Missions in Acts Parts 6: Faith Confirmed

Faith Confirmed-Acts 14:21-22; 15:41

Paul’s missionaries methods were somewhat unique that in many places he did not stay a long time. Just long enough to begin training people. But that does not mean he left them ill equipped. Many times he would come back, send someone to them or leave someone to help train and establish them in the faith. In his first journey, we see the faith confirmed in the church. Paul came back to the churches he had previously established and helped them to grow in the faith and in a sense, discipled them where they needed to be. We see this in Acts 14:21-24 as well aa Acts 15:41. Let’s look at his methods and what we can learn and apply today in our missions work

1. He discipled everyone— He went and discipled everyone that had been saved. He wanted to make sure they were all walking in the faith and growing in the Lord. He wanted to get them to be mature, reproducing Christians. As missionaries, we want to disciple everyone in our church. From those that are not saved all the way up. We want to disciple those that are not saved until they do get saved and those that are saved we want to disciple them to a place where they can go and disciple others and bring others to Christ.
2. He trained several— He went even further with several, training them and helping them to grow even further in their walk with God. He did not force anyone to be trained. He would ask them as he went along and if they wanted to train with and along side him, and he would allow them to make that decision. On the mission field, you disciple everyone but you train several. That means you look for people who are showing progress, they are faithful and wanting to go further in their walk with God. You want to train future leaders in the church. This could mean these would become pastors to Sunday School teachers to deacons. You take more time and train these people so they in turn can go and train others as well. If you do not train leaders, you will not be able to have an established church you can leave behind that will be self supporting, propagating and governing.
3. He ordained a few— Of the several he trained, only a few were ordained. These were the men that God had called to be pastors in these churches. These were the men who stepped forward and showed more leadership and initiative than the others. They desired the office of a bishop so to say and Paul trained them even more specifically. On the mission field you will train several but of those, you will have an even smaller group that will be ordained and sent to pastor churches. These men, you want to spend even more time with and help them to grow even more in Christ than all the others because they will be leading churches. You want to train them to go out and reproduce and do the same as you where they disciple all, train several and ordain a few.

Doing all this will allow you to see God work in a country and see many churches started, leaders trained and the country reached with the Gospel! We must disciple everyone, train several and then ordain a few to be pastors! Our goal should be to train as many men as we can and ordain as many to be pastors as we can so they can go forth and plant more churches and reproduce more then we ever could!