Acts 13:2-3 - Whilst They Were Worshipping

In this blog series, I’m going to take a look at the book of Acts from a strategic point of view. What was going on in the days of the early church and what can we learn from it today in the 21^st Century?

“While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.” Acts 13:2-3 NIV

Amazing things can happen when you worship. Worship puts God in His rightful place as King over our lives and over our church. Worship allows God to move how He would like to.

I’ve helped many churches figure out their vision, and to begin with I started out with post-it notes and ideas. Let’s just see what everyone has brought with them and see where this goes. My assumption is that everyone has been praying and hearing God over the last weeks and months, then I just bring it all together. We narrow down options and then go for it.

However, I recently changed my approach.

I’ve been leading worship for over 20 years now, and I know the power of what God can do when we worship, so instead of starting with post-it notes, I’ve started with worship. Let’s take an hour in God’s presence and see what He says.

Think about this passage from the church in Antioch’s point of view. If they hadn’t had been worshipping, they would have never made this decision by themselves. You wouldn’t send out your leader and your highest potential up-and-coming leader. You just wouldn’t do it.

If they hadn’t been worshipping, they would have put a strategy in place to raise up a leader from within their ranks to send them out. They would have recognised the need for growth into other parts of the Roman Empire and started by sending someone they knew and trusted, but who wasn’t Barnabas.

But they were worshipping. And the number one key to church strategy is this: If the Holy Spirit says do it, you do it. If the Holy Spirit says change, you change. We’ve become far too business-like in our approach to church leadership that we kick the Holy Spirit out of decision-making so often. But when the Holy Spirit is central to our planning, He will suggest things that are not what we would have expected, not what we would have planned.

So the church in Antioch start planning with worship, but the church doesn’t finish there. They don’t just hear a prophetic word in a worship service and then act straight away. No. They spend time fasting and praying. We all know that some odd things can come out when prophecy happens, and we need to take time to weigh it and see if God impresses it on all of the leaders, not just one. That’s what the Antioch church did.

I think one of the things that stop people from acting on prophetic words are that we’re not sure if it’s God or not, but allowing for a time of prayer and fasting after the word gives space for the emotion to wear off. That buffer allows you the space to know if God is truly speaking this to the church.

And then the church moves, it sends them off. Once God has spoken, we’ve got to obey.  

We must come back to the realisation that the Holy Spirit is much better at this than us, but we still have a part to play. We may get the Holy Spirit’s directive, but we can still steward that decision well so it doesn’t create chaos. We can steward the directive so that if God calls us to do something new, we look to see where we cut back elsewhere to make it happen. Just because the Holy Spirit says to do something, doesn’t mean that our church has to grow wild. Unfortunately, so many churches want to hear what God says but they don’t steward the directive well. This actually inhibits the success of the directive. The Holy Spirit wants to move but we don’t put our all into it because we’re too busy saying yes to 10 other ministries.

When the Holy Spirit gives your church a directive, and it gets approved through a time of prayer and fasting, it’s time to go to work to make it happen. We’ve got to be willing to be ruthless in our focus, so that we’re not saying yes to everything, and therefore inadvertently ‘no’ to God.

Where does it all start? Worship. In worship we lay down ourselves and our plans before God. In worship we need to lay down the ministries we’re holding on to and are too afraid to stop, we need to place them at the feet of Jesus and pick up only the things He’s calling us to.

Great vision always involves worship.