Do Paul’s Missions Leave Us with a Geographic Pattern to Follow?
00:00:00.000 | Well, it seems the Apostle Paul traveled about 15,500 miles in his ministry, and around 8,700
00:00:13.960 | of those miles were on foot. These are the calculations of New Testament scholar Eckhart
00:00:18.800 | Schnabel, and that's an incredible range for the first century. We can trace out his missionary
00:00:24.560 | plot points on Google Maps. In fact, it's already been done. But what can we learn from
00:00:29.760 | those trips for our own missionary work today? It's a question from Chi Hong, a listener.
00:00:35.600 | "Pastor John, hello from Malaysia. What can we learn about Paul's missionary journeys?
00:00:39.960 | Can we say he strategized his movements based on his accessibility? Sometimes, of course,
00:00:44.640 | he was prohibited by the Holy Spirit to go certain places. I'm wondering about this question
00:00:49.040 | for myself and also to guide potential missionaries on how we choose where we go. What do we learn
00:00:55.200 | about Paul's missional strategies from his geographical movements?"
00:01:00.560 | I don't think that the way Paul acted geographically and with regard to cities, say, is per se
00:01:11.040 | mandatory for the Church today. In other words, descriptive activities in the Book of Acts
00:01:18.040 | may or may not be normative for us, depending on whether Luke, the inspired writer, gives
00:01:27.420 | clues that the description he's giving is intended by him to be authoritative for later
00:01:33.360 | generations. And I don't think that's usually the case. However, just like we would be foolish
00:01:40.320 | in reading biography not to learn from the strategies of the best missionaries, we would
00:01:45.600 | be idiotic not to pay close attention to Paul and his strategies, because he was one of
00:01:53.760 | the greatest missionaries of all. So let me mention three of his strategies, and then
00:01:59.720 | we can work together on whether these have a direct impact on us or not, or how they
00:02:05.800 | do.
00:02:06.800 | First, on Paul's first missionary journey described in Acts 13 and 14, three things
00:02:13.020 | marked his geographic strategy. One, he went to cities—Salamis, Perga, Antioch, Pisidia,
00:02:19.840 | Iconium, Lystra. Second, he usually focused on the synagogue first in those towns. Third,
00:02:27.880 | he backtracked, revisited the same towns on his way home, discipling people, telling them
00:02:36.640 | they're going to be afflicted, and appointing elders in all the churches. So we should give
00:02:42.820 | serious consideration to the wisdom of focusing on population centers that may have some kind
00:02:49.900 | of religious expression—for him it was synagogue—some kind of religious expression which might provide
00:02:55.100 | a redemptive analogy, a link to make the gospel more readily understandable. But I don't
00:03:04.060 | say this as an absolute, because we don't know whether Paul did serious evangelizing
00:03:11.600 | in the smaller villages between these towns. We still know. There's nothing in the book
00:03:16.960 | of Acts that says Luke's narrative is exhaustive. We know it's not. You can read it in an
00:03:22.800 | hour and it covers years. And so I would never want anyone to think that the only biblical
00:03:33.100 | mandated way to do frontier missions is to go to cities. That may be wise, but there
00:03:40.060 | are other factors that might, in a certain situation, say, "No, that's not the best
00:03:44.260 | strategy." Here's number two, number two strategy that we can look at. We notice that
00:03:49.780 | Paul sometimes spent an extended period of time in one of those urban centers, with the
00:03:56.620 | effect that the gospel spread to the entire region, evidently because people come and
00:04:05.460 | go. There are communication and transportation lines between that urban center and the outlying
00:04:11.620 | areas and villages. So listen to Acts 19, 8-10, as Paul describes his first longer stay
00:04:20.220 | in Ephesus. "Paul entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning
00:04:26.940 | and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some became stubborn and continued
00:04:32.340 | in unbelief, speaking evil of the way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and
00:04:39.940 | took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This continued for
00:04:48.060 | two years, so that"—no, what's that word "so that"? "So that all the residents
00:04:55.460 | of Asia"—that's the province—"heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks."
00:05:01.820 | So that little phrase "so that" shows that the effect of Paul's lingering for
00:05:09.260 | two years in one single urban center resulted in the whole region hearing the word of the
00:05:16.860 | Lord, instead of Paul jumping around to all those villages. So we should seriously consider
00:05:23.100 | whether one effective strategy for reaching a region that may have lines of transportation
00:05:30.660 | and communication to an urban center, whether focusing on that center might be more strategic
00:05:37.700 | than focusing, say, on one of the outlying villages. So that's my second observation
00:05:42.780 | that we could learn from. Here's the last one, and probably most important, I think,
00:05:47.380 | for the task remaining for us, namely Paul's amazing testimony, astonishing, in Romans
00:05:55.260 | 15, 18-24. "I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished
00:06:01.820 | through me, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum"—so that would
00:06:08.620 | be, picture Jerusalem down in southern Palestine and Albania, northern Italy—"from Jerusalem
00:06:16.180 | all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ, and
00:06:24.060 | thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel not where Christ has already been named, lest
00:06:28.580 | I build on someone else's foundation. This is the reason why I have so often been hindered
00:06:34.420 | in coming to you, you people in Rome, because I've been trying to plant the gospel in
00:06:40.180 | all these unreached regions so I can get out of here and let the evangelists finish the
00:06:45.300 | work. But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions"—this is
00:06:51.820 | astonishing that he would say that! "No longer have any room for work in these regions,
00:06:57.280 | and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing
00:07:01.140 | as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you once I have enjoyed your company
00:07:09.220 | for a while." So here are my five concluding brief observations from that text. One, his
00:07:15.940 | ambition and strategy to preach the gospel not where Christ has already been named. Number
00:07:24.540 | two, with that definition of your ministry, a region can be completed. You can think in
00:07:31.660 | terms of closure and completion, if that's the definition of your ministry. The gospel
00:07:37.020 | can be, as he said, fulfilled, even though lots of people are left to be evangelized.
00:07:43.180 | They're not all saved, but local pastors like Timothy, being left behind at Ephesus,
00:07:49.100 | can get the job done with evangelism. Paul's finished, he's out of there because his
00:07:53.860 | job is put the gospel where it's never been heard. Number three, not everybody in missions
00:08:01.000 | is called to have this kind of assignment, to preach where Christ has not been named.
00:08:05.460 | Timothy was taken from Lystra, his hometown, and planted in Ephesus, so he was a kind of
00:08:12.260 | missionary. He crossed geography, maybe some cultural differences, no doubt, and Paul left
00:08:18.340 | him there. Now you get the job done in these wider regions around here as a pastor there
00:08:24.860 | in Ephesus. I'm going to Spain, because that's my calling. Number four, Paul sought
00:08:30.220 | help from the churches to support him in his mission to Spain. So it's not only a missionary
00:08:36.940 | who feels responsible for going where Christ's name has not been named, but churches feel
00:08:42.280 | it and get behind him. Nobody should feel guilty in Rome that they didn't go with him,
00:08:46.380 | he didn't invite them. It's not their job. You stay there and evangelize Rome and send
00:08:51.060 | me whatever money you can, because I'm going to go where the gospel's never been preached.
00:08:55.880 | Number five, last one. So today, I think it is very likely that God wills for there to
00:09:03.860 | be at least three kinds of missionary types, or maybe two kinds and a subcategory under
00:09:09.340 | number two. One is a Paul-type missionary, always pressing to the frontiers where there's
00:09:16.140 | no church, no gospel witness at all. Frontier missionary types. May God raise up more and
00:09:22.300 | more and more of them in our day. Second, the Timothy-type missionary who leaves one
00:09:27.820 | place, goes to another place. This would be like maybe going to Dubai and being a pastor.
00:09:33.620 | I've got several friends who've done that. That's a Timothy-type missionary, I would
00:09:39.320 | say. And third would be all those people who evidently went out from the church in Ephesus
00:09:47.500 | and shared the gospel all over Asia, so that Paul could say, when he'd spent two years
00:09:52.220 | in Asia, "The word of the Lord has been heard all over Asia." Well, he didn't take it. Timothy
00:09:56.860 | didn't take it. This is just average Christians moving around in the world along communication
00:10:04.740 | and we would say internet lines and transportation lines where you can go, and they're taking
00:10:11.660 | the gospel everywhere they go. So those would be at least three pointers from Paul's missionary
00:10:19.640 | strategies that would inform ours today, I think. But we should be sensitive to the Holy
00:10:27.300 | Spirit's leading for whatever new thing God may want to put on our hearts today for finishing
00:10:35.320 | the Great Commission and not feel restricted, "Whoa, I didn't see Paul do that, so maybe
00:10:40.420 | I shouldn't do it." I don't think there's any hint in the Bible that we should limit
00:10:45.020 | our strategies to the ones Paul used.
00:10:48.620 | Fascinating takeaways, even in the discontinuities. Thank you, Pastor John, and thanks for making
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00:11:21.140 | I am not sure what's on the docket next, but I am happy to be your host, Tony Ranke, and
00:11:26.740 | we plan to return on Friday. And Lord willing, we'll see you then.
00:11:30.900 | [END]
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