Thank you very much, John. Did you notice how he gave me about three more years to live? He said that I was concerned about the last 10 years of my life. If that’s the case, at the time I said that, it was about seven years ago, so I have three years to live. I hope perhaps the Lord will give me a little more time than that, but thanks, John. That was a fairly good report on my own personal expression of my desire to serve the Lord. Actually, I loved the pastorate. I came to it rather circuitously, as John mentioned. I had a career in the Air Force and right after I reported to the Pentagon I was medically grounded.

I was an Air Force pilot and to my great chagrin, I’d no sooner reported to Washington, where if there’s any place in the country you need flying pay to help you live in Washington. I found myself medically grounded and wondering what was going to happen. I had a pretty good career in the Air Force and all of a sudden it was knocked into a cocked hat. It was going to be changed radically.

Learning to Be a Pastor

My wife and I began to pray and we’ve been very active in lay life in the church and I thought I was headed for a parachurch ministry. When a brand new church in suburban Atlanta called and the chairman of their little board of deacons, he said, “We’re about 50 people now and we’d like you to come down and be our first full-time pastor.” I had to sit down on my bed, I’ll never forget. I took the call in my bedroom and my knees buckled. I sat down on my bed and I said, “Joe, you must be out of your mind. I’ve never been a pastor before.” He said, “That’s all right. We’ve never been a church before. You just come on down and we’ll learn together.” That began after some weeks of deliberation when I wondered if that could possibly be God’s will. I was very interested in Ben Patterson’s testimony yesterday. I told them I’d give them six weeks. I would discern the will of God in six weeks.

Actually, my wife and I knew within two weeks, spending time in the word and on our knees in prayer and seeking the guidance of God, and he led us to this church full of what are now called baby boomers. That remarkable species that is increasingly filling our churches. I had a wonderful time there along with my wife and I learned a lot about the local church. I learned that the pastorate is the most difficult work in the world. I had spent all my life as a layman and I had known many pastors. I had pastors among my very good friends and I used to look at pastors and say, “Well, they don’t have it so bad.” You’ve heard the old saying, “The only thing you have to do is preach on Sunday morning.”

I can remember saying that to a couple of pastors and how I hated it once I became a pastor. I found that it was the most difficult work in the world, and you know? I’ve traveled a good part of the world now and I’ve looked at an awful lot of churches in this country. I’ve seen missionaries working to plant churches overseas, and I’m convinced with the pressures of the pastorate today, in America at least, to be an American pastor is more difficult than planting churches cross culturally. I really believe that, because of the enormous and often inordinate expectations upon the pastor. As I share with you this morning, it is with a strong sense of identity and tremendous respect and affection for you, your calling, and what it is God has given you to do.

A Church’s Unique Personality

One of the things that I learned about the church that really struck me for the first time in the pastorate is that a church is very much like an individual in that it has a unique personality. Every single church has a unique personality. I used to love to stand before our congregation and talk about the uniqueness of the individual. That’s where our self-esteem begins, really. It’s wonderful to know that there never has been anyone else on planet earth in all history just like you.

Of all the five and a half billion people on the earth today, there’s not another person just like you. If human history goes on for another 10,000 years, there never will be another person just like you. That’s a wonderful thing to know. The flip side of that is that you may be thinking of someone right now and saying, “Thank God, I’m glad there’s not another person like him on earth.” But that uniqueness is a wonderful thing and the local church is like that. Every church has a unique personality. It’s born, it lives for a certain period of time, it does certain things, and then it dies. Every church is absolutely unique, and what the church is going to accomplish for the glory of God and to extend the kingdom of God depends to a large part, as you know, upon its under shepherd, the pastor.

The Troubles in the American Church

Now, I’ve been, as I said, looking at churches across America for the last seven years. I’ve been with ACMC seven years, seven and a half years actually. I’ve seen churches from one coast to the other. Ladies and gentlemen, I am very concerned about the church in America today. You’re looking at a man who is absolutely convinced that the only hope for our nation and the only hope for the church in North America is authentic historic revival. That is my conviction.

At the same time, there is a lot we can do, but I am concerned so much about the health of the American church. Modernity and the culture has made the American church far more of a prisoner than I think most of us realize. As I study the churches of the New Testament, I see the church in America as largely a Corinthian church. You remember the Corinthian church, that group that Paul poured two years of his precious missionary time into, only to see them later dealing with sexual immorality known and condoned in the congregation, crafts materialism, a cavalier and indifferent attitude toward worship at the Lord’s table, and theological uncertainty regarding the resurrection from the dead.

All of these qualities characterize the American church today. It would curl your hair if I told you some of the stories that pastors have shared with me about the sexual immorality in some of their churches. I’m talking about good, reputable evangelical churches.

Global Mission

But having said all of that, whatever the health of the church is, we hear the words of Jesus reverberating down through the centuries from Matthew 24:14, which says:

And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Do you want to know why Jesus hasn’t come yet? My theology is very simple. The gospel of the kingdom has not yet been preached to all nations. It hasn’t. Jesus said, “I’m going to wait until the gospel has been proclaimed in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then I will come again. I will consummate human history only then.” It was fitting that four chapters later at the very end of Matthew’s gospel, we hear Jesus speaking what we have come to call the Great Commission to his followers:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations . . . (Matthew 28:18–19).

He says, “You, the church, will do it in ever widening concentric circles.” Because in Acts 1:8, when he was going back to the Father, he said:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

He gave them a global mission and it’s been very interesting to me to watch the process in one church after another. When the Holy Spirit is filling his leaders and his people, there will be mission. The Holy Spirit is a missioning spirit. He’s not only a convicting and teaching spirit, he is a missioning spirit. Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). He is saying, “If you’re really responsive to the Spirit of God whom I will send to you, you will be my witnesses to the very ends of the earth.” If we’re responsive to the Holy Spirit, we must be a missionary church.

I’m sure all of us here would agree with the words of Emil Brunner, that the church exists by mission as fire by burning. The purpose of the church certainly is mission. I’d like us this morning to look at the model church and I put “missionary” in parentheses because the healthy New Testament church is a missionary church. I’d like us to look this morning at the church in Antioch of Syria in Acts 11 and Acts 13:1–3.

The Context of Antioch

While you’re turning to that, I need to tell you that Antioch was the third largest city in the Roman Empire behind Roman Alexandria. There were 500,000 people who lived within the confines of the great city of Antioch located 300 miles north of Jerusalem. It had its port, the Port of Seleucia, which was 15 miles away. It was a great city of commerce, of learning, of some sophistication, but there was something about Antioch that we need to know this morning as we consider the characteristics of this church. Antioch was as immoral as Corinth. Now, Corinth had a worldwide reputation for immorality, we know that. But the city of Antioch was just as immoral as the city of Corinth.

There were two places near the city in which prostitutes were used in rights of pagan worship. You could get anything you wanted in Antioch. It was very typical for the well-bred free man Roman to have a boy as a homosexual lover. It was typical for men to have mistresses as well as their wives. Men used those prostitutes in Antioch. That was very common, and yet this particular church refused to be Corinthian. That’s why I think it’s important that we look at it. They lived in a culture very much like our own here in the US today, but they refused to be Corinthian. Let’s look now at the passage of Scripture. Dr. Luke’s narrative flows quickly about this church in Acts 11:19–30:

Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.

And then Acts 13:1–3 says:

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 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.

The Need for True Conversion

Now, I believe there are five characteristics. There are others, but there are five characteristics obvious in these passages that I’d like us to observe about the Antioch Church, the model Church of the New Testament for us today. First of all, we observe that the believers, the disciples, were soundly converted people.

We notice in verses 20 and 21, for instance, that as these fresh witnesses, who were Jews by the way from Cyprus and Cyrene, came to this great city and began to share the gospel with gentiles as well as Jews. It says in Acts 11:21 that the Lord’s hand was with them and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. Now, that description of what they did is a perfect simple description of authentic conversion.

Dwight L. Moody had a wonderful little illustration of this. Moody used to say when he preached, that all of us are born with our backs turned toward God, therefore every step we take takes us that much further away from God. We’re going in our own direction until, he said, we hear the truth of the gospel. It has the ring of truth to us. We say, “That’s true, I need to do something about it,” and so we turn and put our trust in the Lord. The turning is repentance and turning our faces to the Lord and receiving Him is the step of faith, of trust.

Now, I point out this characteristic, brothers and sisters, because I’m convinced that many people in our churches today are not truly converted people. They have never repented. One denominational executive of a denomination I will leave unnamed, although it is evangelical, says that when he goes into the churches of his denomination and sits in the balcony or in the back and sees all the people in the pews, he immediately assumes that a full one third of them are in fact not believers at all because they have never repented.

Much of our evangelism tells us to pray to receive Christ, and people go through certain steps and motions, but if they have not dealt with their sin before God and repented, they are not truly converted people. In Luke 13, you’ll remember Jesus in some of his teaching said, “Unless you repent, you’ll perish.” He said it twice for emphasis: “Unless you repent, you’ll perish.” There is no salvation until one deals with his or her sin. These people were soundly converted. They had grappled with the truth. They had faced their sin, and I like to think of sin as anything in us that is contrary to the character of God. Now, we don’t know all of our sin, but we deal with what we do know of it.

Obviously, these people had done that. Apparently, the witnesses from Cyprus and Cyrene, these faithful Jewish men who had been at pentecost, had been part of the church of Jerusalem before it had been scattered out with the martyrdom of Stephen, came north those 300 miles and said, “Let’s try and see what will happen if we share the gospel with Gentiles.” When they did, they found that these people turned from their old way of life and turned to the Lord.

Preaching the Nature of Repentance

I’m convinced that we need to be preaching the nature of repentance as part of the gospel as we have never preached it before, and preaching on sin as we have never preached on it before, at least in my time. Because the church in America is desperately in need of hearing what sin is before a Holy God and helping people to deal with it.

I remember after coming to my church in Atlanta, meeting a most remarkable man. His name was Harold Thompson. He had been put in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary after being convicted for 11 counts of armed robbery. He had been on the FBI’s most wanted list. Harold Thompson began to hear the gospel from people who had come into the prison to share with the inmates. He was called Big Tom because he was six feet one inches tall and weighed 240 pounds. If anybody got in his way, he would simply punch him out. He was the king of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. He was serving an accumulated sentence of 105 years.

His parents had been Christians who had prayed for Big Tom all his life that he would come to know the Lord. One night, after hearing the gospel several times he knelt down by his bunk in the prison and he dealt with Jesus Christ. He gave his heart to Christ. He confessed all of his sins that he could think of. He went back over all those instances of armed robbery, over his divorce, the way he had treated his wife and so on. Soon, it became apparent that Harold Thompson was a changed man. Remarkably, miraculously, at the height of the Watergate crisis in Washington, Richard Nixon gave Harold Thompson a pardon, and he came out of prison because he had become a model prisoner.

I remember the first few times I prayed with Harold Thompson, one of the things he always said to God was, “Thank you Lord for the gift of repentance. Thank you for the privilege of repenting. Thank you Lord that in your awesome holiness you’ve made it possible for men to repent. Thank you for this gift of repentance.” We need to preach it, men. People must repent if they’re going to be true Christians.

The Primary Place of Teaching

The second characteristic that we notice is that the primary ministry of the leaders was that of teaching. You’ll notice in Acts 11:25–26 that after Barnabas had seen this growing company of believers, he realized there were so many and the needs were so great that he needed help, and so it says that he went to Tarsus to look for Saul. When he found him, he brought him to Antioch and for a whole year Barnabas and Saul, pastor and associate, taught great numbers of people. The teaching ministry was the primary ministry of the pastors of the church.

Now, it’s very interesting when we read that Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul and when he found him, brought him to Antioch. That verb in the Greek for “find” indicates a search for a person that is long and arduous. It’s like looking for a lost person. Scholars who have examined this text have generally agreed that probably when Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, he had to look long and hard for him because his family had probably disowned him. He had become a follower of Jesus Christ, and so his family had disowned him.

Saul was probably in some obscure part of the city earning his living by making tents perhaps, and so when Barnabas went, it took him several days to locate Saul. You recall Saul’s words in Philippians 3:8, “For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things.” Perhaps he was referring to what happened to him in Tarsus when he went back to his hometown after his conversion and after he had witnessed and taught in Damascus. Then, he came to Jerusalem and met with the apostles and many of the believers had been scared of Saul because of his persecution of the church. We read in 2 Corinthians 11 that catalog of all his sufferings.

Many scholars believe that most if not all those sufferings occurred to Saul before Barnabas found him and took him off the shelf he thought he was on. But Barnabas realized that with this great number of people, he needed help, and so he brought Saul back. He knew Saul’s qualifications, and the two of them began to teach a growing number of people. I’m sure, aren’t you, that as they taught, they taught what we call “the whole counsel of God.” I’m sure they started with the gospel itself. They asked, “Do you understand what has happened to you?”

The Whole Counsel of God

Most of my life I have ministered to men and I found in discipling men that the place to start is always with the gospel itself. Do you understand what has happened in your life? Let’s check it out. Let’s be sure that you have in fact dealt with your sins. I’m sure that Barnabas and Saul began with the gospel and made sure that every convert understood the gospel and their response to it. Then they went on to teach all of God’s truth. It’s sound doctrine made relevant to life. Gentlemen, this is what we have to do. We must teach the word of God, the whole counsel of God, beginning with a sound understanding of the gospel itself. It’s God’s truth made relevant to life. Frankly, one of my greatest concerns as I visit churches and some of them are large churches and I’m on the campus of churches.

By the way, that’s a new term to me — a church campus with all of its facilities. I always used to think of a campus as being on a university or college, but now churches speak of their campuses. That’s not so bad if that means a place of learning, but I see people scurrying around like ants and all kinds of activities taking place. Most if not all of them are very good things, I’m sure. Then, I hear the preaching and the preaching may be rather light. It may be the preaching that Robert Bellah, the sociologist has described. In a book Robert Bellah wrote in 1989, he said, “The church in America today is the therapeutic church. It exists to make people feel good.”

So much of our preaching and teaching, it seems is designed to help the American believer cope with life to get to the next Friday when the weekend will finally come. I have a strong conviction that Saul and Barnabas were not teaching to help people cope with their lives in Antioch. I’m sure they were teaching the whole counsel of God, doctrine, the truth of God made relevant to life. One of my concerns about the MetaChurch, this growing movement of small groups, is what happens to the teaching. I’m concerned about the demise of Sunday School. I heard a layman in the church that I attend in the Wheaton area shortly after we got there.

After trying several Sunday school classes, he said, “Don’t quote me on this, but I think I’ve graduated from Sunday school.” A lot of our people feel that way. Where do we create the structures and where do we have teaching in the local church today with the church growth movement so prevalent? Where is it that people are taught the word of God? I’m sure that Barnabas and Saul were teaching every night. I’m sure they were using the Jewish Sabbath to teach all day, to teach in the morning, to teach in the afternoon, to teach in the evening along with the worship of the Lord. I’m sure they were giving themselves to teaching seven days a week. I’m convinced that one of the reasons our culture is making such a prisoner of the American church today is a lack of sound teaching and enough teaching to bring people up in the Lord.

Living the Truth

The third characteristic that we see is that once they receive the teaching, these believers lived the truth, they did the truth. I believe that’s indicated in the latter part of Acts 11:26, where it says, “The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.” I remember reading that as a young fighter pilot out in the far east years and years ago, when I was reading through the Book of Acts. As I read that statement, I said to myself, “That is a historic statement. That is a very important statement. What a compliment.”

Years later, after I got to seminary and studied the Book of Acts with some help from my teachers, I found that the word “Christian” originally was a term of ridicule and derision. Why was it a term of ridicule and derision? Apparently, what happened was this, as Saul and Barnabas faithfully taught these soundly converted people in growing numbers, they were living the truth. They were living the truth in every sector of their lives. The typical Antiochans looking at the believers said, “Oh, you people are Christians. You no longer discard your unwanted female infants in the garbage. You men no longer have your mistresses. You’re faithful to your wives. You’re monogamous. Look at you. You no longer take young boys as homosexual lovers, and you pay the Romans the taxes that they ask for without arguing. You’re different from us. You people are Christians. You’re unique.” Yes, they were Christians.

I’m convinced that if English had been the prevailing language of the first century, that’s the way they probably would’ve said it. You people are Christians, you’re very different. You see, these people were living in a Corinthian environment, but they refused to be a Corinthian church. They were living the truth. The teaching of their leaders was effective in their own lives.

We see this, for instance, toward the end of Acts 11, when the prophets from Jerusalem came down and said, “There’s going to be a great famine in Judea. The church in Jerusalem, the mother church and the believers in Judea are going to need our help. Let’s do something about that.” I’m struck by their response in Acts 11:29, where it says, “The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea.” This infers that all of the believers — and we can assume it was certainly practically all the believers — each according to his ability decided to help. All gave according to their ability. Isn’t this what the church is really supposed to be? Each person gives according to his ability. It’s not only in terms of financial wealth, but in terms of gifting, ability, and talent.

It’s living in the world for the Glory of God according to our ability, living the truth. Brothers, are we teaching the truth to make it pertinent and relevant to life so that people believe they can live it?

A Proper Application of the Truth

Several months ago I was spending some time with Stuart Briscoe at his church in Waukesha, Wisconsin, outside Milwaukee. It’s called Elmbrook Church. We were talking about what the culture was doing to the church and how people were responding to the truth. I don’t know about you, but I consider Stuart Briscoe one of the finest teachers of the Bible we have in this country. Sunday after Sunday, he faithfully teaches his people.

He told me about two people who approached him at separate times. One was a businessman in his church. He’d been in the church several years, and he came up to him one Sunday after he had preached and he said, “Stuart, I really appreciate your teaching. I enjoy it so much. I look forward to it every Sunday, but it’s really impractical for me.” Wasn’t that a strange statement? He said, “I enjoy hearing you teach, but it’s impractical for me to apply what I hear you teach in my own life. My life is such that the things you’re teaching I can’t do.” A little while later, a young single woman came up to him and told him she enjoyed his teaching too, but she said, “You know, Stuart, we singles have sexual needs too.”

It was the same thing. They were saying, “Your teaching is good, I love to hear it, but it’s impractical.” Brothers and sisters, I think we must, as we faithfully teach God’s truth, laboring to make it pertinent in our churches, relevant to life, we must challenge people to live the truth by faith. This is exactly what Paul was talking about when he says to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “We live by faith, not by sight.” In other words, when we hear the truth of God, we live it. We do it, believing in faith that God will take care of us. God will bless us if we do that. That’s the life of faith, to do the truth, believing God will bless us. Some of you may have seen the latest issue of “Decision Magazine.”

The January issue of “Decision Magazine” has the brief testimony of Dr. Jerry White who is president of The Navigators. Jerry has been a dear friend for many years and he tells the story of how he washed out of Air Force pilot training. The first and only failure of Jerry White’s life was to wash out of Air Force pilot training, and I was there to see it. I was an instructor at an Air Force base in pilot training. Jerry was not one of my students, but he came there as a second lieutenant to learn to fly and he had set his heart on an Air Force career as a pilot. He had been a straight A student at the University of Washington. He had been a Christian leader on the campus at the University of Washington in Seattle.

He came to Webb Air Force Base to learn to fly, and he had soloed in formation flying. He had already soloed. Then, we had two weeks of bad weather when not an airplane could get off the ground. After the weather lifted, Jerry went out to resume formation flying, and he couldn’t pick it up again. He failed his check ride in formation and he was washed out of the program. After that happened, he encountered someone who said, “Don’t worry, I can help you make your objective anyway. You want to teach at the Air Force Academy even though right now you’re not qualified because you haven’t served three years in another assignment? I can help you get your master’s degree and get into the academy.”

Jerry said to that person who was very influential, “No, my career is in the hands of Jesus Christ whom I serve and I’ll leave it there. I will not take advantage. I’m going to leave my career in his hands.” He lived by faith and remarkably after briefing a group of generals and colonels in Washington, D.C. a man came up to him and he said, a colonel, and he said, “I’m head of personnel at the Air Force Academy. We would like to have you as an instructor there. I will send you the paperwork next week.” To make a long story short, Jerry White went to graduate school, got not only a master’s but a PhD in astronautical engineering.

He went to the academy and taught for six years where he had a marvelous ministry among the cadets. God worked it out. God worked it out because Jerry White placed placed his life in the hands of Jesus Christ, the life of faith. Will our people live the life of faith, living out the truth that they have learned?

Leaders Are Worshipers

The fourth characteristic that is so striking is found in Acts 13. The fourth characteristic is that the leaders worshiped God. The leaders of the church were worshipers of God. After naming the five leaders of the church, Acts 13:2 says, “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Spirit spoke to them.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have yet to encounter a church — and maybe Bethlehem Baptist is the exception — where the pastor or one of the leaders says that we take time as leaders to worship God, just to worship God as leaders. Now, I define worship in this sense, in the sense that the word is used in this way, to worship God is to consciously enter his presence, see him as he is, and praise him in reverent joy. That’s how I defined worship for my people when I preached on it in our church. It’s to consciously enter the presence of God, see him as he is, and praise him in reverent joy. The word in the Greek for that most often is proskuneō. But the word here is leitourgeō, which means that very same thing, but it infers that in a priestly function, as a priestly function.

In other words, this is what the leaders of the church are supposed to do. They are to minister to the Lord in their priestly function because if they’re not worshiping God, they really can’t serve their people as they should. Men, I can’t stress this too much. If we don’t see God, if we can’t see God, the problems and circumstances of our ministry become great walls that grow higher and higher. Have you noticed that? They grow higher and higher until they surround us. These men were worshiping God, and the inference from the Greek here is that this was a habitual thing.

They did it as a habit. They came together as leaders. They entered the presence of God. They knew what he was like from Scripture, and with their sanctified imaginations they told him how great he was and how much they loved him, because that was their duty as under shepherds. It was part of their duty as under shepherds to worship God. They couldn’t serve their people right if they didn’t. They were an example in worship to their people. No wonder they could lead their people and teach them as they did because worship was central in their ministry. You’ll notice it says, they were fasting. That must mean they fasted at least one meal. You don’t fast unless you skip at least one meal. It was not a brief time, it was a time of extended worship. Then, you notice something, God gave his guidance as they worshiped.

Biblical Instances of Worship

Now, when I studied worship to preach to my people years ago about it, I preached a series of six messages on worship. I studied all the great incidents of worship in the Bible, and of course, I found that each one was unique. No two were exactly the same. But then, I went back over all of them and I discovered something. I discovered that out of every one of those great worship incidents, God gave his guidance. You think of Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3.

It was the first time Moses had ever worshiped and what did God say? He said, “I’ve heard the cry of my people in Egypt, and Moses, I want you to lead them out.” Joshua, when he was reconnoitering the city of Jericho and he encounters the Lord and the Lord says, “Take your shoes off. You’re standing on holy ground.” The Lord tells him how he used to take Jericho by marching around it seven times, absolutely astounding. He never would’ve thought of it himself. Think of Isaiah in the temple. When Isaiah worships as a young prophet, the Lord says to Isaiah, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” It’s guidance. You remember, if you go to the New Testament, even the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18–20 was given out of worship. Matthew 28:17 says that, “When they saw him on the mountain in Galilee, they worshiped him.” Then, he said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, you go.” God gives His guidance out of worship.

I think it’s because when we worship God, he has our full attention and we can hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. Particularly as this particular word is used, leitourgeō, as we come before God worshiping, realizing that we have responsibility for our people, our congregations, the Lord can speak to us as he has our full attention and talk to us about our congregations. Have you ever had that experience? I’ve had that experience several times with various groups of men. Our elders met one morning a week for an hour, for prayer. They often came to my home and we decided that for the first 30 minutes of that hour we would worship God. We wouldn’t bring any requests to God.

We would just worship him for half an hour. It made all the difference in the world in how we approached our responsibilities in the congregation. It is out of worship, men. They were worshiping the Lord and fasting and the Holy Spirit spoke to them. He made the most astounding statement. He said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I’ve called them.” Now, if they hadn’t been worshiping, I’m absolutely convinced they never would’ve thought of this. It would be like Bethlehem Baptist Church sending John Piper and his first associate as two of their missionaries. They sent their pastor and their associate pastor.

Sending Our Best

You have to be careful when you preach this, men, because there may be somebody in your congregation saying to themselves, “Boy, I wish they’d call you.” But isn’t it astounding that God wanted these two men? It was the two teachers of the church, the pastor and the associate pastor. They sent their best and that’s what it takes to engage in cross-cultural mission.

I’m finding that as I visit with baby-boom pastors, and by the way, I am so encouraged by so many baby-boom pastors that I’m meeting. They are young men who are strongly committed to the Lord and to their ministries, who want to see their churches make a difference in the world and participate in the Great Commission. They are beginning to say, “I think perhaps we in the past have sent people, some people at least, into missions that really weren’t qualified for it.” We need to be sending some of our best, and this church did.

We come to this conclusion in the late 20th Century, the decade of the 1990s. By the way, I appreciate so much the opportunity to hear Os Guinness take apart modernity for us and our culture, because this is where we live. We’re like fish in our churches swimming in this awesome culture of ours, and yet the commands of Christ are timeless. We are the church. We are to be the church where we are. We are to equip our people to be the people of God by living the truth where we are, and some of them going beyond our own locales with the gospel.

Our Part in the Great Commission

Peter Wagner made a study of several evangelical churches about 10 years ago on the spiritual gifting in local churches. He came away with a conclusion that God has gifted only one in 100 Christian adults with the cross-cultural missionary gift. If that’s true, that means that 99 of us are senders. But I like that saying, “Going or sending: the same heart.” We should be so missionary in our churches that as we find that one in a hundred who is one of our best, gifted to go, called by God to go, the other 99 of us have the same heart for the world to send that person, one of our best. We are at a time in the history of the church that is truly awesome. For the first time in the 2,000-year history of the Christian Church, we, the Whole World Church, have the ability to complete the Great Commission by the end of this decade or the early 21st Century.

Men, that’s astounding. It’s astounding that the great non-Western church that is growing now, growing by leaps and bounds and already has some 50,000 cross-cultural missionaries functioning in various parts of the world, from Latin America, and Asia, and Africa. That church is growing like Topsy. Missiologists tell us that by the end of this decade there will be at least 110,000 cross-cultural missionaries from the non-Western church, and there are other missiologists that say, “That’s far too low an estimate because there will be at least 160,000 cross-cultural missionaries from the non-Western world.” Here we are in North America with 80 percent of all the Christian wealth in the world.

You remember the words of Jesus when he said, “To whom more has been given, more will be required” (Luke 12:48). Will we, in North America, in our churches partner with our non-western brothers, the World Church, to complete Christ’s Great Commission mandate by the end of this decade or early into the 21st Century? Some of you may have heard of the AD 2000 movement. It’s actually called “AD 2000 and Beyond” because few are assuming that the American church is going to come alive and mobilize its resources to partner with a non-Western church over these next seven years to get it done. It may take us into the first century, but we have the means to do it.

It’s not a question of can we, it’s a question of will we. We have the resources and partnering with the non-Western church, it can be done. The question for the pastor today is, “What will the slice, our slice of that mission be? How much of this great world mission of the church does God want my congregation to take?” I look at Acts 1:8 as a pie with concentric circles, and we’re standing at the center and we’re asking ourselves as we stand in the light of what Christ said to his followers — “You will receive power and you will be my witnesses beginning where you are in Minneapolis, or Norfolk, or Nebraska, or wherever, to the ends of the earth — and we ask, “What will our slice of that mission be? How much of it should we take?”

I hope all of you have heard of the 10/40 window, from 10 degrees north to 40 degrees north latitude, beginning west of North Africa, continuing in a great band across all of North Africa and the Middle East, and including a great part of Asia including Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, across through the islands of Japan. You have the 10/40 window in which over 90 percent of the unreached peoples of the world are. Almost all the Muslims of the world are there, which is now almost 1 billion people. The church has made enormous strides in completing its world mission, but here are two and a half billion people who have not heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. The AD 2000 movement has this slogan: “The gospel for every person and a church for every people by the end of 2000.”

Bright Hope in a Bleak Landscape

That’s the challenge that faces the church today, but it all goes back to whether or not we will be Antiochian churches or Corinthian churches. I want you to know that in spite of the bleak landscape that is the American church today, there are some encouraging exceptions. I consider Bethlehem Baptist one of those. You could learn a lot from this church and from John Piper — his vision and his heart for God. To me, the thing that makes a difference in Bethlehem Baptist, from the time I’ve met John Piper and first heard him speak — and I’m not trying to exalt the man, but I’m using a good example — is that I thought, “Here is a pastor who is focused on God.”

The purpose of God, as John said yesterday, is not to complete the Great Commission; it is to gather to himself a growing number, a third race of people from every kindred and tribe and tongue and nation to worship him forever. The Great Commission is to increase that number and see that his plan, that not a single people will be left out, is completed. God is looking for worshipers — worshipers of every kind, every people, every nation, and every language on earth to bring him glory, the glory he deserves. The Great Commission of the church given by the Lord of the church is designed to complete that great plan of God, that we will be his people for all eternity, his worshiping people in the new heaven and the new earth.

Small Churches with Big Dreams

I have just one last word about your church. I’ve been in some of your churches, it’s been good to have fellowship again with some of you. Many of you are from smaller churches, and I want you to know that the small church can be effective where it is and in the world. I’m thinking now of a church on the north side of Atlanta, pastored by a good friend of mine. He started it from scratch, had no one to help him initially, and in about six years he had 350 people meeting on the north side of Atlanta. God gave them a facility. From the very first they started their involvement in mission as well as local outreach in the community. They have since planted two other churches within the last 10 years on the north side of Atlanta in fellowship with them.

That church will soon have had 60 of its people in Yugoslavia — doctors, dentists, and people working in a refugee camp of 1,500 people, which was assigned to them by Peter Kuzmic, a theologian in Yugoslavia. Many of you have known about him or perhaps met him. Peter Kuzmic gave this church the assignment of ministering to 1,500 refugees, most of them Muslims fleeing the Serbs. And the people from Northside Community Church in Atlanta have gone in successive relays of teams to share the gospel, to minister to those people medically, to serve them in all kinds of ways. They have completely evangelized that camp and seen many come to Christ. They’re now having discipling classes and Bible studies.

I see small churches across this country making an enormous difference in their own communities and in the world. Fellows, it doesn’t matter the size of your church, but it matters very much what kind of man you are. Are you his under shepherd? I love those words of Jesus, that he is the great shepherd of the sheep, and he takes care of his under shepherds. It’s the highest calling on earth to be an under shepherd. You never know what your church is going to accomplish. Do you realize that all of us trace our heritage back to the Antioch Church? Every one of us sitting in this room traces our spiritual heritage back to the Antioch Church. Do you know why?

Because as Barnabas and Saul went out and they evangelized the Mediterranean world, other churches were planted that eventually sent other missionaries north into Northern Europe. I noticed most of us here this morning are Caucasian, and those missionaries which derived ultimately from the Antioch Church went into those savage, barbaric tribes of white-skinned people in Europe. The people who are our ancestors were some of the most primitive and barbaric people in the history of planet earth. Many of these missionaries gave their lives, but they hung in there, they shared the gospel. Europe was Christianized. Then, the British Isles were Christianized in a remarkable way.

Then, the gospel jumped the Atlantic and came to North America, and you and I have our marvelous heritage and we’re in this church this morning because Antioch did what it did. Aren’t you glad they did? You never know how God is going to use what you do as a congregation to impact this world in ways you can’t dream of. But men, we’ve got to see to it that our people are soundly converted, that we teach them faithfully the word of God in a relevant, pertinent way and encourage them to live the truth as we are worshipers leading them in the worship of God, getting our directions from him and ultimately sending some of our best. Then, God will use us to his glory in ways we cannot imagine.

Questions and Answers

Well, it’s a great calling, isn’t it? It’s a great calling. May God bless you and by the power of his Holy Spirit enable you to be faithful. Well, let’s have a few questions.

How do we help our people get involved in missions today?

I think I agree when one person said the church in America today is a therapeutic church. It’s a very needs oriented church. How do we help our people cope? I’m the first to say that the church should be a hospital. The church has got to be a hospital for hurting people. There’s no question about that. We should be meeting the needs spiritually and hopefully emotionally of our people.

However, for the boomer generation, and this is really the challenge, I think, in so far as outreach is concerned, there has been a strong generational shift in the way missions is viewed in the local church. The boomer generation, according to the study of Dr. Jim Engle done in 1988, showed that only 10 percent of the baby boom generation was interested in missions, as shown by the fact that only 10 percent will give to missions and only 10 percent of the boomer generation in the churches will attend missions events in the church, unless they’re held on Sunday morning when they’d be there anyway. In fact, some of them will leave if they know there’s going to be a missions event.

Engle found in his study that the only way to really get boomer men and women interested in the world and the needs of the world is to get them out on short-term missions. In other words, short-term mission experiences. We’re not talking about necessarily a year or two years, but just an experience of perhaps a couple of weeks in some place of need in the world that this turns boomers on. Now, short-term missions is really the growing edge of missions today. Some of the mission agencies are chafing under this, but they’re finding they’ve got to do it because if they don’t, the supply of missionaries from North America is simply going to dry up.

More and more mission agencies are providing ways for people to get overseas or perhaps even to a place like Haiti, which is very poor, or places in Europe among refugees or wherever, to see the needs of the world so that when they come back they are from that point on truly involved. Whether they are going back as full-term missionaries or if they are simply helping others to go, at least they’re going to be interested in missions and they’re going to be giving. Short-term experiences are the ticket for the younger people in the church.

My wife and I right now are attending the college church in Wheaton, which is a church about this size. The mission’s pastor of that church has a project and he calls it the STAMP Project (Short Term Adult Mission Program), in which he wants to see all of the younger people in the church get a brief short-term mission experience. He’s making good progress. Several dozens of the younger people in the church have now been overseas. Many of them have to take vacation time to do it, but it’s making a difference in the involvement of younger generations in the church.

Another thing that I’m noticing increasingly as I travel is that if the church is involved in local outreach, if the church is meeting local community needs, generally human needs of all kinds, while sharing the gospel in conjunction with those ministries so that people are moving outside the walls of the church in the name of Christ to help people in all kinds of ways — whether it’s abortion counseling, crisis pregnancy centers, helping the homeless, whatever — they find it very easy to pick up the concept of cross-cultural missions. They will give to cross-cultural missions.

I’m thinking of a church right now on the West Coast. It’s a very large church, a Presbyterian church that has a missions budget of about 1.5 million dollars. They have many people in their congregation involved in local outreach of all kinds, and particularly the various ethnic groups. A lot of good cross-cultural training is going on locally in this particular city, and they have no trouble at all meeting their missions budget because so many of their people are involved with local ministries. Acts 1:8 is not an either/or situation, it’s both/and. We are to be reaching Judea and Samaria as we are in Jerusalem, as well as the ends of the earth. It’s not either/or. The more we’re involved locally, the more we have a heart for the world. That’s what I’m seeing.