As we evaluate the missiological philosophies, the most important thing to consider is: what is the fruit? It would be hard to look at a single indigenous church in this nation and say “nope, wasn't worth the fruit.”

The challenge to partner with local indigenous churches and pastors is immense. It is not easy but we feel so passionately that the difficult road, the way of the cross, will bear fruit thirty, sixty, and one hundredfold, both in this age and in the age to come.

In Acts 4:36–37, Luke shows us how Barnabas’ trusted ministry began—it began with a demonstrated freedom from the love of things and a heart of love for people. He sold a field that belonged to him and gave all the proceeds to the apostles to use for the movement. In this story, he stands as the example of what the grace of God and the spirit of revival does in the human heart.

Antioch Sending Centers are always deeply marked by the lives of fathers and mothers like Barnabas who long ago “sold their field” to be a part of what God was doing on the earth. They have been radically transformed by grace. They have seen Jesus as supremely worthy, and they have responded with all their hearts. What you do today is setting the stage for what you will walk in, five, ten years from now…

Even though Peter had the correct theological stance of inclusion for the Gentiles through the gospel at the Jerusalem council, we find out soon that having the right theological stance can be much different than acknowledging your own ethnocentricity and allowing God, by the power of the Spirit, to search you and fully deliver you from the culture that nurtured your fallen mindset. When Peter finally makes it down to Antioch to see what is transpiring in this new apostolic center, he comes face to face with his own racism…

Racism is the enemy of missions because true missions is born out of a vision of the worth of Jesus that produces a self-sacrificing love for peoples and nations that we have nothing in common with. The only commonality we have with the unreached of the earth is the compassion of the Lamb.

You are not from here. You were born from beyond the cosmos. The New Jerusalem has birthright citizenship. Therefore, nationalism at its core is anti-gospel because it is a lie that deceives the believer into thinking that where they live is where they are from and the culture they are surrounded by is the culture they belong to.

The New Testament writers confronted this stronghold head-on; this was no side issue to the Apostles.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10

In the tests of delay and promotion, Jesus pries our grip off of what we imagined the fulfillment of the promises over our lives would look like so that we don’t reject the promise when it comes. In the delay, Jesus addresses the levels of our identity and self-confidence that are wrapped up in our “dreams” and our “callings”. He breaks down all the confidence in what we think qualifies us and produces a brokenness that is a sweet fragrance to God.

Jesus is looking for something dynamically different than what the world is looking for in leadership potential. Men are enamored with giftedness, intelligence, charisma, skill, and strength. Jesus is looking for purity, love, humility, and a willing spirit. Our destiny and assignments are dynamically affected by how we respond in the grace of God to Jesus’ leadership in every season of the journey…

Communities of corporate prayer and worship become the slingshot for laborers. The kinds of laborers needed for the harvest in the nations are born, nurtured, and sent from worship and prayer communities. Jesus has zeal that these laborers would reproduce this culture in every city and nation to which they are sent. (Mark 14:9, Malachi 1:11)

The majority of your New Testament can be traced to a House of Prayer in a city called Antioch. Many have never even heard of this prophetic community that could arguably compete with Jerusalem in terms of its implications for New Testament Christianity and lasting impact on the Church in the earth…