Context and Strategy: The New Church at Antioch

Antioch was the capital of the Roman province of Syria and the third largest city of the empire. It possessed magnificent temples and other public buildings that were erected by the Romans after they conquered the city in 64 B.C. Antioch was an impressive city to view but immoral pagan religious rites had degraded it (G. Edwin Bontrager and Nathan D. Showalter, It Can Happen Today! Principles of Church Growth from the Book of Acts," Forward by C. Peter Wagner (Scottdate, PA: Herald Press, 1986), 56).

A brief survey of the history of this church illustrates that the Antioch church was second only to Jerusalem in its influence on the life of the early church. It was the Antioch church that was known as the birthplace of foreign missions (Acts 13:2) and the home base for Paul's outreach ministry. It was also the place where those of "the Way" (Acts 9:2) were first called "Christians" (Acts 11:26) and where the circumcision question first arose and was debated” (See Acts15:1-2; Gal 2:11-21). The church at Antioch could also boast of having three of the most influential teachers of the first century: Barnabas, Paul, and Peter (Gal. 2: 11-13) (Longenecker, "Acts," Bontrager and Showaler, It Can Happen Today, 19-22; Johannes Munck, The Acts ofthe Apostles, The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), 399). It was in this place where several valuable components of an effective church planting strategy, transferable to any culture in any era, were found.

Antioch was the most important city of southern Galatia and had a rich amalgam of Greek, Roman, Oriental, and Phrygian population and traditions. Acts tells us that it also had a sizeable Jewish population. It was to this city that Paul and Barnabas presented the evangelism effort related in Acts 12:4-12. This was a very familiar city for this missionary team since they had been there many times before; however, on this particular journey there, they were sent out and guided by the Holy Spirit for a divine purpose. They went first to the synagogues "to proclaim the word of God." This began a pattern that Paul would follow throughout his missionary career (I. Howard Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles: An Introduction and Commentary, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, ed. R. V. G. Tasker, no vol., (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing House, 1980), 217) as shown in numerous New Testament passages (See Acts 10; 13:14,46; 14:1; 16:13; 17:1; 18:4, 19; 19:8;28:17).

(More to come in future posts)