Recently, I shared with my congregation here in Jerusalem, King of Kings Assembly, our need to be a true “family.” I said that we needed to become more like a family because the gospel we preach to Israel and the nations must be something you can see with your eyes. We must demonstrate that the gospel has been tested in the laboratory and it works; it’s not just a theory. The gospel of peace breaks down walls of hostility, even between Jews and Gentiles, making them into brothers and sisters of the same family.

Unless we become a family that prays together and fellowships around the table together, then we can preach until we’re blue in the face, and no one is going to believe anything we’re saying. So welcome to the family of God, at least this little microcosm of the family of God known as King of Kings.

This is our vision: “King of Kings is called to be a compelling, Messiah-centered, Spirit-empowered, disciple-making community…” But we’re not a community for the sake of being a community, nor a family just unto ourselves. We are here together for the great task of being a family that reproduces more spiritual children, and adopts more brothers and sisters. For we are those who co-labor with Yeshua to bring about the fulfillment of the promise that the Lord gave Abraham in Genesis 17:4, ” ‘…Behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations.’ ”

If there is one congregation in the Bible that we ought to emulate – a congregation that we ought to look to as our model of community and family – it is the Jerusalem congregation. We read in Acts 2:46,47 about this first model community in Jerusalem: “⁴⁶So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, ⁴⁷praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

And we will continue to follow after that wonderful model. That’s why we gather together not only in “temple style” larger meetings, as we do on Sunday evenings, but also in our home groups. But there’s another congregational model that the Lord has prompted me to take a fresh look at in recent days. That congregation was located not in Jerusalem, but in the city of Antioch.

As I looked at that congregation in Antioch in the book of Acts, I saw some amazing parallels with what we also desire to be at King of Kings. Like Jerusalem, Antioch was a city of between 500,00 and 800,000 people in New Testament times. Josephus called Antioch “the third city in the habitable earth that was under the Roman empire” (Wars 3:29). In other words, like Jerusalem, Antioch was an influential center in the world. And Josephus says that the city had a particularly large Jewish population (Wars 7:43).

Now today Antioch is not very impressive at all – unless you’re impressed with the fact that it has one of the most polluted rivers possible running through it. I’ve been there and I know. In New Testament times, Antioch was part of Syria, but today it is part of Turkey. (I wonder when Turkey is going to give Antioch back to Syria!) Culturally, first-century Antioch was a melting pot of Greek, Roman, Jewish, Arab, and Persian influences. No other city, apart from Jerusalem, appears as frequently in the book of Acts.

And then when we look at the makeup of the congregation in Antioch we see some other interesting parallels. It was a transient congregation with an international flavor. Not many members of the congregation are mentioned, but the ones who are mentioned are from many different places and backgrounds. We read in Acts 13:1, “Now in the church that was at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.”

Now Barnabas and Saul were Jews from Cyprus (see Acts 4:36) and Tarsus, in Cilicia (see Acts 21:39), respectively. Bible scholars believe that Simeon, who was called Niger, was from African descent, possibly from what is now Nigeria. Lucius came from Cyrene, which was in North Africa, in the territory included in Libya today (Pliny, Natural History 5.31-33). Manaen, who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, might actually have been of Roman derivation.

So Antioch was a little like King of Kings: a congregation made up of Jews and Gentiles from dozens of different nations, with different languages and cultural diversity.

One writer said concerning Antioch: “What a conglomeration of backgrounds with every portent and possibility for conflict, eruption, strife, and division! But they triumphed because ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’ – and it was first established in their assembly. Antioch was and is the pattern of apostolic reality and of a true apostolic sending church.”

Rather than seeing their vast diversity as a hindrance, they used their differences as a means of sending ministers to the nations. It is no mistake that during Saul’s and Barnabas’s first evangelistic outreach, the first place they went to was Barnabas’s home country – the island of Cyprus. And later Paul would return to the region where he was brought up and minister there.

And in the same way, we see the amazing diversity and transient character of our congregation not as negative factors, but as positive means to bring the Word of the Lord from Zion, from Jerusalem, to the nations. The last part of our vision statement is that we are called to “reveal the true face of Yeshua to Israel and the nations.”

If I had to use only one word to describe that congregation at Antioch, it would be “apostolic.” The New Testament Greek word for “apostle” is apostolos. It’s a combination of two words, apo (from) and stello (to send). So to say that a congregation is apostolic is to say that it’s a congregation where people are “sent from.”

Now I’ve looked at every verse in the Bible where Antioch is mentioned and I’ve discovered that truly the Antioch congregation was “apostolic.” Just a sampling of verses shows that. First, let’s look at Acts 13:2-4: “²As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ ³Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away. ⁴So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.”

But that’s not the last time that Saul and Barnabas were sent out by the congregation at Antioch. We read in Acts 15:2,3: “²Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem, to the apostles and elders, about this question. ³So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through Phoenicia and Samaria, describing the conversion of the Gentiles; and they caused great joy to all the brethren.”

And it wasn’t just Saul and Barnabas who were sent from Antioch. We read in Acts 15:32-34: “³²Now Judas and Silas, themselves being prophets also, exhorted and strengthened the brethren with many words. ³³And after they had stayed there for a time, they were sent back with greetings from the brethren to the apostles. ³⁴However, it seemed good to Silas to remain there.”

Now if anyone has been with King of Kings for any length of time, they know that we’re constantly sending people off. As an example, for many years Chuck Cohen served as a pastor at King of Kings. But now he’s not a pastor, but an emissary – an ambassador to the nations. We do not send him away; we send him off, or forth, with our blessing and love! And with warm hands of affirmation we send him. I am reminded of Saul, later called Paul, of whom it is written in Acts 11:25,26: “²⁵Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. ²⁶And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people....”

So we see that Paul, who was an apostle, a “sent one,” spent a whole year in Antioch, serving not in his normal apostolic role, but as a teacher. And so just as Paul served as a teacher for a whole year, without traveling, so has Chuck served a number of years as a pastor/teacher. Sometimes, you know, we get stuck in our ministry gift or office and think that doing any other kind of ministry is somehow “beneath us,” or it’s a distraction from our true calling. Well, Paul proves otherwise in the book of Acts.

So if you’re frustrated that right now you’re not doing exactly what you’ve been called to do, don’t assume that you’re out of the will of God or that people aren’t making room for you to do your real ministry. It could be just a special season where God has your regular ministry on pause. He might be preparing you for a new launch, but this is the time to seek His face; this is the time to get yourself ready; this may be the time when your motivations are tested.

Now at last count there were more than 35 “ordained” ministers who call King of Kings home. The term “ordained” means that their ministry has been recognized by a respected body or fellowship of congregations as having an authentic and anointed calling.

So it shouldn’t surprise us that we’re always saying good-bye to various ministers, whether for a short-term ministry journey or for a longer season in some other place in the world. It hasn’t been by design so much – at least by our design – but by the design of God that King of Kings has become a ministry home, a spiritual launching pad, an apostolic sending agency. I wouldn’t want to be presumptuous and say we are the new “Antioch.” There are many congregations in the world today that are freely sending their members around the globe to do the work of the Lord. But we do regard both the Antioch and the Jerusalem of the book of Acts as models of ministry that we desire to emulate.

There are a number of examples where, with God’s help, we have been quite openhanded in sending off and blessing not just people, but significant resources and whole ministries.

King of Kings made a decision back in the 1980s to release three of our deacons to plant a new congregation. Over 10 years ago, we commissioned and set apart Zvi Randelman to start another congregation in Jerusalem. We blessed and sent out still another congregation in Tel Aviv, which was established under the leadership of Avi Mizrachi. And the Lord helped us to plant what was called King of Kings College in 1990. It’s now called Israel College of the Bible and is training more than 100 students each year from all over the land as well the nations.

Now none of those congregations or the college is under the direction of King of Kings today. They were sent; they were freely released to be established in their own right. But we still enjoy a warm and cooperative relationship with those ministries.

One of the traits of an apostolic ministry is that it is willing to send and to give – and not hold on to anyone jealously. I hope we’ve been generous in our sending and giving over the years.

Recently, the Lord has been showing me that we should help launch a new ministry out of King of Kings called “Planters’ Seed.” The vision of Planters’ Seed is to support the planting of healthy “Great Commission” Messianic congregations by training and sending out congregation planters, and providing them with good “seed” to do effective planting.

After nearly two millennia of desertification and desolation, the land of Israel is being restored to its original fruitfulness. In the same way, the process of spiritual restoration is beginning. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the Messianic body in Israel has more than tripled in number. In the 1990s alone the number of new congregations doubled, to nearly 80 in number. As encouraging as this growth is, we need to remember that the number of Messianic believers is still only one-tenth of one percent of the population of Israel.

God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to multiply their seed as the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea. God’s design for growth was through the formation of families, clans, and tribes. In the same way, God designed kingdom growth to happen through the formation and multiplication of spiritual “families,” a “household of faith” (see Galatians 6:10). The planting of local congregations is a key to the exponential growth of God’s kingdom. Planters’ Seed will, Lord willing, enable many new congregations to be established all over Israel and wherever else the Lord may send people from here.

Now one of the weaknesses that comes along with our desire to equip, send, and plant new ministries is that we have not invested enough in building a support system for those we send. The Antioch congregation sent people out, but they always expected to receive back those they had sent out. They did their best to build a home to which ministers could come back. Come back to do what? To report back to home base about what God was doing through them while they were away from home.

We read this in Acts 14:26-28: “²⁶From there [Paul and Barnabas] sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed. ²⁷Now when they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done with them, and that He had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. ²⁸So they stayed there a long time with the disciples.”

That’s what I noticed distinguished the Antioch congregation. They desired to hear a report of what God was doing through their sent ones, their apostles. They wanted to share in the victories – just as those who look after the supplies during war also get to enjoy the spoils with the soldiers on the front lines.

But they were also there to receive the soldiers when they were getting beat up and on the edge of defeat. Paul and Barnabas had their victories and their defeats. In Iconium they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed. Then we are quickly shown the other side. We read in Acts 14:2, “But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brethren.” And sometimes there was dissension in the ranks. In Acts 15:37-40 we are told about a strong disagreement between Paul and Barnabas concerning taking John Mark on their next missionary journey.

So the Antioch congregation was there to bandage up the wounded. The reporting back home to Antioch not only benefited the congregants who had sent out the apostles, but also the sent ones themselves. And the sent ones also benefited from the home congregation in the matter of accountability. Too many people in ministry today are lone rangers without a ranch to which they can go back – without a home base to which they are accountable.

Someone wrote: “After their first journey, Paul and Barnabas returned to their venture supporters at Antioch to report what had happened. How important this is! Those who pledge support and prayer need to know what is happening so that they can continue to feel a part of the mission. The contemporary entrepreneur is constantly in touch with the venture capitalists, those who have put up money for the project. Reports to the supporters keep their interest in the project, help them feel like partners in the successes, and help them to know how the entrepreneur has dealt with difficulties. This kind of interest in the venture partner builds trust and confidence in the entrepreneur and what he/she is able to do. In the same way, how important it is for the entrepreneurial church planter to also maintain contact with the district, the mission society, or the congregation that has partnered with him in his mission project so that communication takes place and they can celebrate their partnership.”

In the years to come, I pray that King of Kings will do better at “celebrating our partnership” and supporting the people we send – whether through prayer, encouraging letters and e-mails, and even limited finances. Now for a number of years, when individuals tell us that they’re going to be ministering away from Jerusalem, we add their names to our “Out of Zion” prayer list in our bulletin. We encourage them to tell us, so that they do not miss out on having the prayer covering of their friends and family in Jerusalem.

And I hope that more and more of those who do go out from us will see the value of staying connected with us. We need them. But they also need us. If the apostle Paul needed Antioch, they need their “Antioch.” Now I know that many in my congregation are already sent out by another “Antioch,” whether a local congregation or a para-church ministry. But while they’re among the local expression of the body anywhere in the world, including Jerusalem, they need to be connected.

I like what one writer said: ” ‘Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there….’ They were in the church. This is very different from the casual aggregate of individualities that compose our present church situations. We have a lot of flitting about to where the grass might be greener, or the preaching more interesting, or the visiting speakers more attractive. But these men were deeply established. They were in a network of true spiritual relationship, one with another, which constitutes, in itself, the very nature of church….Now, ‘in’ the church at Antioch, not ‘at’ the church. This little two-letter word is full of meaning. These were not casual attendees coming to a place for services. The church was their life; their professions, occupations and businesses were mere secondary enablements. Their place in the church was the purpose for their being and their salvation. That’s the difference between ‘at’ the church and ‘in’ the church. And until you are ‘in’ in that kind of fullness and recognition, and that [sic] this is the purpose for your life and being, then you are only ‘at’; and therefore Antioch waits.”

Then this writer says: “Instead, our ‘sendings’ are self-appointed missions or responses to need, rather than the call of the Spirit, and therefore the consequences of our going are much less than the true works of God. In Antioch, they were already a people separated from their own racial differences, their strivings, their enmity, their suspicions, their resentments, their jealousies, and even from their religious ambition. As long as we embark on ‘ministry’ with ambition alive in us, then what we perform is of necessity less than and other than a true work. The saints in Antioch would have been as content to remain in the place of worship as in the place of service. How many of us have come to that place, where we do not have to go, or where we do not have any itch to perform anything? We are just as content to remain in the place of anonymity, of being unseen, unknown and unheralded, as we are to be in the most conspicuous place of service. Only then can God send us, because He knows that in our going, our one exclusive motive is the jealousy and not our ministerial success.”

He then adds: “The ministry comes out of the life and the life out of the relationships. The ministry was never out of some man’s virtuoso ability or singular calling. The insight, the content of the message, and the quality of the messenger have been wrought into him, but only out of that kind of intensive relationship. Paul[’s] and Barnabas’ separation took place, before they were sent [by] the church. They were not casual Sunday attendees. Only the Lord knows what went on in Antioch before the sending – what issues, what confrontations, what dealings, what shouts, what accusations, what strains as they were filtered, sifted, purified and purged in the depth of God’s sanctifying work. This can only take place in and through the Body of Christ, where men will speak the truth in love in all of the time and patience and sacrifice that such speaking requires.…Are we willing to forsake that, to take the risks, in order to obtain a future Antioch?”

I believe in being connected as a pastor to various ministries related to Israel. I’ve accepted invitations to sit on a number of international ministry boards – possibly more than I should have. But I think it is necessary to support and encourage other ministries, even if they are not involved directly in the work of King of Kings. I believe it’s important that we see the bigger picture of the body of Messiah, just as the believers in Antioch had a vision for reaching the world, and not just their immediate surroundings.

And we even support ministries in other places that were not started by us nor are they directly accountable to us. We’ve raised funds to support a new congregation planted among the Lebanese in the north. And we’ve raised thousands of dollars to buy Bibles for distribution in Ethiopia.

So we have an “Antioch” calling, as well as a “Jerusalem” calling. King of Kings is called to be a compelling, Messiah-centered, Spirit-empowered, disciple-making community, revealing the true face of Yeshua to Israel and the nations.