From here to everywhere. That’s the reach of the mission, and this past Sunday Pastor Chip opened Acts 11 to show how it happened the first time, through ordinary people who got scattered by persecution and couldn’t stop talking about Jesus along the way.
God Uses People Whose Names You’ll Never Know
Acts 11:19 opens with a word worth slowing down on. “Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch.”
Those. No names.
God loves to use ordinary people for His extraordinary purposes. We’re not called to be great people, we’re called to be godly people, and God does great things through those.
Pastor Chip tied it to Veterans Day. In Arlington National Cemetery there’s a tomb that reads “Here rests in honored glory an American soldier but known to God.” Guards have stood watch there around the clock since 1937 for a name nobody knows, because what that soldier did mattered more than whether anyone remembered who he was.
He had the veterans in the room stand. Their service was never about their names. That’s how we serve King Jesus too.
From Jerusalem to the Ends of the Earth
Last week was Acts 1:8 and Jerusalem, the people right where you already are. This week moves outward, and the book of Acts is built on that order. Chapters 1 through 7 are Jerusalem. Chapters 8 through 12 are Judea and Samaria. Chapters 13 through 28 are the ends of the earth.
Judea and Samaria is our state and our nation. The ends of the earth is everywhere else.
Stephen was killed, a riot broke out, and believers fled. Phoenicia is a hundred miles away. Cyprus is two hundred. Antioch is three hundred. They left homes, families, and livelihoods with no idea where they’d land.
You’d think persecution would shut them up. It did the opposite. The whole way there they were speaking the Word, at first only to other Jews. Then verse 20: some of them started speaking to the Hellenists too, people who weren’t Jewish at all.
That’s the turn. The Gospel stopped being only for people like us.
How Do You Share Your Faith When You’re Nervous?
You start by asking about them instead of trying to have every answer ready. Pastor Chip’s framework is three stories: their story, your story, and the Gospel story.
Ask what they’ve been through, what they believe, what’s going on in their life right now. That’s their story. Then share yours, because now you’ve got common ground. Then the Gospel story, how Jesus changed your story and how He can change theirs.
He admitted he still gets nervous doing it. What if they ask something he can’t answer? What if they brush him off? He’s a pastor and he still thinks all of that.
Then he read verse 21. “And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.”
That’s the relief. It isn’t about what you can do for God, it’s about what God can do through you. The hand of God means His presence is with you and His power is with you at the same time.
You don’t need an answer for every hard question. You need to ask, and then tell the truth about what Jesus has done in you.
Believers Reach Unbelievers
Saturday was the churchwide serve day, ten projects across Powder Springs, First Baptist shirts all over town with “Ask me about Jesus” on the back.
Matthew 28:19 starts with “go,” and that word means as you go. Wherever you already are.
Then came the math. About 72,000 people live within a fifteen minute radius of the church, and roughly 2,000 people call First Baptist home. If those 2,000 each shared the Gospel with one person a day, all 72,000 could hear it in 36 days.
Thirty six days. If we don’t reach them, who does?
Disciples Make Disciples
Word got back to Jerusalem that revival had broken out 300 miles away in a city with no church, so Jerusalem sent their best. His name was Barnabas, which means son of encouragement. He was that guy. You walk away from a conversation with him lighter than you went in.
Verse 24 isn’t what you’d expect it to say. It doesn’t call Barnabas a great man. It calls him a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.
That takes the pressure off. God never called you to be great, because God is already great. He called you to be good, and good here means godly.
What was Barnabas doing in Antioch? Discipling people. Which leaves two questions. Who’s discipling you, and who are you discipling?
The most common reason Christians give for not discipling anyone is that nobody ever discipled them. That’s what groups are for. If you’re not ready to disciple someone yet, you can still make it possible for someone else to. Park cars, greet people, work hospitality. Somebody gets discipled this Sunday because somebody else is serving.
Where Were the Disciples First Called Christians?
Antioch. Acts 11:26 says that after Barnabas and Saul spent a full year teaching there, “in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.” Antioch sat about 300 miles from Jerusalem, it was the third largest city in the Roman Empire with roughly half a million people, and before those scattered believers showed up it had no church at all.
Barnabas went to Tarsus and brought Saul back to help him. Remember who Saul was. He started the persecution. He terrorized Christians, the church didn’t trust his conversion, and he’d gone home. Barnabas went and got him anyway.
A church was born out of that year.
We tend to get the order backwards. We think you plant a church to make disciples who then engage the city. Acts runs the other direction. You engage the city, people get saved, disciples get made, and churches come out of that.
First Baptist knows this firsthand. In 1841 two pastors and six other people planted this church when the town was still called Springville. It became Powder Springs Baptist Church in 1859, then First Baptist Church Powder Springs in 1962. That’s 184 years.
Believers reach unbelievers. Disciples make disciples. Churches plant churches.
What Your Giving Is Doing
Nearly 7 million people in Georgia are lost. In 2024, 4,000 churches closed in the United States and 3,800 started, which means we’re losing ground.
This year First Baptist has given $42,200 to church planting, including plants in Knoxville, on an island in Uganda with no churches, and a church planting trip to Spain. Across the last twelve months, more than $400,000 has gone to missions.
Pastor Patrick Fielder and the church planting team moved First Baptist two steps at once. The church is now a supporting church for Danny Abel and Sent Church in Temple, Georgia, and a sending church for Live Love Church, which launched in August.
Live It Out
Pray it daily. God, may Your hand be on my life, and may Your hand be on our church. Put it somewhere you’ll actually see it.
Get discipled. If you’re not in a group, that’s the gap.
Pick your one. The 36 day math only works if somebody starts, and the person you’re thinking about right now is where it starts for you.
There’s a Seat for You
Maybe you’re reading this and you haven’t given your life to Jesus yet. Maybe you’ve been circling it for a while.
You don’t need to have it figured out first. Come as you are.
Plan Your Visit and join us this Sunday, or take your next step and Get Connected with our church family. We’d love to walk alongside you.