The Apostolic Pulse
Called out to be sent out

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.
— Acts 13:1–3

At the end of Acts 12, a king is eaten by worms while the church feeds on the word of God. One is decaying and the other is living. A king dies in his royal robes, yet in the underbelly, in the hiddenness, the church is thriving, because a river is flowing through it from the throne of God. The Church of Jesus Christ cannot die as long as that river flows. When the word is preached, the Spirit carries it into the heart like living water, and people are transformed simply by sitting in the presence of God, even when they cannot repeat everything they heard. And whatever flows in must flow out again, from Jerusalem to Antioch and from Antioch to the nations.

The River That Flows

A river runs through Scripture from the first pages to the last. In Genesis 2:10–14, one river flows out of Eden and divides into four: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. Some have linked their names to spreading out, gushing forth, swiftness, and fruitfulness. Whatever the precise meanings, the picture is a garden whose life keeps moving outward.

In Ezekiel 47, water trickles from the threshold of the temple, from the place of God's presence, and grows deeper as it flows: ankle deep, knee deep, waist deep, and finally a river too deep to cross. It flows down into the Dead Sea and makes it fresh.

And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes. — Ezekiel 47:9

This is the posture of the church every week. We kneel before the Lord in worship to drink, then we rise and step into the river, deeper and deeper until the Spirit carries us, out into the Dead Sea of our city to bring life. Wherever the river goes, people live, and we become fishers of men.

The river reaches its fullness in Revelation 22.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. — Revelation 22:1–2

That is our destination, and the church is the vehicle God ordained to bring that reality to earth as it is in heaven. As we worship before the throne, individually and together, the river flows through us, and wherever we go we carry leaves of healing, fruit in every season, and crystal-clear revelation for people who are thirsty. When the river stops, it becomes a pond, and a stagnant pond becomes a place where things die.

An Unlikely Leadership Team

Most of us read past the names in Acts 13:1, but each one tells a story. Manaen is called a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch. This is Herod Antipas, the one who beheaded John the Baptist and mocked Jesus before sending Him back to Pilate (Luke 23:11). Manaen grew up alongside the man who had a hand in the death of Jesus, and now he stands among the prophets and teachers of the church in Antioch. God can transform anyone's heart, even someone soaked in a godless court and fed on the fruit of deception. A man raised in the palace now carried the Kingdom, and God is still positioning His church in places of influence and among people of influence so that the gospel reaches the whole world. His pedigree could hardly have been worse, and God raised him up to speak for Him.

Simeon was called Niger, a name meaning dark-skinned, which suggests he came from Africa. Lucius came from Cyrene, in present-day Libya. Believers from Cyrene were among the first to bring the gospel to Gentiles in Antioch (Acts 11:20), and North Africa would go on to become one of the great centres of the early church. Look at who stood together in that room: a Jewish Levite from Cyprus, an African, a man from Libya, a member of Herod's court, and a former Pharisee from Tarsus. The genetic code for the nations was already present in the leadership of Antioch before a single missionary was sent. The apostolic pulse was beating in the makeup of the church itself, a foretaste of every tribe and tongue and people and nation gathered before the throne.

Jerusalem had been scattered by persecution. Antioch became the new sending place, a church that went out at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. While they worshiped and fasted, the Spirit spoke, and the whole company of prophets and teachers laid hands on Barnabas and Saul. The word of the Lord came through a body of people listening together, and the commissioning was shared by many hands. The believers in Jerusalem had been driven out by persecution, but in Antioch the apostolic pulse was beating strong as the church intentionally sought the Lord and sent out its very best.

Sending the Best

I grew up in traditional churches where missions often felt like an afterthought. If someone did not seem gifted enough to lead a congregation, the thinking went, perhaps he or she could become a missionary. That mindset, I am sure, permeated the underbelly of my thinking. When I was called to ministry, I told the Lord that even if He made me a missionary in Africa to evangelize just one person, I would go, as though I were offering Him the lowest rung on the ladder of Christian ministry.

Antioch did the opposite. Barnabas and Saul were the strongest leaders that church had, and the Holy Spirit demanded their release. A pastoral church, focused on caring for its own, can easily drift toward congregants who ask what the church will do for them. The word apostolic means to be sent, and an apostolic church sends out its best because it is concerned with advancing the Kingdom more than gathering a crowd.

For many pastors, this stirs real fear. They love their people, and sending the best means losing some of them. More than that, self-preservation is the default mode of most human beings, and pastors are no exception. We ask how we will maintain our ministry, and if we are honest, behind that question often lies a more honest exposé: how will I make a living out of this?

Called Out to Be Sent Out

When Luke writes that the church "sent them off," he uses the Greek word apelysan, from apolyō, which means to release or to let go.

Jesus Himself is called "the apostle and high priest of our confession" (Hebrews 3:1). He is the first Sent One, and He passes the sending on to us: "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you" (John 20:21).

Releasing is hard because community grows on you. Often in our years of ministry, my wife and I have been surprised by the people God called us to, and our love for them has grown. Some we first found hard to connect with have become part of us. As you hear their stories and walk beside them, you reach a point where you cannot imagine the church without them. That closeness is a gift, and it can also tempt us to forget the apostolic impulse as we hold onto one another, forgetting that the church equips the saints for the work of ministry until we attain to the fullness, the plērōma, of Christ (Ephesians 4:12–13) and carry His aroma to the nations of the world (2 Corinthians 2:15). We can hold one another so tightly that nothing ever goes out.

Our forever home is in the throne room of God, and the reason we gather here is the mission. The ekklesia is a people called out of the world so that they can be sent back into it. In the Greek world, an ekklesia was an assembly of citizens gathered to decide what should be done in their city, and when the body of Christ gathers, we stand as representatives of the King, declaring His will over our region. As the missionary journeys of Acts unfold, the same rhythm repeats: they proclaim the gospel, confront demonic opposition, see signs and wonders follow, strengthen the disciples, appoint leaders, and return to report what God has done. The church is meant to work like a dock, where people come in, fuel up, and head back out. We eat and drink in His presence on Sunday so that we can be empowered for the world we walk into on Monday, and a church that only consumes grows bloated while the people around it go hungry.

The Lifeblood

In Hawaii my arm once went completely numb because the circulation had stopped, and I could feel nothing at all.

Numbness in our spiritual lives often means we have disconnected from the heartbeat of Jesus.

Someone going through a hard season may wonder why I would talk about being sent. I have been through hard seasons too. Counselling has helped me, and talking things through matters. What heals me most is the presence of God reminding me that I still have a purpose and that I am not dead yet. When my daughter was going through a serious health battle, the love of Jesus carried me, and the Holy Spirit kept reminding me that whatever happened, I still had an assignment to fulfil.

I got the tattoo in Brazil during one of the hardest seasons of my ministry. I had quit. I told my wife we would just be regular Christians now, attending church and home group, keeping quiet, making a few friends. She looked at me and asked, half sarcastically, "What exactly is a regular Christian?" I was making far more money than I ever had as a pastor, and I was comfortable, yet the more I hid, the more depressed I became. The Holy Spirit was unrelenting, yet gentle, reminding me that my calling was still valid. That angst was itself a sign of life. Augustine prayed in his Confessions:

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

My restlessness was His Spirit stirring me. Then He began opening opportunities for me to step out and do the stuff again.

Then, out of the blue, I was asked to speak as a workshop speaker at a large conference, a conference featuring well-known worship leaders from Hillsong and Bethel. I was a last-minute addition, squeezed between two of the headline names, and I told my wife I wasn't expecting much, perhaps a group of ten or so for a little Q&A, since most people would go to hear the world-famous speakers and leaders. I barely prepared. Five hundred came. I spoke, people were blessed and lined up afterward with questions. I felt the lifeblood surging through my body again.

Whatever you are walking through, using your gifts for the Kingdom is lifeblood. When you watch someone's eyes come alive as the word of Christ reaches them, when a heart of stone becomes flesh in front of you because God chose to use little old you, that is the dunamis of the Spirit flowing through you. The apostles faced the hardest of times, and Acts never pauses for a chapter about taking care of themselves. Lament has its place, and Scripture gives us a whole book of it, yet lament releases our troubles to God so that we can receive from Him again. When David's son died, he mourned, then rose, washed, worshiped, and ate (2 Samuel 12:20). He still had a mission.

For Reflection

1. Where in your life has the river become a pond?
2. Do you come to church mostly asking "What is in it for me?" or "What has God equipped me to do?"
3. Who in your life might God be asking you to release, even though you would rather hold on?
4. When have you felt the lifeblood of using your gifts for someone else? How did you feel?
5. What is one place in your world this week where you can carry the river of God?

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