ACTS CHAPTER 14:21-28,
“Principles of Church Planting”
by
1.
INTRO:
1.1.
In our last study, we looked
at the ‘Ministry and Persecution in Galatia’ which Paul and Barnabas
experienced as they ministered in Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, and Lystra, and we
saw that they suffered severely as a result of preaching the gospel.
1.1.1.
We detailed the suffering
that Paul and Barnabas experienced in each city
1.1.1.1.In
1.1.1.2.In Iconium, a plot that was hatched to harm them became known to them,
and so they fled the city
1.1.1.3.In Lystra, Paul was stoned and then dragged out of the city and left
for dead, however the Lord raised him up (probably raised him from the dead),
and Paul went back into the city, and then the next day Paul and Barnabas left
for Derbe
1.1.2.
We studied last week what
was the motivation that Paul had for ministry, and thus how he was able to have
the courage and perseverance to continue to preach the gospel undaunted even by
the severe persecution that he endured
1.1.2.1.We saw that Paul’s motivation to continue to preach the gospel amidst
such hostility did not come as a result of his having a death wish, nor because
he wanted to do penance for his pre-salvation sins as a persecutor of the
church
1.1.2.2.We saw that he was living the exchanged life where a Christian dies to
self and Christ lives through him
1.1.2.2.1.We saw how that Paul did not consider his life as dear to himself, but
that his concern was to fulfill the calling that the Lord had given to him
1.1.2.2.2.We saw how that Paul had even learned to be content in whatever
circumstance he found himself in, even if it meant that he be persecuted in the
severest way
1.2.
Today, we are going to study
about the return trip of Paul and Barnabas back to
1.2.1.
We will see their tremendous
God-given courage in that they went right back to each of the cities where they
had been persecuted
1.2.2.
We will look at the
motivation that Paul and Barnabas had for returning to each of those cities
where they had formerly been persecuted
1.2.3.
We will learn some
‘Principles of Church Planting’ derived from this return trip of Paul and
Barnabas
1.2.3.1.We will study these principles because they are in God’s Word and in
1.2.4.
We will see how the former
evangelistic efforts of Paul and Barnabas now resulted in solid church plants
in each city where they have gone
2.
VS 14:21-22 - “21
And after they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many
disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22
strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the
faith, and saying, ”Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of
God.”” - Paul and Barnabas were used
to make many disciples in Derbe, and now they return back the way they came
visiting each of the cities
2.1.
After Paul’s
being stoned in Lystra, Paul and Barnabas headed the next day to the city of
2.1.1.
Through
Christ, Paul just seemed to be even more determined than ever to preach the
gospel after being stoned, and his love for Jesus just burned brighter and brighter.
2.2.
The first principle of church planting I see here is
that: Evangelism is essential
2.2.1.
The churches were established, at least initially, through
evangelism. .
2.3.
I would
encourage each of you to have a list of 5 or so people for whom you are
committed to praying for salvation each day.
2.3.1.
This is how
churches are built, by first praying for the lost and trusting God to bring
them to salvation.
2.4.
At Derbe,
Luke records that Paul and Barnabas ‘made many disciples’. This does not seem to indicate that they
simply had these people pray the sinner’s prayer with them. Instead, Paul and Barnabas got involved in
the lives of these people and helped them to grow into more maturity in the
Lord.
2.5.
Not only at
Derbe, but at each of the churches that Paul and Barnabas now returned to they
were concentrating on discipling the new believers.
2.6.
The
second principle of church planting I see here is that: Follow up is mandatory.
2.7.
We do not
want to minimize the amount in which the apostle Paul and Barnabas suffered, or
the extent to which they labored with the people in each city. People have conjectured that this first
missionary journey took anywhere from 9 months to 5 years. However, somewhere close to two years is much
more likely, and during this time Paul and Barnabas labored tirelessly day and
night seeing that people came to salvation and that the ones who responded to
salvation were built up in their faith.
2.7.1.
The motivation for Paul and Barnabas to return to these churches is
something that we ought to think about.
2.7.1.1.From Derbe, it would have
been such an easy journey down to the sea to take a ship to Antioch of Syria,
to which they were returning, and they could have sailed home in just a few
short weeks. However, they chose to go
back the long way knowing that not only would the journey be arduous and
dangerous, but they could still face stiff persecution if they went back.
2.7.1.2.Paul and Barnabas chose to
go back the hard way for two basic reasons I believe:
2.7.1.2.1.They were motivated by love
for these new believers whom they considered to be as their very own children
in the Lord.
2.7.1.2.1.1.They had a
great pastoral as well as a parental love for the people who had responded to
their preaching the gospel.
2.7.1.2.1.1.1.In 1 Thess. 2:8, Paul wrote to the
Thessalonians about the great love that he had for them, “8 Having
thus a fond affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only
the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to
us.”
2.7.1.2.2.They knew that though they
had won converts in these cities, there had not yet been churches established,
and it was essential to the growth of these new believers, and of the work of
Christ in the area, that the new believers be able to have fellowships to
attend and from which to be fed.
2.7.1.2.2.1.They had to see that churches
were planted in each of these cities.
2.7.2.
We in the
church have not only the responsibility to win the lost to Christ, we also have
the responsibility to train up the new converts in how they are to live and
walk as Christians in this world. We
must also be “disciple makers” as Jesus was, and as Paul and Barnabas labored
in their ministries.
2.7.3.
We Christians
need to be faithful to follow up those whom we lead to the Lord. We also need to encourage their souls,
teaching them that they need to persevere and continue in the faith.
2.7.4.
Pastor Chuck
Smith has said that it is a sin to win people to Christ through evangelism and
then not to follow them up.
2.7.5.
What kind of
a person would a woman be who gave birth to a child and then abandoned it
somewhere without trying to somehow take care of that child and see that it is
fed, clothed, and nurtured? Yet, this is
what we Christians do if we lead someone to Christ but then do not do anything
to see that the person is helped to be able to grow in their newfound faith.
2.7.6.
For seven
years in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I was involved in a church in Phoenix
where we had evangelistic concerts every Saturday night at our church, and a
number of Christian music bands had formed through our church. We also went out into the communities around
2.7.7.
As a young
believer I began to attend a church, the first after my conversion, and the
youth pastor of the church befriended himself to me and asked me if I’d like to
get together with him on a weekly basis and study through some discipleship
materials that would help us both to grow in our walk in Christ. I was very excited to do this as I really
wanted to learn as much as I could about the Bible and living for Christ. Well, after about 9 months of meeting with
him on a weekly basis, I had grown tremendously and learned so many spiritual
principles, that I actually met a couple of other young guys who were new to
the church, and I began the same ministry with them that the youth pastor had
begun with me. Now, I was discipling, and
even learning how to be a teacher of God’s Word. This nine month period of being discipled
helped me to grow so tremendously that I’ll bet that without that time and left
on my own I might have taken 10 years to be able to grow to the same place.
2.7.8.
When I was in Bible College back in the mid 70’s I was in my second year
New Testament Greek class, and one day in class the professor began talking
with us students about how long it took us to begin to understand the basics of
what our walk with the Lord was really about.
He asked us to raise our hands as to how long it took us to get to that
place after getting saved. He asked for
those who had been saved one year and learned this to raise our hands, and two
of us raised our hands. Then, it was
three years, and no one raised their hands.
Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
Finally, at ten the first one, other than us two, raised his hand. Then, the rest of the class began raising
their hands after 11. The teacher was
puzzled and he asked the two of us who had raised our hands after one year how
it was that we had learned these concepts so fast. The answer was simple, it wasn’t that we were
any more spiritual than anyone else in the class, it was just that both of us
had been personally followed up and discipled soon after getting saved.
2.7.8.1.I think that in the Calvary
Chapel churches that a person would not take nearly as long to understand the
basics of the Christian walk as it took my fellow Greek students because of how
we teach through God’s Word in the way that we do, however there is still no
substitute for a personal touch.
2.7.9.
Jesus didn’t
just preach the gospel, rather He formed a group of 12 guys whom He invited to
come and live with Him and learn from Him, and He spent 3 ½ years pouring His
life into them. Then, at the end of that
time He told them to go into all of the world and ‘make disciples’ teaching
them to observe all that He had taught them, and these 12 men began to preach
the gospel to people everywhere they went and to find men whom they could pour
their lives into and disciple, and thus the world was turned upside down by the
early church. The disciples just
imitated what Jesus had done in discipling them.
2.7.10.Pastor Ken Ortiz said something interesting one
time. He said that because we in the
church have not been careful to disciple new believers in their faith that the
churches today are comprised mostly of self-starters, since most new believers
who aren’t self-starters tend to wander off after coming to salvation.
2.7.10.1.To support this idea, Ken documents that a few years
ago George Gallup did a poll and he discovered that in the
2.7.10.2.The Greek word used here for ‘encouraging’ is the word
‘parakaleo’ which is the word that is used for the Holy Spirit in His office of
‘exhorting’ or ‘comforting’ us, and thus it means to ‘come alongside’ of
someone to comfort and exhort them. This
is exactly what Paul and Barnabas were doing, they were coming alongside these
ones whom they had previously won to Christ, helping them to understand more of
the depths of spiritual truth, so that eventually they might be able to turn
the ministry over to the leaders among them, and then these new leaders could
continue the work of ministry, and do just what Paul and Barnabas had been
doing.
2.8.
Paul and
Barnabas now returned to the cities which they had visited earlier in this
first missionary journey. In each of
these cities, they had suffered a great amount of opposition and persecution,
and it was very risky for them to return.
2.8.1.
They went
right back to the city of
2.8.2.
They
‘strengthened the souls’ of the young believers there in those cites of Lystra,
Iconium, and
2.8.3.
They also
encouraged all of the new believers to persevere unto the end, saying,
‘continue in the faith’ of the gospel.
2.8.3.1.Paul and Barnabas told these men that the Christian
life is not an easy life, and that everything is not rosy and pretty, but
rather they prepared them for persecutions and difficulties that would arise as
they headed into Satan’s dominion rescuing men and women to eternal life.
2.8.3.2.Paul and Barnabas ‘strengthened’ these new believers
in their faith.
2.8.4.
We Christians
need to be encouraged by the example of the love that Paul and Barnabas had for
the church, which is seen in their being willing to suffer great risk of their
lives in order to return to the places where they had previously preached the
gospel, knowing that the Jews would probably oppose and persecute them.
2.8.5.
Paul and
Barnabas were always willing to suffer great risk in order to win the lost and
build up the churches which were established, and we Christians must realize
that in any meaningful ministry there will always be risks that will need to be
taken.
3.
VS 14:23 - “23
And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with
fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.” - Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in each of
the cities where they had won people to Christ, thus establishing churches in
each of the cities
3.1.
We can see
from this chapter that Paul and Barnabas intention in this missionary journey
was to plant churches, they weren’t just wanting to win souls to Christ.
3.1.1.
The third principle of church planting here is
that: Though evangelism is good, ideally
churches must also be planted.
3.1.2.
It would have
not been a very effective strategy for Paul and Barnabas to just go and win
people to Christ without also seeing that there would be fellowships planted in
the cities where they won people to Christ, for without an incubator, so to
speak, as an environment for growth these ones who came to Christ would have a
very difficult time growing in their faith and also being used by Christ to win
and train others.
3.2.
In order to
see that churches would become rooted in each of the cities where they had
come, Paul and Barnabas had the very critical and yet delicate task of choosing
and appointing ‘elders’ who could be the leaders in these churches.
3.2.1.
The fourth principle of church planting here is
that: leaders must be recognized
(minimally a pastor, that is).
3.2.2.
There needed
to be a clearly established leadership in the churches because:
3.2.2.1.Without someone to have the
responsibility for leading, it would probably be the case that no one would
take on that responsibility themselves.
3.2.2.1.1.I have seen churches where
they do not have a pastor, and what seems to happen is that very little seems
to ever get done since everyone stands around waiting for someone else to act.
3.2.2.2.Some people would not be encouraged to lead since they
may feel out of place or that they were over-stepping their bounds.
3.2.2.3.Others might not want to follow those who attempted to
lead, for after all who made these ones leaders, and these ones could also fee
that they might be just as capable to lead as any of the others.
3.2.3.
Now we can
see more clearly why it was important that in each city Paul and Barnabas went
to the synagogues first and preached the gospel, for the men from these
synagogues who would accept Christ already had a degree of spiritual maturity
and understanding of the scriptures, so they were much further down the track
to leadership than the pagan people of the world.
3.3.
The ‘elders’
in a church are called to oversee the spiritual health and well-being of the
body.
3.4.
This was a very delicate task that Paul and Barnabas had to perform, for
they had to entrust God’s work in establishing a church to the leadership of
new converts to Christianity, and thus Luke
records that in each of the churches they ‘prayed with fasting’ in selecting
and then in appointing these elders.
3.5.
This is the
first mention on the mission field of this all important role of leadership
with the church, that of an ‘elder’.
Paul in his epistles lists in great detail the qualifications and
responsibilities of an ‘elder’ within the church.
3.5.1.
In these
churches, and in this unique time of revival, these men must have matured very
quickly in order to be considered for eldership in such a short amount of time.
3.6.
One of the
things that I have seen and heard of happening so often in churches is that as
soon as a man is appointed an elder he tends to stop elding. It seems so often that people desire to be in
a place of leadership to the extent that once they have finally gotten to that
place they stop serving, especially when it comes to menial serving, because
they are now an elder.
3.6.1.
This why it
is so important that leaders are chosen based upon their character qualities,
and Paul in his writing to Timothy and Titus gave a list that comprises approx.
21 different character qualities that must be met in someone’s life in order
for them to be considered for leadership.
3.6.2.
In Paul’s
missionary journeys he had no choice but to appoint men to leadership who were
fairly young in their faith (and thankfully the Lord blessed these choices),
however it is normally best to be slow to recognize people to places of
leadership within the church since once they become elders it is much harder
now to demote them, and usually they do not go quietly when they are demoted.
3.7.
We see
finally in these verses that after discipling the believers, choosing the
leadership in the church, they finally would ‘commended them to the Lord’, and
this act involves lifting them up to the Lord in some sort of an ordination
ceremony and charging them before all of the people to be faithful to the task
of leading God’s people.
3.7.1.
The
fifth principle of church planting here is that: Leaders must be commended to the Lord.
3.7.2.
This formal
commending of the leaders to the Lord was a ceremony that was designed to burn
upon the leaders mind the utmost importance of the position of leadership, as
well as the importance of being faithful before the Lord to the role of
leadership.
3.7.3.
These leaders
had to be released to do the work of ministry, and thus they must now be
accountable to God for the proper fulfillment of this godly labor.
4.
VS 14:24-25 - “24
And they passed through Pisidia and came into Pamphylia. 25 And when they had
spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia;” - Paul and Barnabas continue to return along
the path they originally traveled to these cities
4.1.
Now, Paul and Barnabas are ready to board a ship and sail the
Mediterranean back towards their home church in Antioch of Assyria.
5.
VS 14:26-28 - “26
and from there they sailed to
5.1.
Upon
returning from their first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas gave a report
to the church of ‘all things that God
had done with them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles’.
5.2.
Upon their
return from the mission field, Paul and Barnabas spent a good amount of time
with the disciples there in Antioch of Syria.
5.3.
It is
important for all those who are in missions work to keep in close touch with
their support base. Regular prayer
letters and progress reports are essential as they remind people of the need to
pray for those who are planting churches.
They also tell people what the prayer needs are.
5.4.
Rest and
relaxation are important even for those who have dedicated their lives to
fulltime ministry, and thus I believe that Paul and Barnabas were doing some
resting up here in Antioch of Syria, and at their home church.
6.
CONCLUSION:
6.1.
We need to make sure that we make that list of 5
persons to whom we are committed to praying daily for salvation.
6.2.
As a loving parent, we need to be committed to
following up on anyone whom God uses us to win to Christ.
6.3.
We all need to learn to be disciple-makers and follow
Jesus’ example in the way in which He performed ministry.
6.3.1.
We who have been in the Lord awhile and have some
maturity need to think about pouring our lives into others and mentoring them
in their faith.