Oct 19, 2026 · By Ben Lacey
In 2018, twelve boys and their soccer coach were trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand. Some 10,000 people joined the rescue: Navy SEALs, cave divers from Britain and Australia, engineers, medics, and volunteers from around the world. One rescuer gave his life. After eighteen days, all thirteen came out alive.
It took a worldwide partnership to rescue thirteen people from one cave.
Now think of a place like Tokyo. Roughly 37 million people live in that one metro area, and the vast majority do not know Christ. Or think of Lagos, Istanbul, Paris, or Mumbai. If it took 10,000 people to save thirteen, how will the gospel ever go to cities like these?
Desperate situations tempt us toward desperate measures: the model or program that will finally crack the code. But the first great global city in church history was not reached by a master plan or by ten thousand specialists. It was reached by a handful of displaced believers whose names we don’t know, and then by churches willing to give away their best.
The cave rescue gets one thing right: no one reaches a city alone. In Acts 11:19–30, Luke shows how the risen Christ plants his church in Antioch through partnership of a particular kind. He scatters ordinary witnesses. He moves healthy churches to send their best. And he turns receiving churches into sending churches. That pattern should leave us less desperate and more urgent, even hopeful, about the global cities of our day.
The Lord Scatters Ordinary Witnesses (vv. 19–21)
The church came to Antioch through a funeral. After Stephen’s martyrdom, persecution scattered the Jerusalem believers, and they preached wherever they went. Then some men of Cyprus and Cyrene began speaking to Greeks as well, “preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord” (vv. 20–21). God used death to bring life, just as he did at the cross.
These were diaspora Jews, ministering in a city that wasn’t their home to people who weren’t their own. The first great breakthrough among the Gentiles of a global city didn’t come through the apostles. It came through ordinary believers Luke doesn’t even name.
Antioch was the third-largest city in the Roman Empire, a crossroads of Syrians, Greeks, Jews, and Romans. It was the Tokyo or London of its day. Yet no apostolic committee selected it. The Lord Jesus was the great strategist. That carries three implications.
First, global cities are where the Lord is scattering the nations. Peoples unreached in their homelands now live in Tokyo and Dubai, and in Houston and Fort Worth.
Second, the first wave in those cities is often ordinary believers: students, nurses, engineers, refugees. Pastors should raise up members who see a job transfer to Tokyo as a gospel assignment, not merely a career move.
Third, we must hold our strategies with an open hand. Plan, map, and pray, yes. But verse 21 doesn’t say the plan of the apostles was with them. It says the hand of the Lord was with them. Being displaced is not the same as being misplaced.
Healthy Churches Send Their Best (vv. 22–26)
When Jerusalem heard, they sent Barnabas. He was the man who sold a field so the church would lack nothing, who vouched for Saul when no one else would, “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith” (v. 24). Jerusalem sent him not out of surplus, but as a young church freshly scattered by persecution.
The church I pastor exists because of this kind of generosity. A dozen Texas churches joined together to plant in Fort Worth, and two local churches, Redeemer and Redemption Story, sent us some of their best people and rejoiced to do it. Now our young church is preparing to send Tyler and Lindsay Briggs to plant in west Fort Worth. The Jerusalem pattern is giving away the people you would most like to keep.
Barnabas also shows us partnership on the ground.
He saw grace before he saw gaps. He walked into a mixed Jew–Gentile church with no apostle and no elders we know of, and “when he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad” (v. 23). Strong churches partnering with young ones are prone to arrive as inspectors rather than encouragers. We quietly imply the church will be healthy when it looks like ours. But Christ does not break the bruised reed, and neither did Barnabas. This is the man who would later give John Mark a second chance when Paul would not (15:37–39).
He knew his limits. When the work outgrew him, Barnabas went to Tarsus for Saul, a man who would eventually eclipse him. No single church, network, or agency will reach the great unreached cities of our day. Our autonomy as Baptist churches is precious, but autonomous churches must never become isolated churches.
He reached, and then he taught. “For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people” (v. 26). The goal is not decisions but healthy churches, with members who know the Word and leaders who can teach it. Who will teach the Bible in the local language in five years? Who will be the elders be? How will the church faithfully proclaim and guard the gospel for generations to come? Patient teaching is not a detour from the mission; it is the mission.
And the city noticed. “In Antioch the disciples were first called Christians” (v. 26). A church of Jews and Gentiles living unified, in a city primed for division, was something Antioch had never seen. They weren’t known for their dysfunction, but their love and loyalty to Christ. Never underestimate the apologetic power of a healthy, diverse church living under the authority of God’s Word.
Receiving Churches Become Reciprocating Churches (vv. 27–30)
When Agabus foretold a famine, he made no appeal. Yet the disciples “determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea” (v. 29). The church that had received help a year earlier was now giving it. Gentiles were giving to Jews they had never met. Nothing but the gospel produces that kind of love and generosity.
The goal of partnership is not dependence but reciprocity. If our partner churches are still entirely dependent on us in ten years, we should ask whether we have helped them or hindered them. From the start, we should honor their gifts, invite their counsel, and encourage them to send. The older church often needs the younger one too. Jerusalem, after all, was the one rescued in the famine.
By Acts 13, Antioch’s prophets and teachers looked like the nations: a Levite from Cyprus, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, a man brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul of Tarsus. The Spirit set apart Barnabas and Saul. Jerusalem had given Antioch its best man. Antioch gave away its best two. The mission field became a sending hub. And the rest of the book of Acts flows from Antioch.
What Christ Did in Antioch, He Can Do Today
How will Christ plant his church in a city of 37 million? Not fundamentally differently than he did in Antioch. Christ planted his church in one of the empire’s great cities through a handful of nameless believers and one generous church. That truth should fill us with urgency and hope.
Remember what the city called them. Not Jerusalem’s people, or Barnabas’s, or Paul’s. They were Christ’s people. Reaching cities with the gospel is finally not about our networks or our logos. It is about Christ receiving the reward of his suffering among the nations.
So go, if he sends you. Send your best, even when it costs you. Look for grace in the work of others, and be glad. And give, every one according to his ability, until the glory of Christ covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.