mission · 53–57 · Ephesus
He stayed three years at Ephesus, longer than anywhere else, teaching daily in the hall of Tyrannus until the silversmiths rioted for Artemis. Ephesus is where most of the correspondence radiates from and where the churches of Asia in the Apocalypse are already forming. The other thread is the collection for the poor of Jerusalem, carried by delegates from every church he had founded — attested in Romans, both Corinthian letters and Galatians quite independently of Acts, which is rare enough to be worth saying. He took it to Jerusalem knowing what was likely, and was seized in the temple within days of arriving.
To spend himself on one city, and to carry a collection from the Gentile churches to Jerusalem.
Ephesus as the base of the letters, and an arrest that ends his freedom.