We don’t need to look any further than the Biblical book of Acts to discover how the church at Thessalonica got started.
The origin of the church at Thessalonica began when Paul the Apostle visited the city in the course of his second missionary journey, After being “shamefully treated” and released from prison in the town of Philippi, Paul arrived in Thessalonica and taught in the local synagogue there for three consecutive Sabbath days. Acts chapter seventeen tells us that many people who heard Paul speak came to faith in Christ during that period (Acts 17:1-4).
However, God’s message through Paul also resonated with those who were outside the Jewish community. That group included many prominent women of Thessalonica and others who held respect for the God of the Scriptures. 1 Thessalonians 1:9 will later go on to tell us that some members of the church also came to Christ from pagan backgrounds as well.
So the good news of salvation through faith in Christ began to have an impact on the people of the city. Unfortunately, that success also attracted the attention of those who were hostile to Christianity as well as some members of the religious establishment. They responded by employing the services of some local troublemakers in an effort to run Paul and his associates out of town.
Legal charges were soon brought against the new converts and Paul had little choice but to leave Thessalonica for the sake of the new congregation. Although the timeline is open to some discussion, Paul probably had little more than three weeks to establish the church in that area before his work was terminated by those who were opposed to the message of Christ (see Acts 17:5-9).
So Paul and two traveling companions named Silas and Timothy escaped under cover of darkness and found their way to the town of Berea. The Bereans were more open-minded than many of those whom Paul had left behind and they responded to his teaching by checking the Scriptures daily to verify the truth of his message.
Unfortunately, some of Paul’s antagonists from Thessalonica continued their pursuit of him into Berea. That led to another uprising that forced the Apostle to depart for the city of Athens on his own. Paul remained in Athens a short time and then pushed on to Corinth (see Acts 17:10-18:11). Yet even while Paul’s itinerary had taken him to several different cities after his departure from Thessalonica, we’ll soon find that the fate of the Thessalonian Christians still weighed heavily upon his mind.