In my opinion, the three problems facing the Church, after the death of Jesus was gaining the support of followers, unfaithfulness and/or lying, and the separation of people, because of different beliefs. I think that it was difficult to get the people to support the Church, because of their fear of getting persecuted like Jesus and others. Christianity was a new religion to people. People did not know where Christianity stood with them and the God that they already believed in. It is hard to have faith in something that you cannot see, something that you know nothing about. Christianity seemed to be too abstract for people to handle. A person has to have strength within them to believe in something that they cannot physically view. But that is why faith is faith. The second problem I think faced the early Church was lying. Jesus was the “leader’ of Christianity. After his death, people did not know who to believe and who to turn to. People were lying about money, about the direction of the Church, among other things. They also could not just have anyone else, come up and say that they were a Prophet, or the son of God, because that was Jesus. And obviously he was not believed by everyone because he was murdered. The third problem was the fact that certain people could no longer get along, and separated themselves from each other after Jesus’ death.
Luke’s main goal in Acts was to get people to believe in and support Christianity. It was known that it would be hard for people to support this, especially if society as a whole did not believe in it. Back then people went with the majority. They felt that majority rules. In this he wanted to give people evidence that Christianity is something good for them. I think he saw this as laying down the foundation for the church. In doing this he hoped to gain support. He wanted Paul’s message to get out. Paul’s message was to have the followers of the Church to continue to do what they were doing, in supporting the Christian religion. People needed as much information as they could possibly gain, about Christianity, to believe that it was something that they should follow. We people know more and more about something, they will most likely participant in that. So if people got more comfortable with the Church and Christianity, then they would most likely follow it or believe in it.
If I was James, Paul may have made me upset because we would have conflicting views on how people go about achieving salvation. Paul believed that salvation could only be achieved by faith only, where as James believed that salvation could be achieved by faith and action (doing good deeds). Here is a quote that may reflect that: “A person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.”(James 2:24).
I think that Paul’s view came to dominate Christianity because he was more so focused on faith, where Christianity is centered around.

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