“St. Peter’s Cave Church in Antakya – one of the oldest churches in Christianity.
Peter, Barnabus and Paul all worked with the Christian community in Antioch.”
The church in Antioch as described in the book of Acts is a fascinating case study on building a thriving gospel movement.
Just wanted to share a great resource I used in our staff meeting last week that our staff really enjoyed and were motivated by (it took about 45 minutes).
Here’s essentially what it is:
- Looking at three passages in the book of Acts, what are the consistent themes and distinguishing marks of the church at Antioch?
- What can we learn about building a movement where the gospel spreads rapidly
- How can we be a sending movement like the church at Antioch -Â Are we a leadership/laborer-factory like the church at Antioch?
Here’s how to set it up (download the notes listed below so this will make more sense):
- Read the first passage out loud
- Ask- “What do you observe about the movement in Antioch in this passage?”
- Repeat for all three passages
- Ask- “What are the take-aways for our campus in building that type of movement that is modeled in Antioch?”
- Share some summary thoughts from the 5 Movement Building Principles (that Ken Cochrum came up with)
- End with some of the closing questions to further apply it to your movement (see notes below)
The notes and idea are from Brian McCollister (Cru Director at Ohio University) who did this exercise at our Regional Local Leaders conference last week.
[gview file="https://www.timcasteel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/The-Antioch-Movement-in-Acts.pdf"]
photo courtesy of tamra hays