Before we pray, I'm gonna read Acts chapter 12, beginning in verse 24 all the way through verse three of chapter 13. God says to us, but the word of God increased and multiplied. And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark. Now they were in the church at Antioch, prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manan, a member of the court of Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off Let's pray father. Thank you so much for the opportunity that you Give us once again to worship you through studying your word And I pray, God, that as your word is proclaimed to us, that your spirit would speak through your servant to our hearts, and that you would correct and encourage and comfort and rescue and convict us. May we leave people who are changed. May we hear from you tonight through the word of God. And by your grace, may you enable us to see that you are getting your work done. It's going to happen. People are trusting in Christ. You are going to bring in your people. But may you, in your grace, use us to be a part of what you're doing so we get the joy and you get the glory. And we ask this all because of what your Savior's done in our place. Amen. Last Halloween, something happened that has never happened before in all of world history. I mean, since Adam and Eve, this has never happened before. Halloween may have come by and backwards and forwards and you didn't realize it, but for the first time in all of world history, we had 7 billion people on planet Earth. That was the day that it happened, they think. 7 billion now I have no idea what that number means that's just boggles my mind, but there's that many of us on planet Earth, but But if you think about that Figure try to put it in this perspective if we were to draw a graph that started with Adam and Eve on that wall and that wall over there would be today and You were to draw a graph all the way across the platform of population growth since Adam and Eve. We started with two. We just kept growing and growing and growing. If we drew a graph all the way across, basically that graph would be relatively flat all the way across the front of this room. And when you get to about two inches before that wall, it would literally do that. So when we talk about population explosion, we're talking about literally something that's happening before our eyes in our lifetime. I don't know how they figured this out, but some think that there may be more people alive today on planet earth than all the rest of world history put together. In other words, we are living in days that are just unprecedented. There literally is an explosion because that graph basically just skyrocketed in the last couple of hundred years. So for thousands of years we've been sort of puttering along, going up a little bit, but all of a sudden, bam, it goes straight up. And you and I are living in that day. Now, for those of us in the world of missions, that means something. It basically means we've got a whole lot more work to do than we used to. because there's seven billion of us. And as I mentioned last night, and as we saw on the screen, they estimate that at least half of those people have yet to hear the presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and would not have a neighbor living next to them if they wanted to go next door and say, can you point me to the true God? And so though we have done a great job in the past, There's still a lot of work to be done. Now, hold that thought for just a moment and let me superimpose on that another idea, okay? Population growth doing this, skyrocketing right now during our days. The United States has been used in an incredible way for the last 100, well, almost 200 years now. to be the main people that are doing missions in North America. I mean, we were the powerhouse. We just have cranked up missions like no one else in the world was doing for at least 100, 150 years. You know, back when, especially after the war, we were just sending missionaries out all over the place. And they were saying, they said that a lot of the ships that were leaving New York Harbor, half the people on the ships were missionaries. And we have spent billions of dollars and sent thousands, hundreds of thousands of missionaries all over this planet. We've done an incredible job. And the United States has been known as the missionary sending country of the world. But for some reason when we hit around the 80s or so we started to plateau. When we got into the 90s that graph started going down and they estimate that there's probably 20 percent fewer missionaries today than there was back in the 60's, 70's and 80's. And here in North America though in Santa Rosa Bible Church you may not appreciate this or see this because you guys keep expanding your missions, but if you take all of the evangelical churches and put them together this is not right now a growth period of missions in North America by way of numbers of missionaries that are going to the field. There are actually more Mormon missionaries right now out there than all of our evangelical churches put together. The Mormons are serious about missions and they're doing it. You wonder about their methodology but I guess your numbers they're accomplishing something. But we tend to for some reason at this particular phase in church history be downsizing our efforts and missions. And I'm not talking about Santa Rosa Bible Church. I'm talking about all of us together if you lump us all together into one pot. Now, you don't have to be really brilliant to understand these two graphs don't really make a lot of sense. While the world's population is doing that, here in North America we're doing this. Something's wrong with that picture, don't you think? Now I realize that God doesn't need North America to accomplish His purpose on planet earth. He is doing missions through a lot of countries all over the world and a lot of people that we have reached in the past have picked up the banner and they're sending out missionaries. The group of churches that my parents worked with in Nigeria presently have a thousand missionaries that those churches are supporting. Incredible stuff is happening all over the world. So the story is not whether missions is going to get done. God is going to get missions done, and He's going to use different peoples to do it. And we're not the be-all and end-all of missions. But wouldn't it be a shame if God said, I'm going to put you guys on the bench because you guys have just, you know, you've just sort of given up on the game. And you're not going to be involved in the missions anymore with the intensity that you did, and you guys are going to sort of be sitting in the backwater while the rest of the world rises to the occasion. I think we have a lot of potential left here in the United States. This is not time to fold up our tent and go home. This is our time to radically expand what we're doing in missions. And that's what we want to talk about tonight. Last night we talked about the who and the where and we sort of gave you the short version of that and that's simply everyone everywhere. That's real simple. everyone everywhere. And if we can find any place on this planet that has not yet received missionaries, we've got to be concerned about that. Then this morning we talked about why. And that basically is, as we talked about it this morning, we framed it this way, the reason why we're involved in this is simply because we have a purpose. We're not here by accident. We're not here just sort of floating through life waiting for death to come. Each of us, if we grasp that passage in 1 Timothy chapter 2, each of us ought to be driven by a purpose. Someone came up to me this evening and said I did my homework this afternoon. That's so cool. Did anybody else? I want to ask you to raise your hand right now. Did you make a list of your mission field? Why would you be interested in doing that? Well because you embrace your mission. And you want to be on mission with God to do what He wants to through your life. And so we talked a little bit this morning about the about the why, tonight we're going to go back to the fourth one and that is talk about the how. And obviously when we talk about how to do missions or how you can be strategic as a church there are so many things that we could talk about so I'm going to have to obviously narrow this down in order to fit this in the next few moments. But to do so I want us to go to Acts chapter 13 and I want to talk about sort of one little narrow band of what you practically can do about this problem that I just described. Exploding world population, declining numbers of missionaries. What can we do about that at Santa Rosa Bible Church? 13, I recognize the book of Acts as a transition book. We don't establish all of our theology from this book. I took hermeneutics in Bible college and all the rest of this and I understand that this is a transition time. But could you at least bear with me this evening to say, you know what? Maybe we could find some ideas from the way they did it back there at the beginning and see if maybe we could replicate some of those ideas in our world today. And what would happen if we did? Acts chapter 13 is one of those pivotal chapters in the Bible because at this point Paul's journeys begin. And the epistles that we have, all the stories about the Apostle Paul, all the rest of that kind of... that all happened after Acts chapter 13. So this is really the beginning of Paul's missionary journeys. It's sort of the start of what we read about in much of the rest of the New Testament. So this is a pivotal chapter. And let's go here. and just see if maybe we could pull out a couple of ideas that if we would implement them today, they might start changing this downward decline in missions in North America. We obviously are going to have to do something different. And for the last 100, 150 years or so, we have had a certain model that has worked for us. It was sort of based on colonialism and that era of our world history. But we have moved out of that era right now, and we're going to have to think differently and creatively and be innovative and do things differently than we ever have before if we're going to do something about that two-inch space over there by that wall. Seven billion people. I'm going to read verse 1 here in just a moment. Again, we're going to read it again. And as I do I want you to see if you can find an answer to a question. Now here's the question. It's not a trick question. It's real simple. But I want you to see if you can find it. When God wanted missionaries, verse 1, where did God go to get them? That's the question. When God wanted missionaries where did He go to get them? Now there were in the church that was the Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas Simeon who's called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manan, a member of the court of Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. And while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work unto which I have called them. All right. Who has the answer? When God wanted missionaries, where did He go to get them? The church. Now that's pretty simple, isn't it? I work in a mission organization as a stand and we have recruiting departments. And so we've got representatives and they're going out all over the place trying to find missionaries. Where do you think we go to find missionaries? Oh man, thank you for giving us the benefit of the doubt. We're not really as smart as you. You know where we spend most of our time and effort? In colleges and seminaries. And that sort of makes sense, doesn't it? Because that's where people are studying for the ministry and so it sort of makes sense if you want to find people interested in going into missions, you might find a cluster of them there. And so we do that. But realize that every person that is there in that Bible college or seminary first of all came from a local church. You see Bible colleges and seminaries don't produce missionaries. Local churches produce missionaries. Now that may seem rather simplistic but it is profound. And if you could just embrace that one concept here tonight it could radically change the way you view this church. That it is here. that missionaries are found and prepared and identified and sent. And though it's a simple concept it is so critical for us to understand that because it is in the local church. There was a church in a city called Antioch, a literal city with a literal church, a group of people just like you. They were meeting together and it was to that group of people, to the local church there in Antioch that God said, that's where I'm going to find my missionaries. Not at the seminary, not at the Bible college, I'm going to find them in a local church. Now What if we really embrace that in our church? That one of our primary responsibilities is to find, train, identify, send people from our congregation to the mission field. Hold that thought for just a moment. Let's go a step further. When God looked at this church in Antioch, who were the group of people that he picked on in that church. Alright I'm hearing several different, I heard several of you say teachers. There were these guys in verse one who were the leaders in the church if we could simply use that word leader or teacher. They were the guys that were sort of heading things up. And these guys were obviously key guys in the church. Now our tendency has been for the last 100 years or so to pick on the teenagers, you know. And we have a missions conference like this and then at the end we sort of lay it on heavy and we say, you teenagers, you need to graduate from high school and go off to Bible college and go to the mission field. And the rest of us who are a little bit older than that we're saying, yeah, they need to go do it. But isn't it interesting here that they didn't pick on the teenagers? They picked on you guys. They were guys that had already proven leaders in the local church. What would happen if we started thinking that way today? You know, in the era in which my parents went to the mission field, you had to be young. In fact, if you were getting like 26, 27, 28 years old, No mission board would accept you. They would just send your application back. You were over the hill. You were too old. And part of that reason was that back in those days when parents went, they were going to very primitive situations. There was not the medical attention that was there. You had to be physically fit because you had to ride a bike or a horse or a motorcycle or, you know, you just had to be physically fit. So you couldn't send somebody that was a little bit older. You had to send young healthy people to the mission field. And there was an era in our church history where it was just a young person's game to be involved in missions. Well that has radically changed. least in our mission the average age now of people joining is between thirty-five and forty and they're going for the very first time. And there's always room for the Timothys on the mission field but the vast majority of these guys were already well established and they were leaders in the church. Paul at this particular time we believe was probably had already been a Christian for fourteen years. He wasn't just starting off. This wasn't a novice. This wasn't a guy that didn't know what he was doing. He had already established himself in the faith, already knew a lot of theology before he ever got saved. And these guys were mature leaders in the church. And maybe I'm a bearer of bad news to some of you who thought, wow, I'm 38 years old, I've escaped the draft, I'm no longer qualified to be a missionary. I'm here to tell you that maybe you are just now reaching your qualification age. And today, because most of the world lives in cities, You can live in cities around the world where all the medical attention and Coca-Cola's there, everything that you sort of want. Walmart and McDonald's are, you know, close behind Coke. And you can pretty well live almost anywhere in the world and you can have all of the services and the things that you need. And so no longer is missions a young man's game. That's why people can stay on the mission field into their 70s and 80s. That's why people can go to the mission field when they're 40 and 50 and 60. You know, about 100 years ago, the average age span here in the United States was 55. I'd be dead now if I lived 100 years ago. Well, that makes sense, doesn't it? That was a profound statement. I don't know how to say that right. You know what I mean. You know, today we're living up into our 70s. Some of you men are taking retirement at 50, 55 years old. You know what? You still have a whole nother career in front of you. What would happen if some of you would start thinking in terms of, OK, now I've done something with my life by way of putting my family through college and raising a family. Now it's time to do something significant for the kingdom of God. And maybe the rest of my life, my next career needs to be involved in missions. We tend to underestimate the potential that is dormant here in this church. Do you realize that if you can quote John 3.16, which I would dare say most everybody here tonight could, if you could quote John 3.16 and explain what that means, which probably everybody here could, do you realize you know more theology than probably 80% of the world's population? If you stayed awake during any of Pastor Bauer's sermons, you definitely know a whole lot more theology than the average person around the world. And I don't know exactly how to deal with that because we have certain standards for people joining our mission and you've got to know so much theology, but there's at some time that we're going to have to rip the top off this can and we're going to have to say, you know what, this thing needs to explode just like the population is exploding over there by that wall. And if we're going to do missions, some of you are going to have to say, you know what, we're going to have to think differently about this thing of doing missions than we've ever thought before. And the old colonial model of us taking on full support for a missionary to send them out worked well, but we need a thousand times more missionaries than we've ever had before. And our churches may not bear that financial burden, but we're going to have to find some other means to finance missions creatively. Even if we've got to go and we've got to work on the mission field to do that, we've got to get out there. Somehow we've got to radically expand our missions outreach far beyond where we are presently in what we're doing. And so in verse 1 we basically have the source of missionaries and verse 1 we also have who gets picked on. It's the leadership. What if you started doing that here at Santa Rosa Bible Church to say, you know what? One of our main goals is to see if we can send out some of our own. And you've done that. But what would happen, what if we could once a year at every missions conference be commissioning a new missionary to go out from our church? And that this place be a place where you get prepared to do missions? and that the ambition of this church is to say we're going to send out as many as we can. And we view this church not as a place where you come and sit and watch someone up here on a stage, but a place where you get prepared to do ministry. And we don't know what that ministry is going to be, but some of you are going to be doing ministry somewhere around the world. But what if we viewed our church like that, that this was a place for me to be prepared to do ministry and many of you to be heading out to the mission fields of the world? go to verse 2. There's an interesting thing here in verse 2. It says in verse 2, I've lost my place here, while they were worshipping the Lord and fasting. By the way that word worshipping is an interesting word. It's not your typical word that we use for worshipping. It actually comes from a word from which we would get the word civil servant. It's kind of a strange word to be sticking in this text here. Civil servant. Now that again doesn't mean too much to us today, but back in those days a civil servant was a person who worked for his country or for his community, for his city, and he did so at no charge. Now I don't know how far to push this. It's just intriguing that this particular word was chosen here in verse 2. But maybe, just maybe, these guys in verse 1 were not the paid pastoral staff. They were, using this term, they were working for the church without getting paid for it. They weren't on staff. They didn't have a salary from the church. They were pulling down regular jobs just like you, but God chose from those men the ones that ought to go to the mission field. In other words, guys that had already proven themselves and had already shown they knew how to do ministry. They had already established their credibility. They already had the qualifications of an elder, 1 Timothy chapter 3. And these guys were already guys that were ministering. You know, we do this a little bit backwards. We tend to try to find someone that's willing to go first, and then after they're willing to go, then we worry about whether they can do the job. You know, no one else in any other industry would do it this way. We find people, you know, it doesn't make more sense to find someone, first of all, qualified, and then send them. You see, that's what the local church is all about. It's a place for you to qualify whether or not you can serve God. You know, if you've never won a soul to Christ here in Santa Rosa, You get on an airplane and fly for 8,000 miles and get off, you're not going to instantly be turned into an evangelist. You're just going to be turned into a tired person, that's all. There's nothing mystical about going to some other country because if you're not discipling new believers here, you're not going to do it there. If you don't know the Word of God here, nothing magical happens over the Atlantic Ocean that then you know it. And so this is a place where you are to learn the Word of God, to do the Word of God, and once you have proven yourself, then you start becoming like these people in verse 1. And it was as they were worshiping, as they were liturgeo is the word, the Holy Spirit said... Who was the Spirit of God speaking to in verse 2? To whom is the Spirit of God speaking to in verse 2? The Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work unto which I have called them. Maybe a better way for me to put that question would be to whom is the Spirit of God not speaking? Who's He not talking to? Barnabas was a Saul because he said, see those two guys over there? Paul and Barnabas, send them. Now we don't know exactly who he's talking to. Maybe it was to the leadership team in verse 1. Maybe it was to the congregation as a whole. We don't know. But the strange thing is that it was not Paul and Barnabas, the guys that were supposed to go. You know, our view of the call of God in our life, as Americans we tend to make this sort of a very individualized thing. No one's going to tell me what to do. And if I feel a chill going down my back, then I'll get involved. But it's interesting that that's not the way they functioned here in this church. Now let me back up the truck for just a moment and frame it this way. When there's a shortage of missionaries, there is basically one primary strategy that Jesus gave to us to get more. Remember the passage? When you see the fields that are white unto the harvest, what's the next word? Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He would send forth laborers." So what that means is everyone in this room tonight can become a mission recruiter. Yeah we've got guys in our organizations they go around talking to people and I spend a good bit of my time talking to people to see if I can find someone that would be interested in going somewhere. But you know what? That shouldn't be my job. And in fact if you were doing your job I'd be out of a job. I shouldn't really have to be doing any recruiting. Why? Because that's really your responsibility. What would happen if we took seriously this idea that we're to be praying that the Lord of the Harvest would send forth laborers? Here's the takeaway for tonight. If you want a homework assignment for tonight, here it is. Would you put on your daily prayer list, daily, that's every 24 hours, okay, daily prayer list that you will pray that God will raise up a missionary out of Santa Rosa Bible Church. Would you put that on your prayer list? Would you pray every single day that God will do that? You know what, if you start doing that, guess what's going to happen? As you come here on Sunday morning and you're shaking hands with people during the fellowship time, the thing that's going to be niggling you, the thing that's going to be in the back of your mind is, I wonder if it's him, I wonder if it's her. Lord, who is it that you're calling from our congregation to be a missionary? And you're going to heighten your sensitivity to what God is doing in people's hearts, and you're going to understand what the Spirit of God is doing, and you're going to be part of that process of helping to identify the next person that ought to go to the mission field from this congregation. But our responsibility is to be engaged in prayer. And some of us have sort of waited around for others to sort of volunteer and raise their hand and say, oh, OK, well, someone's got to go, I'll do it. But what if all of us got pretty aggressive in this thing and said, God, we are desperate to see the next missionary go from Santa Rosa Bible Church, and every day we plead before God to help us to understand who that is. And then as we're sensitive to what the Spirit of God is doing in someone's heart and life, we help to identify who that should be. And we can do what they did there in verse 2, where we understand who the next Paul and Barnabas is from Santa Rosa Bible Church. Notice in verse 3, after fasting and praying, obviously they were serious about this. You know normally you don't fast unless you're really serious about something. They were serious about this. They laid their hands on them and they sent them off. Or literally the word is they let go of them. They released them. Now if Paul and Barnabas were members of Santa Rota Bible Church and they were here tonight and we're going to send them off and next Sunday they're not here, do you think you'd miss them? Of course you would. I mean, we're talking about the Apostle Paul. Sure you'd miss them. Don't you think they'd leave a vacuum? We're talking about Barnabas and Paul, our members of Santa Rosa Bible Church, and now they're gone? You see, it takes a lot of sacrifice on the part of churches like yours to give up your best. You know, there's been sort of a tendency to think, you know, missionaries are just sort of They're the leftovers. They're kind of the losers in the church, you know? And if you can't get a pastor here, well you can always be a missionary. You go over there and the natives won't notice that you're incompetent and you don't know what you're doing. And it's sort of a tendency to think, you know, missionaries, that's all right. They just need to get out of here. That wasn't the way the Spirit of God approached this. He said, I'll tell you what, let's take a look at the cream of the crop and let's scrape off the top, the best guys that we have and fling them to the mission field. But you know what that does? It leaves a vacuum in the church. This is a sacrifice. So before you start praying for this, make sure that you're willing to make the sacrifice because some of your best givers, some of your best workers are going to be heading out somewhere else around the world. Are you really sure you want to do this? It will leave a vacuum. But you know the great thing about a vacuum is this. Once there's a vacuum, what happens? Other stuff tries to rush into it. So what happens is you get rid of an apostle Paul and Barnabas. There's some other guys standing behind them that can step up to the plate. And now they have an opportunity to be developed as leaders in the church. And they then will be the next generation that goes out. But as long as Paul and Barnabas are there, we're going to say, Paul, you preach. But when you get Paul out of there, then you start generating the next generation. And that is the cycle. that has happened generation after generation around the world with churches that were concerned about the Great Commission. Someone has said that the greatness of a church is not how many you get in, but how many you send out. Or another way it's put is this way, the church's health is not measured by its seating capacity, but by its sending capacity. I was familiar with a church up in Michigan that was quite missionary-minded. It's a church out in the country. church of about a hundred people and I'd heard that they were really intense in missions and so I stopped by there one time just to meet the pastor and learn a little bit more about the church and as I was talking to the pastor I said how many how many missionaries have you guys sent out from this church now this is a church of a hundred probably never had more than a hundred people in that church he said he thought for a moment he said well I don't know that I could say I know exactly how many are going to go in the mission field but into ministry pastorates or other kinds of ministry and missions we know that we've sent out three hundred Now here's a church of 100 that has sent out 300. Which, which do you think is God's design? To have 400 people that have never sent out anybody meeting in one spot? Or to have a church of 100 that's launched out 300? They got it. They're the New Antioch. They're up in Michigan. That is the thing that we want. And it's not about the numbers, but it's about the fact that we have a passion in our heart to get the gospel out to the world, because that graph at the end of this room is just skyrocketing. And every moment we sit here, there are more people that are being born and more people that are dying and going to hell. We're going to have to do something radically different. And maybe, just maybe, If we would take some of the ideas here just in the first couple of verses of Acts chapter 13, maybe we could make a bigger difference in the world. Notice verse 4, so they being sent by the Holy Spirit went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus. They were gone. Amazing. They just left. What would happen If one year from now, you're having your missions conference, and it's Sunday night, we're all gathered together, and at the end of the service, Pastor Chris has everybody stand in a circle in this room. As we're all standing in there in the circle, Pastor Chris calls out your name and said, would you go stand in the middle? And Chris would say, you know, we've been praying all year that God would raise up a missionary from Santa Rosa Bible Church, and all of us together believe you're the one. Does that strike terror into your heart? Would you be willing to go? And I realize not everybody can go, not everybody should go. Someone's going to have to stay here to keep the lights on. Someone has to be here to continue to prepare the next generation of missionaries. But one of the things that is an indicator of a missionary-minded church is the fact that we're willing to go. That needs to be our heartbeat. And the amazing thing is that when they identified Paul and Barnabas, verse 4, they got on the boat. They just went. They went with the affirmation of this local church that said we believe in you and we believe God has called you and we're going to stand with you. Now go, get out of here. So as we see the decline in missions here in North America. As they write the history books of church history in North America and say, you know what, there's sort of a downward path. I firmly believe that if we could start thinking maybe in some of these ways, we can change that graph. And America need not be sitting on the sidelines and we don't have to be has-beens. We can be a key player still in the arena of missions. And if it's going to happen, it's going to happen because of Santa Rosa Bible churches. Churches like yours that understand all the stuff we've been talking about this weekend, and you believe in it enough to give tons of money towards this kind of stuff. And it also rides to the occasion and says, you know what, we're going to send some of our own kids and our own grandkids to the mission field. with joy, knowing that we're not going to see them much the rest of their life, but we'll see them in heaven and know that we have risen to our day, the need of seven billion people. Father, I do pray for Santa Rosa Bible Church that you would indeed continue to leverage the incredible legacy, the passion, the commitment to serving you and the world and the Lord the best days would still be ahead for this congregation as they radically expand the outreach of this congregation in Jesus name I pray. This message has been brought to you by the Santa Rosa Bible Church. Our purpose is to lift up the Lord. by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.srbible.org or come visit us in person at 4575 Badger Road, Santa Rosa, California 95409. You can also give us a call at 707-538-2385.