Priscilla

A couple who made tents for a living, and yet in whose home an era's deepest teaching took shape.

Priscilla and Aquila were originally a Jewish couple living in Rome. When Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews, they moved to Corinth. Their trade was tentmaking. One day someone in the same trade came to them — Paul. From that day they worked together, lived together, and began a lifelong partnership. In nearly every scene where Scripture mentions them, they appear together — the two names always paired.

The most decisive thing they did was take one person aside. In the Ephesian synagogue, a Jewish man from Alexandria named Apollos was teaching. Scripture describes him as 'an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures... fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.' There was a gap in his understanding, but they didn't correct him publicly in the middle of the synagogue. Instead, she and her husband took him to their home and 'explained to him the way of God more accurately.' One person, in a quiet place, in depth.

Wherever their home was, it became a church — in Corinth, in Ephesus, and again after they returned to Rome. Paul writes of them in Romans: 'They risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but all the churches of the Gentiles.' It wasn't a glamorous apostolic role. It was hands that made tents, a home always kept open, a quiet place where one person was taken aside and taught more deeply. Yet in that place, one of the era's most influential preachers (Apollos) was shaped, and at the most dangerous moment, Paul's very life was protected.