The Acts 1:8 Challenge-Empowering the Church to be on Mission

By Nate Adams

Acts 1:8 provides a biblical paradigm for how the Spirit-filled, Spirit-led New Testament church is to fulfill God's mission on earth until Jesus returns. This study will help believers understand Jesus' Acts 1:8 challenge and discover biblical principles the New Testament churches used to reach their mission fields. The local church, as a worldwide mission center, can formulate a comprehensive mission strategy that simultaneously reaches out to its community (Jerusalem), state or region (Judea), continent (Samaria), and world (ends of the earth).

The church is the body of Jesus Christ, and its assignment is to continue Jesus' work. Jesus' disciples were discovering that entering the kingdom of God begins with a personal relationship with Jesus, the King. Furthermore, Jesus' disciples would soon learn that their mission would be to invite individuals from every people group in the entire world to become subjects of the kingdom Jesus came to establish- the kingdom of God. God is moving throughout history and all over the world with the missionary purpose of seeking and saving the lost, forming for Himself one people from all people groups who would faithfully trust and worship Him. The mission for which God established the church finds its roots in the very nature of God Himself. Because people are the crowning touch of God's creation, we have a special role in reflecting His glory.

Worshiping God means acknowledging His great worth. Worship is something we do with our entire beings and our entire lives. We were designed to worship God for now and eternity. God wanted the many godless peoples to be drawn to the one godly people. Jesus is the center of history and the center of God's redemptive plan. When Israel stumbled in its assignment to be on mission with Him, God raised up the church, a new kind of nation united not by race or ethnicity but by God's Spirit. Because today's church has the incredible resource of Spirit-filled Christians, its influence can spread throughout history and all over the world as people come to faith in Christ. Without the power of the Holy Spirit flowing through us, we are more like the striving and often failing nation of Israel than the empowered, radiant church of Jesus.

The Great Commission is given to every follower of Jesus, not just to pastors, missionaries, or full-time Christian workers. New Testament churches had a radiating influence on the community, distant parts of the world, and many places in between. Instead of retreating within their walls until they could grow stronger or get more organized, the churches urgently and systematically shared the good news everywhere. From its beginning, when the church is turned inside out, the world is turned upside down. It is easy for a church to become nearsighted if it focuses only on the activities and programs inside its walls. Every church is challenged to maintain God's vision of the relationships He desires for the individuals and peoples who do not know Him. A missionary is simply someone who, in response to God's call and gifting, leaves his or her comfort zone and crosses cultural, geographical, or other barriers to proclaim the gospel and live out a Christian witness in obedience to the Great Commission.

Our effectiveness in reaching our own ends of the earth- and our own Samaria, Judea, and Jerusalem- completely depends on the power of the Holy Spirit. Because the Great Commission is a supernatural task of supernatural proportions, it requires supernatural power. Sensitivity and obedience to the Holy Spirit are essential and are far more important than our plans. Redeeming the lost peoples of the world is God's mission, and we simply join Him in that mission. God calls Christian to the world in ways that are both incidental and intentional. An important vehicle in God's plan for delivering the gospel to the ends of the earth is the normal traffic of believers' lives. The local church is to be a launching pad for missionaries and mission trips. The Holy Spirit works in the lives of local church members, teaching them their mission purpose and calling out faithful witnesses for missionary service.

The scattering of witnesses from the Jerusalem church shows us that a local church's missionary purpose can be fulfilled wherever witnesses go. The sending of witnesses from the Antioch church shows us that a church's missionary purpose can be fulfilled when witnesses go wherever. God's mission to the world includes all people groups. Every people group deserves the opportunity to hear, understand and respond to the Gospel in their own language and cultural context. The word nations is best understood as ethnolinguistic people groups. Virtually every country, regardless of geographic boundaries, includes multiple groups, families, or clans who share a common identity. Factors such as language, race, religion, heritage, and socioeconomics help define a distinct people group or its subgroups. When the gospel is successfully planted, new churches grow and multiply.

The priorities the Holy Spirit gave the New Testament witnesses are still the priorities of today's missionary endeavors: proclaim the gospel message, make disciples of those who believe, and organize the disciples into a healthy local church that joins you on mission. Taking the gospel to the world is costly. The reality of missions, especially at the ends of the earth, is that spanning distances, spanning cultural barriers, and overcoming opposition to the gospel all take time, and time costs money. A church's mission giving is similar to an individual's tithe: it acknowledges that all wealth and blessing come from God and that the consumption of those blessings should not precede their sacrificial dedication to the purposes of God's worldwide redemptive plan.

Many kingdoms oppose God's kingdom, but God has sovereign authority over all. Like the early witnesses, today's churches are wise to consider the reality of earthly authorities as they carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. But they can do so with the same confidence displayed in the apostles' prayer, knowing that God's mission will prevail regardless of opposition and seeking boldness and power rather than relief or escape. Many people groups today have little or no access to the gospel because churches have not yet sufficiently overcome barriers to the good news. Whether a church sends missionaries from its own body or supports those who have been called from other church bodies, it can partner with those missionaries in reaching specific people groups.

Churches with a heart for reaching the ends of the earth frequently provide training in evangelism, church-planting principles, and the missionary use of education and technology. Today's churches must always remember that the mission is God's and that the Holy Spirit's power and direction are indispensable to the missions task. Each church has the responsibility and joy to discern where the Holy Spirit is calling it to join Him in reaching the ends of the earth. All of Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria did not have to be evangelized before the Holy Spirit scattered and deliberately sent witnesses abroad. Today, as in the New Testament, a church's ends of the earth, Samaria, Judea, and Jerusalem are to be reached simultaneously. International missions give us the broadest view of the world's lostness and of God's heart for all peoples everywhere. As the ends of the earth show us the breadth of lostness in the world, Samaria shows us the depth of lostness that characterizes our own North American culture.

Jews labeled anyone they perceived to be a dissident against the Jewish religious establishment as a Samaritan. Just as being accused of demon-possession was the worst spiritual judgment, being called a Samaritan was the worst racial slur. The Samaritans needed acceptance, legitimacy, and a relationship with God that did not depend on race, national origin, or family heritage. Penetrating a diverse continent or country with the gospel requires a loving understanding of its people and history. There are population segments in or near our homeland with which we rarely come in contact unless we make a point of doing so. Jesus was informed. He was ready to contextualize His message within the history and prevalent culture of the land. Jesus was interested in the people He met there, acknowledging that their culture was unique and different from His. He was insightful into their deep spiritual needs. He entered the culture for the sake of its inhabitants.

Those who go on mission to Samaria today must be ready to penetrate the hard shell of prevailing religious or secular culture and to apply the gospel to lost people's deep spiritual thirst. The unchanging gospel speaks to diverse cultures and generations through new leaders and new methods in new churches. The Holy Spirit intended the good news to be on every believer's lips, and some- like Philip- would see powerful results in places where apostles and even church leaders were not yet in place. The fact that the Holy Spirit did not manifest Himself until Peter and John arrived confirmed the acceptance of the preciously outcast Samaritans to oversee the doctrinal purity of the early churches; teaching and practice. It quickly became clear, however, that the number of converts and congregations in Samaria would exceed the number of the apostles or evangelists available to lead them.

As important as it was for the Jewish Christian missionaries to understand the Samarian culture in which they proclaimed the gospel, it was also important for them to develop church leaders within that culture to lead its many new churches. Informed churches pray God's power into God's mission. As churches invested their leaders, their prayers, and their resources beyond their walls, new about the progress of the mission guided their plans for future missions efforts. Missions education encourages missions cooperation. Negative cultural influences require both scriptural proclamation and spiritual confrontation. Pagan, secular, and demonic influences within a culture can enslave and addict people. Churches must confront the culture's sinful pressures with scriptural truth. God calls Christians to personalize the gospel for the diverse peoples in and near their homeland. Marketplace ministries and bivocational pathways into fields such as education, law, medicine, and media can provide strategic inroads for everyday witnesses that professional clergy and established churches may not encounter. Today's churches are often most effective in reaching their Samarians when they forfeit home-court advantage and creatively take the gospel into a new culture, whether that culture is ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, geographic, or all of these.

People are sometimes more committed to protecting the status quo and their own rationalized beliefs than accepting truth that would necessitate change. Whether through the legalistic Judaism of the first century or the cultural Christianity or false religions of today, sinful humankind has always tended to distort sincere faith into self-serving religion. The Judea mission field, both in ancient and modern times, presents its own unique challenges. While the mission to Samaria is often a mission across culture, the mission to Judea is often a mission within the same culture. God calls Christians to penetrate surrounding regions and their predominant religions with the true gospel. The early churches' missionaries and evangelists in Samaria remind us that the call to reach diverse peoples is often a call to strategize- to go out of our way and think differently. An up-close view of the Judea mission field shows us the call to strengthen a region's churches so that they not only withstand the world's pressures and persecution but also rescue people from the false assurances of empty religion and secular society.

Those depending on works-based religion rather than a grace-based relationship don't understand the gospel. One responsibility of first-century churches in the culture of their Judea mission field was to strongly proclaim that the new covenant Jesus made possible is a covenant of grace, not position or performance. A great challenge that was common to the culture of the Judea mission field was the barrier of presumed familiarity that people have with the gospel. Churches and individual Christians who are on mission in Judea must relentlessly clarify that a redemptive relationship with Jesus, not a religion of works, brings a right relationship with God. Regional support and cooperation strengthen new churches for multiplication. Judea's common culture and religion also created bridges to the gospel. With few barriers of language, culture, or religious history and tradition, the early disciples could easily get straight to the point with a Judean Jew. The result was a network of growing, multiplying churches that were bold enough to proclaim the gospel of grace throughout their region and strong enough to endure the resulting persecution and hardship.


Mission-minded churches mobilize to meet human needs in the name of Christ. The growing network of churches spreading throughout Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth was increasingly diverse and widespread yet remarkably unified. The churches readily exchanged resources, leaders, and letters. Their sensitivity to one another's needs revealed the new love the Holy Spirit had placed in their hearts. That love equipped them to add benevolent ministry to their evangelistic mission.

Opposition from religious systems and leaders should be expected and met with spiritual resolve. The early churches understood that to be effective in the Judea mission field was to be savvy about the religious and governmental forces that influence a region and that have political interest in the spiritual decisions of the people. Unbelievers in our own Judea today may view Christianity as another legalistic religion rather than a life-giving relationship with God. The surface similarities between Christians and those who live in their Judea make the spiritual differences more critical if today's disciples are to be effective witnesses. Many people in our Judea mission field possess only a cultural Christianity. The Judea mission field certainly needs pioneers and evangelists, but as a region becomes populated with cooperating churches, the need to coordinate strategies, equip leaders, exhort one another with sound doctrine, and mobilize existing churches for the missions task also becomes important. Without cooperation and coordination, individual churches have great difficulty reaching beyond their immediate community. Timely, compassionate ministry can earn credibility to share the gospel with people whose pain has opened their hearts. And churches that are prepared to minister and share with those who are hurting can transform times of pain and need into opportunities for eternal life change. A church that seeks to influence lives with the gospel will inevitably begin to influence education, media, law, government, and other arenas with new moral, ethical, and spiritual standards.

Although Jerusalem is our closest mission field, reaching it for Christ requires as much intentionality as the mission fields of Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Our Jerusalem mission field is filled with many people who, for a variety of reasons, might never attend our church. Still we must reach out to them, not to populate our fellowship halls but to populate the kingdom of God. Part of our Jerusalem mission is to cooperate with other churches to reach people. In many cases, in fact, our Jerusalem mission may even involve starting a new church that can reach people whom existing churches cannot. Churches that are content to keep their practices within their walls without "imposing their beliefs" on society or secular culture can expect a fairly comfortable existence. But when churches take the life-changing gospel into the culture, they find the Holy Spirit ready to work through them in miraculous ways that even the gospel's opponents cannot deny. God calls Christians to establish a lasting Christlike influence in their local communities. The Jerusalem church might be more accurately described as an association of churches that met "from house to house" (Acts 2:46), probably organized around language or neighborhood location.

Evangelism- sharing the good news- should be a primary activity in every mission field. But so should church planting, discipleship, ministry to physical and emotional needs, leadership development, and other mission activities. Reaching a community trains a church to reach the world. Disciples sacrifice for the sake of new believers and new churches. Working together under the Holy Spirit's leadership, they were able to saturate their community with the gospel and to start new churches. Participating in God's mission is a local, life commitment. In the Jerusalem mission field of the first century, disciples shared and sacrificed for one another and for the sake of the mission. They neither insulated themselves from unbelievers nor reserved their witness for certain locations and times of the year. The 1st-century witnesses did not compartmentalize their lives, separating their church, Christian activities, and believing friends from the lost world around them. Many Christians need help to understand and obey Jesus' Acts 1:8 challenge.

The term cocooning describes our growing tendency to stay in the comfort of our homes, enjoying our families, possessions, and comfort rather than socializing in public settings. Sadly, that same tendency can exist in local churches. Growing comfortable within the walls of the church is always a threat to the spread of the gospel. The Jerusalem mission field beckons believers to leave their comfort zones and reach out with the good news of Jesus Christ. Church leaders must challenge members to authentic missions involvement under the Holy Spirit's authority. A church that is intent on reaching its Jerusalem focuses on people who may never enter the church building. It is active in the schools, apartment complexes, shopping malls, and neighborhoods. Such a church knows that missions is local as well as remote and that barriers such as language, culture, economic status, and age can be as imposing as barriers like oceans or mountains. Whatever a church's Jerusalem mission field looks like, a large percentage of the inhabitants do not know Jesus as Savior and Lord and do not have a relevant church within reach.

Churches in a Jerusalem mission field must have leaders- not just career missionaries but also pastors and key lay leaders from local churches- who recognize the lostness around them. To be cooperative and intentional in reaching the Jerusalem mission field, churches must train leaders and other witnesses for all of the churches' mission fields. When an existing church sacrifices time, people, money, and other resources to establish a new congregation, God blesses its kingdom-minded generosity. Helping all church members understand and obey their all to be witnesses is a critical task. No more critical need exists today than for believers to awaken to the same calling and power that will spill them from the comfort of their churches into the streets of their Jerusalem and, ultimately, their world.

And every local church should be a worldwide mission's center that equips its witnesses to fulfill God's call. No matter how many important activities take place within the church walls, a church's primary, most urgent mission is beyond those walls. The first step toward reflecting the biblical model of an on-mission New Testament church is to recognize that you and your church belong at the forefront of God's mission to the world. Each church needs a vision of its unique ends of the earth, Samaria, Judea, and Jerusalem and a strategy for joining God's activity in each field. It is communicated through spiritual leaders who seek God's direction. The primary vision and commitment should come from the pastor and flow to other staff and leaders. A church must also identify gifted, called, Spirit-led missions leaders who can serve as a team to help the church develop strategies and plans for reaching its unique mission fields. It must also implement that vision in creative, practical ways that will capture the imagination and involvement of every church member. Bring missions awareness and interaction to the entire church body, train members for service, and connect them to missionaries and mission needs.

A church's obedience to God's mission is linked to its understanding of that mission. Ask God for a kingdom perspective and a worldwide vision as you intercede for Christian workers and unevangelized peoples. Reading about the sacrificial giving of New Testament churches is both humbling and inspiring. Every dollar invested in Jesus' Acts 1:8 challenge is money well spent. Giving faithfully, generously, and sacrificially allows churches to have an impact on each Acts 1:8 mission field. Enable a growing number of members to directly participate in short-term, long-term, and marketplace opportunities to minister and spread the gospel beyond your church walls. Involve an increasing number of members in intentional, culturally relevant evangelism. Provide opportunities for members to hear and respond to God's call to vocational missions service. Participate in church planting and facilitate church-planting movements.

An Executive Book Summary Prepared by

Thomas L. Law, III, DoM
Tarrant Baptist Association
Ft. Worth, TX

(For More Book Summaries by Dr. Law,
Go to www.tarrantbaptist.org)