Antioch Church Perth Church
“Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2 While they were worshipping 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 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.” (Acts 13:1-3)
“A champion Team (Antioch 48 AD) will always outperform a team of Champions (Perth today). (JRB etc.)”
Introduction
Whilst it might be fashionable in some circles of spirituality to think of our city as an Antioch city, the Church in Antioch was a real Church with real conflicts. During the Global Day of Prayer, Pentecost Sunday, I was given the opportunity to speak to a small group on “Prophetic Maturity”. As folk online spoke about the Quiet Revival going on internationally amongst Gen Z’s (https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival), the Spirit of the Lord began to speak with me about his actively “de-platforming” the Church. This was during a meeting when I virtually new everyone who was asked to get up to speak. They were all godly folk, male and female, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Evangelical, Orthodox, but afterwards I felt it was all rather “dated”. We easily forget that Jesus was not being sarcastic when, in concluding on the old versus the new wineskins, he said: “And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”” (Luke 5:39). If we would become a mature apostolic missional Church we must harken closely to the Word of the Lord in Acts 13 as set out below.
One Church
“Now in the church at Antioch”. Even though Antioch was the third major metropolis of the Roman Empire (approx. 200,00) we never hear of churches there. Today we can speak of one city: one Church with some freedom, but this has not always been the case across Christian history. For most of our story, especially since the Protestant Reformation, denominations and divisions have multiplied the Christian identity. Praise God, today this is rapidly coming to an end. Whilst I could readily quote from O.T. scriptures, like Ps 133, theologically, the ultimate explanation for the Church being “one, holy catholic and apostolic” (Nicene Creed 231 A.D.) is that the people of God share in the glory of the Father in the Son, which is an essential indivisible unity. Jesus prayed: “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)
Prophets and Teachers
The arrangement of “prophets and teachers” in the Church, in that order, is also found in other places (Eph 4:11; 1 Cor 12:28), along with the apostle-prophet pairing (1 Cor 12:28; Eph 2:20). These divine orderings are not arbitrary but indispensable for the Church to attain by grace “unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13). The following saying is quite unforgettable, “All Word and no Spirit, we dry up; all Spirit and no Word, we blow up; both Word and Spirit, we grow up (David Watson).” It is helpful however only in describing the limits of our contemporary experiences of prophecy and teaching. Bible readers cannot imagine anything, short of false teaching and prophecy, that would be anything less than that which necessarily grows the Body of Christ. Healthy preaching and prophecy is what Acts 13 points to. This truth is exemplified through Barnabas and Paul’s life and writings in Acts and elsewhere.
Worshipping Jesus in the Spirit
“‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called (προσκέκλημαι = perfect tense in Greek) them” (Acts 13:2); indicates that these Barnabas and Saul/Paul knew prior to their release from Antioch that they were called to mission. They were deeply schooled in the most difficult of the fruit of the Spirit, “patience/forbearance/long-suffering” (Gal 5:22), without this fruit the charisms of the Spirit will always reproduce, because they are spiritual gifts, but eventually disastrously abort. (This has been my long painful experience.) Their persistent worshipping the Lord Jesus in the power of the Spirit of his sending, past, present and Coming, indicates their perfect positioning for the divine revelation of “being sent”. I.e. their being apostles.
Missing Ingredients in the Church Today
Deep Humility immediately comes to mind as a missing fruit in Perth today. (Those who were at https://worldprayer.org.uk/events/world-prayer-assembly-australia-2023/ will have seen the, unconscious, lack of this on public display.) From Acts 13:1 until 13:43 Barnabas is always named before Paul, from there on in it is always Paul first named. This mobile reversal of roles amongst the apostolic team indicates an exercise of great humility by both parties as recorded by “the Spirit of grace” (Heb 10:29). The emerging apostles waited until the ever-patient Spirit spoke and anointed the hands of the functioning council of elders at Antioch (Simeon/black man, Lucius/North African, and Manaen/Jewish nobleman, were intentionally gathered by the Spirit representing the fulness of the Body of Christ across the Roman world). Their united act of “prayer and fasting” represents a model I have yet to see across the Church in Perth imaging “the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18-19) .
Conclusion: The Hothouse of Divine Suffering
In an emerging age of de-platforming we cannot expect the normal. The reason is found in the shape of the life of Jesus. The hidden wisdom of God, Christ crucified, is being reapplied in the hothouse of divine suffering for his Church, paradoxically, amidst the prosperity of Western Australia! As the fullness of the apostolic vocation out from Antioch was ordained to be expressed beyond their local church in Syria, so it must be for the expression go the Lord’s glory through the Church of our city in the years to come. The fruit of tears shed profusely in Perth will be reaped in joy amongst the nations of the world (Ps 126:5; Acts 20:19, 37). What has been a team of Champions is being transformed through anguish into a champion Team by the mystery of the gospel of grace. Watch for it, remembering, “the Lord God does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets” (Am 3:7).
Your brother in Jesus, John (Rev 1:9)