Paul’s Missionary Enterprise

When it comes to the topic of what works, and what is meant to work, in missions, I am happy to tell you that the tried and true is still better. Even in missions. The old paths are still the good paths. I hope someday to be of old age and still saying the same thing: why the tried and true is still better. The aim is not to be traditional for the sake of being traditional, nor to insist that whatever was done in the past must have been better than what we do today. They were sinners then too and made mistakes and errors and we have learned from them. But it is the case that the old ways, when it comes to the mission of God in the world––evangelism, discipleship, church planting, church strengthening––are still today, as they were then, the biblical means of grace.

To make the case for the tried and true in missions, Acts 14 has become my go-to text. If you have one shot to help a group of people try to understand the mission of the church, what missions is about, what missionaries do, you can’t do better than to point them to the missionary par excellence: the Apostle Paul.

But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 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. 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.

Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia, and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled. 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. And they remained no little time with the disciples. (Acts 14:19–28)

That last paragraph shows how Paul has returned to Antioch. This was the church that had “set apart” Paul and Barnabas for Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 13:2). He’s come back to report, declaring all that God had done through him, and how he had opened a door of faith. That’s the big picture summary: he had opened a door of faith. This is at least the bare minimum of what we are doing in missions, we are praying that God might open a door of faith.

The paragraph before this gives us a glimpse of the sort of things that I think Paul would have shared back at his sending church in Antioch. I imagine this to be Paul, back on furlough, as they used to call it, giving an update to the missions committee. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be in your mind if you’re thinking about going into missions. Or if you're a pastor or you're on a missions committee, when missionaries return and tell you what they have been doing, does it sound anything like what the Apostle Paul has done?

We see in these verses, particularly in 21–23, the “three-legged stool” of mission work. We have here the apostolic model for missionary service. This is what a church's mission's committee should be looking for in considering how to spend their mission dollars. Other authors have put it differently and used different lingo, but if you want to use neat alliteration you can describe the three-legged stool of Paul’s missionary enterprise this way: new converts, new communities, and nurtured churches.

The first leg, new converts, comes from verse 21, “when they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples.” Notice how evangelism and discipleship are treated as the same thing or different aspects of the same thing. We often tend to put them into different buckets, but the aim is never to just have somebody pray a prayer or sign a card or call themself a Christian, it is to speak the gospel and build converts up as disciples. We find new communities in verse 23, when they had appointed elders for them in every church. Then in verse 22, we see nurtured communities, or nurtured churches, because we read that he strengthened the souls of the disciples.

Another way to describe this is in terms of evangelism and discipleship, or church planting, and then church strengthening. When we do our missions budget at our church, these are the three things we're looking for. We also have a category that we think of as diaconal ministry, which is going to help adorn the gospel or help be an entry point. But the aim even with that is to support one of the legs of this three-legged stool. We want to know if this person or organization is doing evangelism/discipleship, planting churches, or strengthening churches.

It’s worth noticing that part of Paul's missionary journey is to go back and strengthen the church. This is why we need good schools, why the Lord uses seminaries, why he uses good publishing houses to produce good books. All of this is to help ensure that we don't just have something that we can call “a church.” Remember, church is not plural for Christian. I know that Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:20) That's a wonderful passage about the authority of Christ in church discipline. It's not a passage that means that if three people are in a park and they're praying it's a church though. Those are three Christians in a park, praying.

Eckhard Schnabel, the fine biblical scholar and missiologist, has written helpfully on this subject and he has three points which are really identical to the ones I've just laid out. Here's what he says,

“Missionaries communicate the news of Jesus the Messiah and Savior to people who have not heard or accepted this news."

“Missionaries communicate a new way of life that replaces, at least partially, the social norms and behavioral patterns of the society in which the new believers have been converted."

“Missionaries integrate the new believers into a new community.”

It's a way of saying the same thing: evangelism and discipleship, church planting, and church strengthening. In Acts 14, we see this is what Paul and Barnabas have been sent out to do.

Missionaries may aim at one of these components more than the other, but all three must be present in an overall mission strategy. The work of discipleship and church planting cannot take place unless non-believers are evangelized and born again. At the same time, we cannot leave new converts on their own simply because they claim to be Christians. They must be grounded in their faith, taught what it means to turn their backs on the world and follow Jesus. If your mission strategy and my mission strategy does not have all three of these components working together, then our missionary effort will not be healthy, stable, long lasting, or ultimately fruitful to the ends of the Great Commission.

Note: This article was adapted from Kevin DeYoung’s Missionary Conference 2024 address, “Why the Tried and True Is Still Better, Even in Missions.”