Acts 16: 1-5 – The interconnected web of the early church

 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?

Approximately 2 years after being in Galatia, and about a year after the writing of the epistle to the Galatians, Paul is back in the Galatian churches of Derbe and Lystra. A year previously, Paul wrote to the churches there saying, “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” (Galatians 3:1 ESV), but on his second visit, Paul’s found a new protégé.

Paul meets a young man who’s bursting with potential, Timothy. He’s part Jewish, part Greek, a great combination if you’re wanting to take the message of a Jewish Messiah to a Greek speaking world.

Into this difficult Galatian environment Paul finds a diamond in the rough, and then immediately recruits him. It’s something reminiscent of Jesus calling the disciples, and them immediately dropping everything to follow Him. Paul swings into town and gives Timothy the same call, and Timothy joins the trip.

The amazing thing here is that no-one in Galatia disputes Paul. If this was happening in the West, we’d all be up in arms that our up-and-coming leader has been poached. But this speaks to the strategy that was emerging in the time of the early church. It was something that was very different from our individualised, siloed churches of today. 

Paul was the founder of all the churches in Galatia. In each place he appointed elders to run the church whilst he kept a trans-local ministry between the churches. The early church is not operating in a traditional Senor Pastor – Congregation model. This model is a Sending Church - Apostle – Elders – Deacons - Disciple model.

What this means is that each church isn’t independent. We actually know this because each church isn’t referred to as a separate unit, but rather as “the church in” a certain place. One church, multiple locations. That sounds awfully like a modern multisite church (minus video preaching!). However, that’s where the similarities end.

Here’s a simplified version of what I think the church looked like in Acts 16: 

Firstly, there’s no centre to the operation. Peter appears to be the point between the main centres of Jerusalem and Antioch, but he’s not the main leader of the church. Indeed, Paul chastises Peter for taking on too much influence from the Jewish Christians (most likely James).

Jerusalem seems to, in my opinion, take a more oversight role between Jerusalem and Antioch, hence why the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 was presided over by James. The second centre, after Paul and Barnabas go their separate ways, appears to have been run by Luke. We assume this from Origen (185 – 253 AD), who links Luke and Lucius of Cyrene as the same person, and we know that the church was started by people from Cyrene, which would put Luke as the leader in Antioch. Church tradition also identifies Lucius or Luke as the bishop of Antioch.

After that, it’s the apostles (apostle means “sent one”) that are doing the work of going around starting churches and encouraging them. In each location, there are elders, and we can assume that they would have held a first amongst equal format of eldership as suggested in Antioch. The apostles, then have the power to move people around, just like Barnabas was sent from Jerusalem to Antioch to take leadership there.

There’s another interesting dynamic. The general progression is that they move from leading in one location to leading trans-locally. Look at Peter, Barnabas, and Paul. They all start locally and then move trans-local.

Trans-local isn’t just the destination, it’s also the training ground. John Mark, Silas and Timothy are all being apprenticed under an apostle trans-locally. We know from the book of 1 Timothy that Timothy then gets stationed in Ephesus as the main leader, most probably of a new Sending Church. We also know that Luke moves from leading in Antioch to following Paul on the road. The early church truly was an interconnected web.

Imagine a church world in which talent (I’ll use this word to encompass gifting, anointing and character) can be found and moved around? We can only start to achieve this if we embrace the fact that a church isn’t a complete unit. We need of be part of a bigger whole.

Like a skilful gardener, Paul was taking people and moving them around the garden as he saw fit. For the church to truly thrive in the 21^st Century, we need to take a similar approach, we need to revert to a Sending Church – Apostle – Elders – Deacon – Disciple model. Why? It solves the problem of having one singular point of failure. In this sense, it is very different from our multisite and church planting models. It’s much more robust, much more flexible and dynamic. If you took Peter out of the mix, the church would have been hit but it wouldn’t have been destroyed. Same for Paul. Our top-down approach to church is much too weak to have longevity.

How do we get to this point? We need Apostles. The “Apostolic Age” was said to have closed at the end of writing the New Testament, and the following generation, whose leaders included Ignatius and Irenaeus didn’t see their role in the same light. Many church traditions do not hold to there being apostles around today.

I find this odd, It’s a form of strategic cessationism. The role of Apostle was to plant and strengthen those churces. To be a link between the sending church hubs and the congregations. I think the church not recognising apostles has stopped the church being the great interconnected web its intended to be. We have itinerant ministers, but that’s not the same as apostles, who have authority over churches.

I think it’s time we brought the apostle back into the normal lexicon of Christian ministry, that we allow The Holy Spirit to send people to plant and oversee churches, that the church once again becomes the great, interconnected web it’s meant to be.