Sunday, September 21, 2008: Missional Church

Missional Church
Acts 13: 1 – 12.

I. Introduction.
Last weekend, Shauna and I experienced our first hurricane. Understand that I don’t mean our first hurricane in Lufkin. I mean, Hurricane Ike was the first time either of us have ever witnessed 75 mph winds and people calling the radio station to let all of us know they had fallen trees in their yard and no electricity.

By Thursday of last week, I came to the conclusion that there would not be very many people in church on Sunday morning. We chose to cancel our Sunday night activities but wait until the last minute to make a decision about Sunday morning. I just did not want to cancel our Sunday morning worship.

By 3:00 Saturday afternoon, we felt like we needed to make a decision. The power was out all over town. There were trees blocking the roads. Roofs and fences were blown apart. It just seemed like canceling church would be the right thing to do. But, how do you get that message out to everyone in our church? Call the radio station.

So, at 3:00 Saturday afternoon, I became one of the hundreds of East Texans who called the radio station. I didn’t realize I was talking on live radio when I called, but several people told me they heard it.

I introduced myself to the guy on the radio and gave a fairly good message. I said, “Hello. My name is Andy Pittman. I am the pastor of First Baptist Church in Lufkin. I want to get the word out to all of our church members that we will not have church services on Sunday. The power is off at the church, and we don’t want anyone to do anything dangerous by driving to church.”

It was a good message. I got my point across. And I don’t think I sounded like a redneck. But I have a couple of regrets.

First, I should have said something like my friend Steve Wells said to his church in Houston. They had a brief worship service in the dark Sunday morning. I asked him, “Did ya’ll have power at the church?” He answered, “I told all our church members, ‘There is no electricity in the church buildings, but there is power in the church.’” I should have said that on the radio.

Second, I should have said something like Laurie Hefner said when we came to work on Monday. She said that even though we did not have worship services Sunday morning we acted like a church outside the walls by serving our neighbors and taking care of the Buckner families who lived in our Family Life Center. I should have said that on the radio.

I should have said, “First Baptist Church will not meet in the church buildings Sunday. There is no electricity in the church buildings, but there is power in the church. We encourage all our members who are able to be the church all over Lufkin and Hudson this weekend by serving their neighbors in the name of Jesus.” THAT is what I should have said!

Sunday morning worship is just one of the things we do as a church. Most people agree that there are five purposes for the church: worship, discipleship, evangelism, missions and fellowship. We are acting as a church when we fulfill one of those five purposes. So, even though we did not meet for worship on Sunday, we continued to function as a church through the mission work we did this past week.

In Acts 11 – 13, we read stories about a church that fulfills these five purposes.

Read Acts 13: 1 – 12.

The church at Antioch was founded as a result of the persecution taking place in Jerusalem. The religious leaders arrested Christians, had them beaten and executed a godly man named Stephen. As a result, a group of Christians scattered from Jerusalem and began to share their faith with the people they met. The group in Antioch took their faith one step farther than anyone else had done previously. They preached the Gospel in the Jewish synagogues, just like everyone else did. Then, they started preaching outside the synagogue to the Gentile people living in Antioch. This “street preaching” was a radical departure from what the other Christians were doing in other cities.

The Jerusalem church sent Barnabas to investigate what was going on in Antioch. Barnabas discovered that God was at work in Antioch and did not want to stop what God was doing. Barnabas’ actions lead me to believe he was impressed with the work of evangelism but knew something was missing. These new believers needed someone to disciple them—to teach them about the Scriptures and how to live out Christian faith in daily life. So, Barnabas found Saul and brought him back to Antioch. These two men spent one year in Antioch mentoring, teaching and discipling the new believers there.

We can watch through the ministry of Barnabas and Saul in Antioch how this new church fulfilled their God-given purposes. This was a new kind of church in Antioch. In fact, I believe the church in Antioch is the first church that really “gets it.” They understand what Jesus told his disciples in Acts 1: 8, and they act it out in the way they live their lives as a community of faith.

The church at Antioch had five men who served as prophets and teachers. We might compare these prophet-teachers to our modern day concept of a vocational minister. Two of these ministers are not strangers to us: Barnabas and Saul. The other three men are not as familiar to us, or even to church history. There was a man named Simeon, who was nicknamed Niger. The word “Niger” is a derivative of the Latin word for black, so we assume he was originally from Africa. Lucius is described as coming from Cyrene. Some historians think this Lucius might actually be Dr. Luke who wrote the book of Acts, but there is no real proof. Manaen was a man of noble birth, because we know he had spent a portion of his childhood with King Herod.

Even though we don’t know much about these men and their personal lives, we do know something about the roles they fulfilled within the church. They were prophets, which means they were preachers who spoke God’s word to God’s people. They were teachers, which means they invested their lives in the instruction and discipleship of other Christians. In other words, they served the church in Sunday morning activities. They were the preachers, worship leaders, youth ministers and discipleship leaders.

II. The Church Was Expecting God to Speak.
In what I believe was perhaps a typical worship service, these men heard a message from God. The church was engaged in two activities: worship and fasting.

We know something about worship, but fasting falls outside the frame of reference for some of us. Fasting is a biblical discipline that is found in both the Old Testament as well as in the teachings of Jesus. In the Old Testament, sometimes fasting was practiced to show repentance or even sadness. But Jesus taught us not to let anyone know when we were fasting. It is something between us and God that should not be done for outward show. In this case, fasting is a way for us to commit ourselves to listen to what God has to say to us. It is a concentrated time of prayer and a method we can employ to be more sensitive to what God has to say.

This is an important point, because I believe it helps us understand something about the church at Antioch and to compare it to our own church. Both worship and fasting are indications that the church was expecting God to speak. The same thing is true for us. God speaks to us when we gather for worship. If we want to hear from God, we will come to church. If we don’t want to hear from God, we will stay at home.

The church knew God was going to speak to them, and God did. God instructed the church to send Barnabas and Saul as missionaries.

III. The Church Began Intentional Missions.
The next thing we witness is the practice of “laying on hands.” We don’t really know if it was the prophet-teachers who lay hands on Barnabas and Saul or if it was the entire church. I like to think it was the entire church.

By laying hands on Barnabas and Saul, the church was symbolically giving them permission to do the work of the church outside the walls of the church. Barnabas and Saul went out with the full authority of God and the blessing of the church to do the work God had called ALL OF THEM to do. Barnabas and Saul were not acting alone. They represented God, AND they represented the entire church at Antioch. They were doing the work God had called the church to do, but they were the ones who had the ability to go places others could not go.

When the church laid hands on Barnabas and Saul something happened for the very first time. Before this moment, the Gospel had spread AS Christians moved from one city to another. It was a kind of serendipitous spread of the Gospel. Now, the church is becoming more proactive. They are becoming intentional about preaching to other people. Instead of preaching wherever they find themselves, they are making plans to go places where they might not have gone on their own…Places that could only be accessed with a passport and a boat.

Proactive and intentional are good words to describe what the church is doing. But there is an even better way to describe it. They were led by the Holy Spirit. God initiated the spread of the Gospel and commissioning of missionaries. The church joined with God and answered God’s call. This is what it looks like when a church and the Holy Spirit are working together.

IV. Missionaries Meet Interesting People.
Barnabas and Saul traveled by boat to a place they may never have gone without God’s leadership. And as a result, they met new and interesting people.

The first person they met was a government official called a proconsul. The Roman Empire was divided into two different kinds of states. The Imperial Provinces were led by governors, who reported directly to the Roman Emperor. The Senatorial Provinces were led by proconsuls, who reported directly to the Roman Senate. The Proconsul Sergius Paulus was a high ranking official, whom Paul would not ordinarily have contact. Yet, the Holy Spirit led the proconsul to ask for more information about Jesus.

The proconsul’s interest in the Gospel led Barnabas and Saul to meet another interesting character—a pagan magician with an ironic name, Bar-Jesus. Up to this point in Saul’s life, he did not spend much time with pagans. No. Saul had been a Pharisee who spent all his time around self-righteous, elitist Jewish rulers. Then, Saul became a Christian and started spending time with church people. First, Saul was a learner who sat at the feet of men who instructed him about Christian ethics. Then, Saul was a prophet-teacher, who spent time instructing new Christians. Now, as a missionary, Saul finds himself around people who are lost.

This is part of God’s call for us as well. God has not called us to be an isolated colony of people who look like us, think like us, talk like us and smell like us. God has called us to engage the people of our culture…Even people who don’t look, think, talk and smell like we do. Another way to say this is to say God has called us to go outside of our comfort zones.

If you only spend time around Christians, then you cannot do all of the work God has called our church to do. When we worship, we are supposed to spend time with other Christians. When we do discipleship, we are supposed to be with other Christians. When we have fellowship, we are supposed to be around people with whom we share commonalities. But, this is not the case with evangelism and missions. If we are going to be like the church at Antioch, then we have to leave our comfort zones. We need to engage the people of Lufkin, the people of Angelina County, the people of Texas, the people of the United States, the people of the world.

V. Conclusion.
Some of the things we do as a church will be comfortable: worship, discipleship and fellowship. Other things are not supposed to be comfortable: evangelism and missions.

My prayer for this church is that young men and women will hear God’s call to be vocational ministers and missionaries. This is one way we can be proactive, intentional and led by the Holy Spirit. We ought to be like the church at Antioch—find someone whom God has called and send them out to represent Jesus and our church in preaching the Gospel in faraway and uncomfortable circumstances.

My prayer is that we will accept God’s call to be an evangelistic church. We have begun this process through the Matthew Party. Have you heard that we will have a Matthew Party in a few weeks? Just like Matthew the tax collector invited his friends to a party so they could meet Jesus, I want you to invite your friends to meet Jesus in our church. If you are not praying for someone already, start today. Find someone in your life who does not know Jesus. It might be someone you work with or go to school with. It might be your neighbor or your uncle. It might even be the woman who serves you coffee in a restaurant or a convenience store. Pray for them every day. Then, invite them to come to a free chicken supper at the church on Saturday, October 4. We will introduce them to the ministries and activities of our church, and I will present the Gospel.

This is what it means to be a missional church. God does not call us only to be comfortable. God calls us to leave our comfort zones and share the Gospel with interesting people, who are not exactly like us.