Weekly Blog - 28 August 2023 - Missionary Communities
Sharing faith
Arise’s weekly action this week concentrates on how we can all be empowered to share our faith with our friends and neighbours through Arise’s Equipped to Share course. The vast majority of evangelism and sharing of faith that needs to happen in our modern world needs to be done through ordinary people in their local churches sharing their faith with friends and family. However, there are still some parts of the world where there is very little Christian presence in large areas and therefore this kind of local church evangelism is not possible. Here the sending of missionary communities to plant new local churches is still crucially important, as it was in the days of the early church, during the conversion of Europe, or with the missionary movements of the eighteenth – twentieth centuries. Arise’s weekly blog this week takes a look at what the Bible says about the sending of missionary communities.
Missionary communities
After Jesus ascended to heaven to be with the Father, the early church initially remained in Jerusalem, in obedience to Jesus’ command to “stay in the city” (Luke 24: 49) until he sent the Holy Spirit to empower them. Later, following the martyrdom of Stephen (and after the Spirit had been received), “a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria … Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.” (Acts 8: 1 – 4) From this point, the global evangelism mission Jesus had given his church to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28: 19) really began. Christians travelled to new areas to preach the gospel. We often think of these great pioneers of the early church, such as Peter or Paul, going alone, but in almost every instance they were travelling as Jesus instructed, at least “two by two” (Mark 6: 7). We see this with Peter and John, Paul and Barnabas, Barnabas and John Mark, or Paul and Silas. We also see wider groups – “Paul and his companions” (Acts 13: 13), such as Timothy, Luke, Philemon, Titus, Aquila and Priscilla. Taking the gospel to a new area alone can be very hard. Going together, groups of Christians can support each other, and even form the nucleus of a new local church around which others can then join. We see this model continuing to be used very successfully long after the New Testament period, for example, in the missionary monastic communities of the early Middle Ages or in today’s church planting movements and house churches.
The early Christians listened to God and were led to the places he wanted them to go by the Holy Spirit. Philip was told to “Go south to the road – the desert road – that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza” (Acts 8: 26), Simon Peter that “three men are looking for you … Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them” (Acts 10: 19 – 20), and Paul “had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them” (Acts 16: 9 – 10), amongst many other examples. It is notable throughout Acts that God used these missionary communities to particularly target the cities, especially the capitals. We hear of the gospel being preached in Azotus, Lydda, Joppa, Caesarea, Antioch, Paphos, Perga, Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Attalia, Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus and ultimately Rome, as missionary communities travelled through what is today Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and Italy. This intentional targeting of cities appears to have continued as a successful tactic throughout the Roman period and even today. Cities are cosmopolitan places where many people meet. Throughout history they have tended to be places where new ideas and communities could form, where those new ideas could have a disproportionately high impact in a nation relative to their size, because of their strategic location, and from where they could then spread out into rural areas.
Wherever these missionary communities went, they used local culturally specific methods of communicating the gospel. As Paul says, “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law … so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law … so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” (1 Cor 9: 20 – 22) We see this in Peter arguing from the scriptures to convince the Jews, “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel … Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know” (Acts 2: 14 – 22) or in Paul arguing from Greek philosophy to convince hellenistic gentiles, “Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: ‘People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship – and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.” (Act 17: 22 – 23)
These missionary communities didn’t just preach the gospel, win local converts and then leave, abandoning them. They planted new local churches, ensuring new believers were grouped together into communities. We are told that as they moved on from the places where they had won local converts, “Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord” (Acts 14: 23). Furthermore, missionary communities ensured that new local churches were not left isolated, but connected into the wider global church. They did this by sending others to visit them, writing to them and re-visiting them to strengthen and encourage them, such as when Paul “travelled from place to place throughout the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.” (Acts 18: 23) Thus, these local churches became part of the wider family of God, with ties of fellowship to all Christians.
Once a local church was planted, responsibility for evangelising that local area transferred to the local church. We never see missionary communities planting in areas where a local church already exists. When missionary communities visited, they worked with and through the existing local churches to bolster their ministry to evangelise their local area. They never went around existing local churches or re-planted the same area. In just one example, Paul writes to the church already planted in Rome by another missionary community to tell them, “I planned many times to come to you … in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.” (Roms 1: 13) (Of course this may have involved sending people into existing but dormant churches to revive them, as it does today.) Even when the existing local churches had huge problems, the emphasis was on reforming, reviving and continuing to work through them, as all the letters of the New Testament show, not giving up on them and planting new local churches in their area. Thus, when there was deep division and wrong teaching in the churches around Antioch, rather than give up on them and replant new churches, the church in Jerusalem wrote “To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia” (Acts 15: 23), with clear instruction to correct misunderstanding and divisions, sending “Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing” (Acts 15: 27). This is still a major challenge for the church. As David B Barrett and Todd M Johnson observe in their study World Christian Trends, “Today, as we look back over the entire 20th century, we see that although Christian resources were more than adequate for evangelizing the world, 9 out of every 10 new missionaries sent out went to work among already Christian peoples.” [1] This approach weakens our strategic focus and impact. It undermines Christian unity, and often achieves little more than simply winning converts who are already Christians from one local church or denomination to another. The Biblical model is that missionary communities are sent to unreached areas only.
Finally, although all Christians are called to share their faith, in the New Testament church it is clearly understood that some also have a specific calling on top of this to spend the majority of their time specialising in evangelism. We see this in the early church in Jerusalem, where following a dispute concerning the daily distribution of food to needy widows the twelve Apostles were clear, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6: 2 – 4) Both roles were important, but the Apostles were clear about their special calling to evangelism, as indeed others will have a special calling to issues like development or social justice. Arise suggests that it is Christians with this special calling to evangelism that should go out as missionary communities to plant new churches.
Conclusion
In the majority of countries where local churches in local communities exist, then the responsibility of sharing Christian faith with those local communities rests with those local churches, and with all of us as the members of those local churches. However, in parts of the world where there are no local churches for dozens or even hundreds of miles, then there still is a need to send out new missionary communities to plant new local churches in these regions. There is much the Bible still has to teach us about how to do this effectively. And this is one of the things a major piece of research from Arise, the Arise Manifesto, looks at in detail (Arise Manifesto, pg 21 – 24, 41 – 42).
Find out more
Find out more about how God is at work in the world, and the role we all have to play in that work, in the Arise Manifesto. This report is Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world. It looks at what the Bible says, and what we can learn from the best data and the world’s leading experts on the five major areas of evangelism, discipleship, social justice, development and the environment. It then draws these lessons together into a practical road map for the changes we need to see in our world, which the Arise movement campaigns to achieve.
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[1] Barrett, D. B. & Johnson, T. M., World Christian Trends, (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2001), pg 761