heaven, promised them the Spirit they prayed for, and chose the new apostle. Dr Richard Longenecker goes further and sees these four factors as comprising what he calls ‘the constitutive elements of the Christian mission’, namely the mandate to witness, the ascended Lord who directs the mission from heaven, the centrality of the apostles in this task, and the coming of the Spirit to empower them.3 Only when these four elements were in place could the mission begin.