a sermon, and getting a little daily encouragement.

All those things happen, but what we want to see is you actively engaged to change the world. This world needs changing, and there are a lot of change agents out there, and not all of them are moving in a direction of peace, hope, and unity in the name of Jesus Christ. These final four weeks of the series, we've been looking at ordinary Christians, people in the Book of Acts who were just very normal. I always say you could have been in the Bible. He could have pulled your story out and taken the things you're dealing with and made you part of it. What we see with these people in Acts is they had a very outward focus.

I'm sure they had their own problems and storms in their lives, but they had a regular gear that would shift into loving God and caring for others. That's what we want to do as a church. This week, we're going to meet Priscilla and Aquila, an amazing married couple in the Bible. In the Old Testament there are a lot of bad marriages, but in the New Testament you start to see some better examples, and Priscilla and Aquila are one of those. We're in Acts 18, verses 1 through 4. "After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth, and he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.

And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks." Paul's mission was to go into the civic, public arena and reason things out. The synagogue was basically the YouTube of his time, the Instagram of his time, the place of social influence. It's really important that you have a plan for growing in Scripture, not just reading a little every day but studying, so you have an answer for why you believe what you believe. Paul leaves Athens, goes to Corinth, and finds this incredible couple.

They end up being one of the most influential couples and friends in his entire life. They supported his ministry, they were active in supporting the church, and their whole game as a married couple was to support their church and the churches in their region so the message of the gospel would go forward. It wasn't about their platform. They partnered as a couple to bring stability to ministers of the gospel like Paul, and they also had their house be a place where they let other Christians in. There was a house church in their home. And everywhere they went, on the road, at work, there was an integrity to them.

That's the key word for today: integrity. Integrity often just means someone who doesn't lie, and it does mean that, but there's more to it. I remember being in science class in seventh grade, talking about the space shuttle and its heat tiles. The teacher said if one of those tiles is out of place, the whole thing could overheat and explode on reentry. Integrity is when all the elements come together to bring protection. It's easy to be a Christian at church on Sunday. It's harder on the way to church, harder in your business. What we see in Priscilla and Aquila is an integrity of living where what they looked like on Sunday is what they looked like on Tuesday at two in the afternoon and Friday at ten at night.

We want a Christian life that enters every sphere of our life, not just our quiet time and then we go live however we want the rest of the day. The monastics would call this a rule of life, a rhythm of life. I'm going to a silent monastery soon for five days, no internet, no Wi-Fi, just trying to listen to the Lord. As Protestants we don't always think in these terms, but we need a rule of life too: a rhythm of stopping to pray, to read, to stay rooted, not just on Sunday but every day of the week. Making Jesus known was fully integrated into the entirety of Priscilla and Aquila's lives.

They're mentioned six times in Scripture, and when you get mentioned six times for a good reason, it means you were doing something. Before we get there, let's meet them. Aquila is described as a Jew, a native of Pontus, and Priscilla is his wife. They were tentmakers by trade, ordinary working people with a passion for transforming ordinary space into kingdom space. Kingdom space means taking the culture of heaven, the presence and priorities of God, into whatever ordinary space he's called you to. Their three primary spiritual gifts, based on how they show up across Scripture, were teaching, discipleship, and hospitality. You'll see all three of those on display today.

Point one: ordinary people. Aquila was from Pontus. Priscilla was likely already in Rome. Under Emperor Claudius, Jews were expelled from the city, and that's how this couple ended up in Corinth. That's one of the times, one of over a hundred documented times in history, that the Jewish people have been forced from one place to another. There's not been a people group displaced more. For so many people, displacement means despair, and displacement can be an excuse to move away from your core values, into blame, into a pattern or lifestyle where you lose your compass point on the map. What we see here is that they were displaced, sent from Rome to Corinth, not knowing they would come across one of the most influential believers in the New Testament in regard to writing Scripture.

As I prayed over this passage, I felt the Lord say, "What looked like displacement became divine placement." Just because something negative happens in your life doesn't mean you have to lose your compass point on the map if your life is centered in Christ. Without the displacement, we're not preaching about them right now. Without it, they're not mentioned six times in Scripture, because what looked like displacement was God's divine placement. I want to give you a word of encouragement: when you follow God and the rains come in your life, when you're following God through it, they will always come with some form of harvest on the other side.

We have a God who does not waste any crisis in your life. I've watched believers go through some of the most difficult things I've ever seen, and I've watched them keep finding fruit and a harvest on the other side. One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 16:9: "The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps." I love the word "establishes." Imagine when you put your foot down, God actually puts his hands around your feet and moves them into the soil so deep that you are rooted in that pathway, in those steps. If you're going through a difficult time, a health issue, something extremely difficult in a relationship: stick with the Lord, continue to read Scripture, do not let displacement move you into despair or into habits you left years ago.

Point two: making Jesus known was fully integrated into the entirety of their lives. At work, in Acts 18:1 through 3, Paul meets Aquila and Priscilla in Corinth. They're tentmakers, and Paul lives and works with them. I think it's interesting that Paul became a tentmaker, because tents have a significant place in the Old Testament: God's presence dwelt with Israel in a tent in the wilderness. I don't think that's lost on God. Sometimes in your own life, God has shaped you in a way that looks random but is actually preparing you for what he's called you to do. Now, in the new covenant, God no longer dwells in tents; he dwells within us.

When you believe in Jesus, that he died for your sins, was raised on the third day, and is coming again, you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit living within you. You become not the tent, but a temple of the living God. That's a radical teaching. The question is whether you're going to use that access or suppress it. Their workplace was totally transformed, steeped in prayer and in thinking about what could change the world. What is your work steeped in? It's easy to make the work itself the end goal, the production, the scaling up. What can you do to change your workplace, whatever sphere you're in?

I dare you: get a Bible, take your church Bible, and put it somewhere in your space, not necessarily front and center, but somewhere it invites a question. Shine the light, just don't blind people. On the road, in Acts 18, Priscilla and Aquila travel with Paul to Ephesus, a trading city, probably to make a living, but also a dark, pagan city where they may have helped plant the church. In personal relationships and at home, you see them mentioned again and again. Near the end of his life, Paul writes in 2 Timothy, "Greet Priscilla and Aquila." These relationships were the kind that endured. In Romans 16:3 through 5, Paul writes, "Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well.

Greet also the church in their house." If you make it into the book of Romans, that's significant. They risked their lives for Paul, in a Roman culture, and could have been stoned to death for what they did. And then Paul says all the churches of the Gentiles are thankful for them too, because they traveled with Paul to Ephesus and likely helped plant that church. They didn't stop going to synagogue. They didn't wait for Paul to give them a thumbs up to start a group in their home or change their workspace. They just went for it. I want to give you full permission: one of the things I want us to get away from at our church is a bottleneck mentality, where nothing counts unless it's run through my office.

If you want to start a ministry, go start it. We have to release the church and not have to personally anoint every single thing that happens here. Point three: tents were their profession, but people were their passion. You are not going to make a difference if people are not your passion. In Acts 18:24 it says, "Now there was a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.

He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately." Apollos ends up becoming Paul-esque; Paul will later say some people say "I follow Paul," others say "I follow Apollos." But at this point he wasn't there yet. This ordinary married couple essentially says, "Hey, you got time for a cup of tea?" and sits down with him. They wanted to explain the Scriptures to him because he only knew the baptism of John, and they wanted to tell him about the baptism of the Holy Spirit that would empower him.

He was fervent, he was studying in Alexandria, one of the great intellectual centers of the day, he knew how to debate. But this couple took a risk, stepped out, and said, "Let us tell you about this way." They ended up discipling him. They recognized his potential and could help develop it. We've been looking for a definition of discipleship. It means one on one, over a table, talking about the Scriptures. We sometimes never end up discipling anybody because we're arguing about what it means to disciple somebody. Here's the definition I wrote down: recognizing who someone can be in Christ and investing into that calling. It's recognizing who someone can be in Christ, looking at their gifting, their personality, what they're into, and investing your time, your treasure, your talent to see who they can become, and then helping them develop into that.

That is discipleship. This week I want you to identify one ordinary space that God has given you: your home, your workplace, your business, your neighborhood, your relationships, and intentionally turn it into a space where you make Jesus known. Take the space, and make Jesus known in that space with intentionality. I want to close with a story. I was at a conference once, praying, and God speaks to me sometimes in pictures, word pictures that just show up out of nowhere. I've done it enough now that I'm pretty sure, not always a hundred percent, when it's me and when it's him. In that moment I saw the faces of people who took a risk on me when there was every reason not to.

I got kicked out of five different high schools. But there was a first grade teacher, Ms. Comber, who took me in for two years despite everything going on with me. There was a mentor, Randy Wright, who invited me over every week to watch The Cosby Show and eat a home cooked meal with his family. And there was a pastor, Dave Dignall, who, when I was only a few weeks sober, let me teach small portions of a Bible study under his covering. He saw potential in me and took a risk on me before there was any evidence I deserved it. Who are the people that you can develop?

There has to be at least one person in your life that you see potential in, someone you could have a mentoring style relationship with, where you are raising them up in Christ. There has to be margin for at least one, or we're not going anywhere as a church. If it means cutting off some golfing time or whatever the thing is in order to be that person who invests in someone else, this is the only way we're going to change the world in Jesus Christ, because the Church has left the building.