Acts 14:21-28 Paul's Painful Leadership Lesson from His First Missionary Journey

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?

“They preached the gospel in that city and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.” Acts 14:21-23 

On the way back, around 48-50A.D., Barnabas and Paul appointed elders to oversee the churches. It seems clear that the new churches formed on the missionary trips would have been filled with only new converts. After all, Paul and Barnabas were the first Christians there.

This gets to the big issue for many small and medium-sized churches. They need leaders, but the leaders that come along in these churches are usually new to the church or new to faith. They get stuck in a catch-22: if they wait, they’re left without leaders, but they don’t have time to wait. 

Paul and Barnabas were in the same predicament. They were on a journey home to Antioch, and they didn’t have the time to wait around.

The book of Galatians gives us a clue as to what happened. The book of Galatians was sent to the churches that Paul and Barnabas visited in this passage, written sometime shortly after their visit – estimates range anywhere from 48A.D. to 56A.D. Paul accuses the Galatian church of having embraced a different Gospel, after Jewish Christians came to the churches and persuaded them that they must start following Kosher Law and circumcision.

Paul has to take the whole book to undo a problem of his own creation. Whether it’s someone who is new to faith or just new to church, there’s inherent problems in promoting people into leadership too quickly. Here’s 3 reasons:

1.  Theology

If you promote too quickly you run the risk of damaging the church theologically. In the case of the Galatian Churches, they were appointed very quickly, and didn’t have the theological foundations in place to be able to refute the Jewish Christians demanding law observance.

When you promote too quickly, you don’t know where they stand theologically. They may have been a Christian a long time, but new to the church means that you don’t know what they believe (the exception to this would be in the case of hiring, but for this I’m going to focus only on people moving to your church). When you promote them, you take a big risk. Much better to wait and see. 

2.  Culture

Promoting new leaders too quickly damages culture. When you give an area of authority to someone, you need to know that they will replicate culture, not create their own. A new leader won’t be culturally aligned and as such will struggle to keep things moving in the same direction. All things tend towards chaos unless they are kept sharply in line. In the case of Paul, Kingdom culture and Jewish culture were at odds with each other. It wasn’t about remaining Kosher, getting circumcised, there was a different culture.

In your church, sometimes people will come from other churches. They have a version of  Kingdom culture, but doesn’t submit to the unique flavour of Kingdom Culture in your church. Sometimes even seemingly good leaders can be a bad fit.  

3.  Momentum

Promoting new leaders too quickly can kill momentum. A good leader in the wrong context is the wrong leader, and as John Maxwell is famous for saying, “everything rises and falls on leadership.”

A recent convert or a new leader to the church runs the risk of slowing everything down. They are going to need to take time to get to know people, perhaps get up to speed with correct doctrine and teaching, and learn the nuances of your church. All of that time kills momentum.

That’s not a reason to put anyone on the scrapheap. Their time will come, but the time is not yet. A better method is to use tried and tested leaders in your own church first keeping the momentum going in your church.

No new converts

Later on in the New Testament, Paul pens a letter to his protégé Timothy (1 Timothy) where he gives the qualifications for being an elder:

“Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.” 1 Timothy 3:2-7 NIV (my emphasis added)

This letter was penned in approximately 63-64A.D., a full 13-14 years after Paul and Barnabas appoint elders. Paul and Barnabas learned the hard way that you can’t appoint leaders quickly without putting the church in significant danger.

If you’re struggling for leaders, resist the urge to promote too quickly.