Acts 16:16-24. A slave girl possessed by a spirit of divination begins following Paul and his companions around Philippi crying "These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation." She does this for many days before Paul becomes annoyed and charges the spirit to leave her in the name of Jesus Christ, which it does. The girl's owners, having lost a good source of income, seize Paul and Silas and bring them before the rulers, saying they are disturbing the city and preaching customs not lawful for Romans to practice. The crowd joins in the attack, and the rulers have Paul and Silas stripped, beaten, and thrown into prison where the jailer puts them in the inner prison and fastens their feet with stocks.

Evangelization is often subversive, especially in un-Christian nations. Christianity upsets the power balance and the relationship that people have with their government. Unless the government is specifically founded on Christian values (and remains true to them), preaching the Gospel will cause political unrest, since it leads people to serve a higher authority than the state, thus reducing the state to something less than the ultimate good. This was true everywhere in the early Church. There obviously was no government founded on Christianity yet, so the apostles, Paul, and the other early evangelizers, were causing disturbances wherever they went and they were suffering for it. As the West moves further away from Christian values, even becoming hostile to them, those of us trying to evangelize today will face many of the same issues.

Knowing these risks, the early evangelizers started small and under the radar. They met with people in their homes, in the streets, and in synagogues. They copied Jesus' style, and spread the Word without calling too much attention to themselves. But in addition to earthly powers, they (and we!) also have the spiritual ones to contend with. The devil is always at work, and if he can accomplish his goal by telling the truth, so much the better! So here we see a possessing spirit proclaiming loudly and incessantly that Paul and his companions are servants of the Most High God and are proclaiming the way to salvation. It is a great message and it is completely true, but it is also calling unwanted attention and disruption to the men. So Paul casts out the spirit, which leads to a beating and imprisonment for Paul and Silas.

When we are evangelizing, we are not only upsetting the human earthly power structure, but also the spiritual one. The Kingdom we are proclaiming is not of this world, but it is for all the world's citizens. We are calling them out of this world to a better one, so we are threatening everything tied to the way this world works. We have to learn to do our best on both fronts, but we must also realize that we will suffer, there is simply no getting around it.