Many friends (and critics) hold the opinion that the Antioch church laid hands on Paul and Barnabas, sent them off, and acted as their sending church. I often open the Bible again to Acts 13:1-4 (You can read it here) and ask, “Help me see what I might be missing; I have so many blind spots.” Here are some writers who hold to a different opinion from mine.

• David Wilson (my friend) writes, “Paul was called and sent out by the Antioch church.”[1]
• Paul Rees wrote, “The apostle Paul was sent forth by the Antioch church and, equally important, he felt himself answerable to the church.”[2]
• Tom Julien, author of Antioch Revisited, writes:

As the believers of the [Antioch] church worshiped and fasted, they Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul” . . . They laid hands on the two men, as a sign both of their recognition as a church . . . It was a divinely inspired model of how the church ought to function. [3]

The writers I have quoted—David Wilson, Tom Julien, Paul Rees, as well as a hundred more—are deeply concerned that the local church assume a more active role in the carrying out of the church’s mission. Fortunately, Harold Cook of Moody Bible Institute responds, “But this hardly justifies reading into the New Testament text what is not actually there.” I remember what Senator Daniel Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Here are five facts I hope will help my readers sort this out for themselves.

1. Five men from the Antioch church came together to worship and fast. They were Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, and Saul.
2. The Holy Spirit said to these five men, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
3. Three men (none of them a pastor, none an elder of the Antioch church), laid hands on Barnabas and Saul and sent them off. Harold Cook writes, “This Greek verb apelusan “sent off” is never used in the sense of an authoritative sending of individuals on a mission. It is translated “divorce” in Matthew 5:32 and as “set free” from prison in Acts 2:32. “So it really should be translated,” Cook explains, “‘they let them go,’ or more freely, ‘they wished them Godspeed.’”[4]
4. Barnabas and Saul governed their teams without guidance from the Antioch church; their missionary teams were “field-governed.”
5. Cook writes, “If the Antioch church had constituted itself a missionary sending agency, surely there would be some further evidence of its missionary activity after this one trip. But this is completely
   lacking.”

As mentioned, Paul Rees is of the opinion that “the Apostle Paul felt answerable to the Antioch church.” So I will add a sixth fact:

6. Paul and Barnabas felt answerable to any church that raised funds for their ministry, such as the church in Philippi. But there is no reason to think that the Antioch church raised funds for their ministry. When Paul returned to Antioch, he and Barnabas were the ones who gathered the congregation, in order to declare all that God had done with them. The church did not call the meeting (See Acts 14:27). 

I am grateful to Harold Cook for his superb article, “Who Really Sent the First Missionaries?” Cook writes:

The Antioch church as such was not involved in sending Paul and Barnabas. It was only these prophets and teachers who were involved. Some would contend that the church was involved by implication, since these were the leaders in the church. But this is pure presumption. There is absolutely no indication in the text that these men were acting on behalf of the church. Nor did their ministry in the church necessarily qualify them to act for the church. They are not named as elders or bishops of the church. They are more like the prophet Agabus mentioned in Acts 11:28, who ministered temporarily in Antioch. So, any proof that the men represented the church in their action is completely lacking. [4]

Blincoe: Church leaders should pray and fast and hear what the Holy Spirit is saying. God will set apart many members of the congregation to be missionaries. Church leaders will then assess which mission society to partner with. Harold Cook concludes with one final tremendous fact:

Mission societies are not an aberration, as some would have us believe. Rather, they are modern attempts (often faulty, to be sure) to follow the scriptural principle of letting the Spirit do the sending as in the early days. Our only contention in this article is that it is wrong to claim that the organized church is the one agency prescribed in the New Testament for the sending of missionaries. On the contrary, the one indispensable is the sending by the Holy Spirit. If the church acts in accord with the Holy Spirit, well and good. But if not, the Spirit will still send forth his missionaries, whether individually, as in the early centuries, or through independent societies, as in more recent years.

[1] David J. and Lorene Wilson, Pipeline: Engaging the Church in Missionary Mobilization (Littleton, CO: William Carey Press, 2018). p. 4

[2] Paul S. Rees, editorial in World Vision Magazine, April 1974. 

[3] Tom Julien, Antioch Revisited: Reuniting the Church with Her Mission (Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2006).

[4] Harold R. Cook, “Who Really Sent the First Missionaries?,” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1975).

[5] Harold R. Cook, “Who Really Sent the First Missionaries?,” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1975)

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