Acts 14:21-28: The Centrality of the Local Church

Acts 14:21-28: The Centrality of the Local Church

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of Acts, and today the next passage we come to is Acts 14:21-28. It says,

21 When 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 that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. 23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. 24 Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. 25 And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia, 26 and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. 27 And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. 28 And they remained no little time with the disciples.  

May God bless the reading of his Word.

One of the most common reasons people give for not wanting to be involved in a church is that they’ve been hurt by a church in the past. This hurt can be inflicted in a variety of different ways and is often extremely painful for months, years, or even decades. I remember when I was around 10 or 11 years old, my dad went to be the pastor of a church. And this is a story, by the way, that he gave me permission to share with you. This church was located in a rural area not too far away from Charlottesville, VA, and was fairly typical for a Baptist church in that area in many ways. It was relatively small, pretty traditional, and had been around for a very long time. However, one feature of this church that wasn’t typical is that the leadership team of the church—which was actually the deacon board—had forced the resignations of seven pastors in seven years. I’m not exactly sure of everything that was contributing to this dynamic in the church, but from what I understand and was told, there were certain people in positions of power who really enjoyed that power and didn’t want to share it with anyone else. So my dad accepted the invitation from that church to be their pastor, and he lasted around a year and a half before he was finally forced to resign—making him number eight in the line of pastors who were forced out after a very short tenure. 

Now, thankfully, I believe my parents shielded me from the worst of all of the ugliness that went down, but that experience left a mark on our family—and on my dad in particular—that’s still felt to this day. My dad has never had it in him to be a pastor again since that time and actually struggles to even be meaningfully involved in a church because of the things he experienced at that one. So I share that with you just to let you know that I have no doubt that the hurt inflicted at times by churches can be quite real and quite painful, as I myself have experienced to some degree. 

And maybe you have as well. Or maybe you know someone who’s had a hurtful experience. And maybe that’s caused you to not want to be involved in a church or—even if you’re involved to some degree, like showing up on Sunday morning—maybe you have no desire for any involvement beyond that. Church has hurt you once, and you’re not going to let that happen again. So, you’ve determined to keep the church at arms’ length. If that describes you or even just someone you know and are trying to minister to, this passage in Acts 14 is definitely a good one to be familiar with. And you’ll see what I mean as we go along.  

But first, let me briefly remind you of the context. Paul and Barnabas have been traveling from city to city preaching the gospel on what’s often known as Paul’s First Missionary Journey. This is recorded in Acts chapters 13-14, and you can see it on the map here. The red line is what we’ve look at so far—starting at Antioch all the way at the right, then to Salamis, Paphos, Perga, the other Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and finally Derbe. We then read this in verses 21-23 of our main passage, Acts 14: 21 When they had preached the gospel to that city [Derbe] 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 that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. 23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. So we can see in these verses how Paul and Barnabas retraced their steps and went back through the cities they had already gone through. 

Now think about this for a moment. Going back through all of these cities was a lot of work. Travel wasn’t easy back then. They didn’t have any Sheetz stations they could stop at every 30 minutes to refresh themselves. Travel was actually quite difficult and dangerous. On top of that, keep in mind that many of these cities they were returning to had kicked them out before and, in some cases, had tried to kill them. So Paul and Barnabas were risking their lives by returning to many of these places. Yet, according to these verses, they did it in order to “[strengthen] the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith” (verse 22) and to “appoint elders for them in every church” (verse 23). 

Think about the kind of picture this paints of Paul’s missionary efforts. How did he approach his missionary task? What did he focus on and prioritize and invest energy into? Clearly, as these verses illustrate, his focus was on establishing healthy churches. That’s the main idea of our main passage this morning. Paul’s ministry efforts centered around establishing healthy churches. Paul would arrive in a town, preach the gospel, see people saved, organize them into a very basic church, leave to do the same thing in other cities, and then come back through to strengthen that church, appoint qualified leaders, and make sure the church was generally healthy before moving on. Paul would also keep in touch with these churches afterwards and often write letters to them in order to guide them and help them work through the various issues they encountered. And it’s a good thing he did that, because those letters form a large portion of what we now know as the New Testament. 

Don’t miss that. A significant portion of the books in the New Testament are letters written not to Christians in general or even to individual Christians but rather to churches. So churches are actually central to the entire New Testament. New Testament Christianity revolves around churches. So, that means, if you want to live out genuine New Testament Christianity today, you have to be a part of a church. There’s just no way around it. And not just part of what’s often called the “universal church”—which consists of all believers everywhere and from every period of time—but also part of the localized expression of that—what we might call a “local church.” That’s what we see in the New Testament. And that involves not just showing up on Sunday mornings but actually being meaningfully involved in the relational community of that church, becoming a member of that church, supporting that church financially, and ministering to others in that church with whatever gifts and abilities the Lord’s given to you. 

And that’s something a lot of professing Christians in our individualistic Western culture seem to have trouble embracing. It seems like there are a lot of professing Christians these days wandering around, we might say, and pursuing a meaningful spiritual life apart from any church. They rely on this ministry over here, that special event over there, this Facebook group, that YouTube channel, this famous preacher, that bestselling book. And many of these things they get involved in may be relatively good things, but the problem is that that’s all they have. There’s nothing that anchors them—no place that they can call home. They’re basically spiritual nomads.

Listen: if you want to become who God wants you to be and experience what God wants you to experience and make a difference in the way God calls you to make a difference, all of that begins with you getting connected in a meaningful way to a local church. The best way you can glorify God with your life and live your life for him is to spend it serving in and through and from a local church. 

And the reason I say “from” a local church is because there is significant ministry that happens outside the context of the church. The church isn’t the limit of our ministry, but it is the base—or the base camp—of our ministry. We can see this pretty clearly in the Apostle Paul’s life. His missionary endeavors took him far away from his home church in Antioch. And yet, he was operating under the authority of that church the whole time. 

Back in Acts 13, we see Paul and Barnabas being commissioned for their ministry by the church of Antioch. Look what it says, Acts 13:1-3: 1 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. 2 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.” 3 Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So notice that Paul and Barnabas didn’t just head off on their own to do their own thing. They were sent by a local church and had that church’s prayers and support and blessing. 

Then, we see back in our main text the manner in which Paul and Barnabas concluded their first missionary journey.  Acts 14:24-27: 24 Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. 25 And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia, 26 and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. 27 And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. So what did they do? Did they just send out an email to all of their prayer partners and financial donors thanking them for their support? No, they went back to their home church in Antioch and, it says in verse 27, “declared all that God had done with them.” That word “declared” is translated in most other translations as “reported.” The NIV, CSV, NASB, and NLT all translate it as “reported.” Paul and Barnabas went back to the church of Antioch and gave a report of their ministry activities. And I’m convinced they did that because it was appropriate and even expected. They were operating under the authority of that church and were accountable to that church and therefore reported back to that church regarding their ministry activities. So, just to state the obvious, if even the great Apostle Paul placed himself under the spiritual authority of a local church and was accountable to that church, then you need to be as well. 

Because the fact is that all of us who are Christians are called to engage in ministry that extends beyond this church. Even if we never become cross-cultural missionaries like Paul and Barnabas, we’re still called to be missionaries in this area, orienting our entire lives around the mission Jesus has given us of spreading the gospel and making disciples. But all of that ministry should be done with a local church as our base—people who know us and people to whom we’re accountable. 

Now, again, I know that that might be incredibly difficult and even scary for some people because of experiences they’ve had with churches in the past. I get that—and have experienced some of that hurt myself. But in light of the picture that’s painted here in Acts 14 and in the New Testament as a whole of the centrality of the church, let me encourage you: don’t give up on meaningful involvement in a local church. You know, when you think about it, saying that you’re not going to be a part of a church anymore because you’ve been hurt by a church in the past is like saying that you’re not going to go to the hospital anymore because one hospital didn’t provide good treatment. It’s like saying you’re not going to eat at restaurants anymore because food from one restaurant gave you food poisoning. And it’s like saying you’re not going to take your car to the mechanic from now on because one mechanic ripped you off. I don’t think I know anyone who’s ever responded like that to bad experiences in these various other contexts, so why would we respond that way to a bad experience in a church? 

My advice, if you find it difficult to love the church for the sake of the church, is don’t love the church for the sake of the church. Love the church for the sake of Jesus. Remember that the church is the bride of Christ. That’s a metaphor used for the church throughout the New Testament, including the Gospel of John, several of Paul’s letters, and the book of Revelation. Jesus loves the church and is committed to the church just like a husband is to his wife. In fact, Jesus loves the church so much that he gave his life to save her from her sins. As Paul writes in Ephesians 5:25-27, 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Isn’t that incredible? The church was morally filthy and totally helpless and underserving of anything good, yet Jesus gave his life to purchase her rescue and to cleanse her from all her filth. That’s how much he loves the church and how committed he is to her. The church is his bride. 

So if you love Jesus and want to enjoy closeness to him, then you have to be on good terms with church as well. You can’t love Jesus but despise his bride. It’s the same as it would be with a man and his wife. You can’t be on good terms with me if you’re not on good terms with my wife, Becky, right? It doesn’t work like that. If there are unresolved issues between you and Becky, then, by extension, there are unresolved issues between you and me. And it works the same with Jesus and the church. You can’t love Jesus or be close to Jesus and yet despise his bride. 

In addition, not only is the church the beloved bride of Jesus, it’s also his chosen instrument for reaching the world with the gospel. Jesus announces his plan for reaching the world with the gospel when he says in Matthew 16:18, “…I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” As the saying goes, “the church is God’s Plan A, and he doesn’t have a Plan B.” And that’s certainly what we see also in Paul’s missionary endeavors—illustrated so well in our main passage. In fact, I think we could even say that Paul’s missionary strategy didn’t merely involve churches. His strategy was churches. 

And I believe Paul approached things that way because he knew not only that the church is the beloved bride of Jesus and the chosen instrument of Jesus but also an essential component of the spiritual health of his converts. Think again about the snapshot of Paul’s approach to ministry that we see here in Acts 14. He didn’t just share the gospel in a city, see people come to know Jesus, and then tell them, “Alright guys, you’re on your own from here. Here are some good preachers for you to listen to on YouTube. Good luck living the Christian life.” That wasn’t Paul’s approach. No, he made sure that those who had put their faith in Jesus were organized into groups, called “churches,” so that each individual convert could have the committed support of brothers and sisters in the faith as they all tried to live for Jesus. On top of that, they’d also benefit from the faithful teaching and wise guidance of church leadership. 

So that’s the role that a healthy church plays in the lives of its members. The church is like a greenhouse that helps its members grow spiritually and makes sure that each one is cared for. The primary way that happens, of course, is the individual members of the church taking the initiative to care for each other. As we see in Ephesians 4:11-12, the role of church leaders is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” That “ministry” that the members of a church are supposed to have toward one another involves a wide variety of things like praying for each other, encouraging each other, confronting each other in love, offering comfort to each other during difficult seasons of life, and making any spiritual investment in each other that they have an opportunity to make. And I’ll just say that, in our particular church, the primary context for these kinds of things to happen is in Community Groups and various informal discipling relationships. 

We also care for one another at our Prayer Gatherings each Wednesday by praying for each other. And even at our Members’ Meetings that we have once every few months, we’ve made it our regular practice to publicly review the names of each individual member who isn’t currently attending or who’s only attending infrequently and just give everyone an update on that member. How are they doing? What’s going on in their lives that’s preventing them from attending? What communication have we had with them? How can other members of the church reach out to them in a helpful way? We do that, first and foremost, not because we’re trying to embarrass anyone but because we care about people and want to do everything we can to minister to them.  

And on top of that, one thing our church’s elders do that some of you may not know about is that we have a special meeting every month in which we don’t handle any administrative or business matters but simply go through our membership roster name by name in order to coordinate our ministry efforts to our members and pray for each of them as we go along. We call it our Shepherding Meeting, and we do it every month. 

So hopefully you’re starting to get the picture of how a healthy church functions in the lives of its members and the manner in which all of the members and leaders minister to one another. As you can see, this isn’t L. A. Fitness that we’re talking about here. You know, at L. A. Fitness, they have memberships. If you pay the right amount, you can become a member and use their equipment and probably make some friends while you’re there. But, ultimately, L. A. Fitness doesn’t really care about your welfare, right? Like you could work out in their facility and then go across the street to McDonald’s and stuff your face full of Big Macs and French fries and live a lifestyle that’s terribly unhealthy, and L. A. Fitness doesn’t care. As long as you pay your membership dues every month, you’re good to go. L. A. Fitness doesn’t take any responsibility for your welfare—even your physical welfare. And yet, that’s exactly what Jesus designed the church to do—to offer support and nurture and care and teaching and to actively take responsibility for one another’s well-being. He designed the church to be a family—spiritual family that’s committed to each other and there for each other even in the midst of the most difficult times of life. Obviously, no church does that perfectly, but if a church is healthy, that’s at least what they’re pursuing. 

That’s why Paul organized his converts into churches. He understood how critical churches are to the spiritual health of God’s people. I remember watching a documentary one time on solitary confinement in the prison system. And after watching it, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. It’s very unfortunate that some people behave in such a way that that may be a necessity in some cases, but it’s certainly not desirable. Because, even if you don’t have any training in psychology, you can probably imagine how solitary confinement for a prolonged period of time can really mess people up in the head. Psychologists tell us that prolonged solitary confinement can cause things like hallucinations and panic attacks and paranoia as well as difficulties with thinking, concentration, and memory. Basically, it’s really not a good idea. And it’s also not a good idea for our spiritual lives. God didn’t design us to live the Christian life alone. He designed us live it in the context of a community of other Christians and have meaningful relationships with them so that we can build each other up. 

You may be aware that, according to the Bible in 1 Corinthians 12, every Christian has a spiritual gift—an ability given to us by the Holy Spirit to minister to other believers in particular way. It could be serving or teaching or a number of other things. And the beauty of it is that no one Christian has all of the spiritual gifts. There’s a sense in which each of us is incomplete by ourselves…and that’s by design so that we would need each other to complete us.

You know, the more I read the New Testament and learn about God’s design for the church, the more I marvel at the incredible gift the Lord has given to us as his people. What wisdom, what goodness, what grace he’s displayed in giving us this incredible spiritual family called “the church”! What a blessing! 

So, in light of all of this, let me encourage you in several ways. First of all, if you’re just casually attending this church on Sundays, let me encourage to pursue more meaningful involvement in the church through things like a Community Group, Wednesday Prayer Gatherings, volunteer opportunities, and informal relationships. Don’t hold the church at arms’ length. Instead, be all in. Also, if you’re not yet a member of the church, let me encourage you to sign up for our Membership Information Class that’ll take place next month. You can do that through a Connection Card simply by writing “Membership” at the bottom. And I’ll be giving a lot more details about that in the coming weeks. 

However, before you do any of that, it’s critical to understand one thing. In order to be a part of this spiritual family, you have to be supernaturally born into it. You see, the all-important prerequisite for being a part of a church is to embrace Jesus and put your trust in him to rescue you from your sins. Because the reality is that you and I and everyone else in this world have sinned against a holy God and deserve his judgment for our sins in hell for all eternity. That’s not just some scare tactic that preachers came up with to get people to live better. It’s a reality that Jesus himself taught about repeatedly. In fact, we learn more about hell from the teachings of Jesus than we do from anywhere else in the Bible. 

However, the good news is that, even when we were in such a wretched and desperate condition, Jesus came to our rescue. That was his purpose for coming into this world. And the way he accomplished that rescue was by living a life of sinless perfection and then dying on a cross to pay for our sins. The full force of God the Father’s wrath against our sin came down on Jesus so that it wouldn’t have to come down on us. He suffered the judgment we deserved—and then triumphantly resurrected from the dead. And the way we can share in his triumph over sin and death is by repenting of our sins and putting our trust in him alone to rescue us—not in our efforts at morality or our acts of religious devotion or even our involvement in a church but in Jesus alone. 

And that’s the way we become a part of the family of God. We’re adopted into that family by embracing this message of Jesus that we call “the gospel.” You know, not every teenager who hangs out at another teenager’s house to play video games is a part of that family. In order to actually be a part of that family, they’d have to be adopted. And, spiritually, that adoption happens through the gospel. 

That’s why, as you can see in verse 21 of our main passage as well as dozens and dozens of other places in Acts, the first thing Paul did when he entered a city was to proclaim the gospel in that city. The gospel is the great prerequisite to membership in a church and, we could even say, to the existence of a church at all. Churches are birthed through the gospel. The way Paul started churches was essentially by preaching them into existence. Churches don’t exist apart from the message of the gospel. The church is the fruit, but the gospel is the root.