There is a version of Christian life that looks almost nothing like what you find in the book of Acts. It involves showing up for the parts that feel meaningful, finding the worship style and programs that fit your preferences, and moving on when the experience no longer meets your needs. The church, in this version, is essentially a service, and you are the customer. Acts 13 opens with a congregation that had no idea such an arrangement was possible, because these people were not consumers. They were on a mission, and they were about to send away two of their best.
What Antioch Looked Like from the Inside
Luke’s introduction to the church in Antioch is brief but deliberate. “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off” (). This church’s first appearance in the narrative is while its people are deep in worship and spiritual discipline, and the immediate result is that they send away two of their most capable leaders. Not to build their own numbers. Not to expand their reputation. To go somewhere else and serve the spread of the message. The church in Antioch became home base for Paul’s journeys precisely because it had no interest in hoarding what it had been given.
A Mandate as Old as Creation
The call to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and exercise care under God’s direction, runs from through to the commission Jesus gave before ascending: go and make disciples of all nations (). What Paul does in Acts 13 through 18 is respond to that commission city by city, synagogue by synagogue, household by household. Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Ephesus. The goal was never to grow one particular gathering in one particular place. It was to spread the message of Jesus to people who hadn’t heard it and to establish communities of believers who would do the same in their own spheres.
Speaking the Word and Living It
In , Luke records that “the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region.” Not just from a platform. Through the lives of people who had heard it and carried it into their daily environments. This is what spreading means. The word is spoken aloud, but it also has to be lived consistently, because the gap between what is said and how people actually live closes doors faster than anything else. Paul confronted this gap repeatedly. He warned that it is possible to know the scriptures well and still miss their point entirely, as the rulers in Jerusalem had done, reading the prophets aloud every Sabbath without understanding what they pointed to (). Knowledge and reception are different things.
Moving Toward Open Hearts
Paul doesn’t push the message on people who have decided they don’t want to hear it. When audiences in Pisidian Antioch and Thessalonica stirred up opposition and became hostile, he shook the dust from his feet and moved on. He was looking for people who were ready. “The Lord opened Lydia’s heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (). God was working in the background, preparing specific people at specific moments, and Paul was paying attention. That attentiveness is its own discipline, the practice of staying alert to the neighbor, the coworker, the family member in whom something is stirring, rather than manufacturing opportunities that aren’t there.
Three Things That Make It Possible
Three postures emerge from Acts 13-18 as the practical shape of joining the mission: faithfulness, awareness, and responsiveness. Faithfulness means consistency in your own life, saying and living the same thing so that the message has integrity when you offer it. Awareness means staying alert to the open doors God places in front of you. Responsiveness means actually walking through those doors when they appear, rather than finding a reason to wait for a better moment. The danger on one side is trying to force conversations that aren’t ready. The danger on the other is seeing an opportunity and walking past it because it feels inconvenient. Neither is what Paul modeled. When he was stoned in Lystra, dragged outside the city, and left for dead, he got up and kept going (). He was not doing this because it was rewarding in the moment. He was on a mission.
Every Joint Working
Paul would later write to the church he planted in Ephesus: “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (). The leaders exist to equip everyone else, not to do all the ministry themselves while the rest observe. The formula for growth, as Paul describes it in that same passage, is the whole body joined and held together, with every joint contributing properly. That doesn’t function if most of the body is in the audience. The mission belongs to every follower of Jesus. It is lived in daily life, in ordinary conversations, in the relationships that are already in front of you, and it is sustained by the prayer that God will open hearts and give courage when the moment comes.
