In this series I am drawing out reflections from a recent journey to Kenya.
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Any consideration of the local church’s role in global missions will eventually wash you up on the shores of Acts 13.
There Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (v. 2). Notice where the missionary initiative begins. It does not begin with Barnabas and Saul announcing their plans or with the church developing an expansion strategy. It begins with the Holy Spirit: “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (emphasis added).
The missionaries belong to the Spirit. The work belongs to the Spirit. The calling comes from the Spirit. The church does not create the mission of God. It listens for how the Spirit is calling it to participate in what he is already doing.
But the Spirit does not bypass the church. After fasting and praying, the church lays hands on Barnabas and Saul and sends them out. Verse 3 says that the church sent them. Verse 4 says they were “sent out by the Holy Spirit.” Which was it?
Both.
The Spirit sent them through the church. The church listened, discerned, affirmed the calling, and sacrificially gave its own leaders for the work God had called them.
Once again, Africa is present in the story. Among the leaders worshiping and listening that day was Lucius of Cyrene—clearly an African leader—and Simeon called Niger, who may also have been African. They helped discern and affirm the calling that carried Barnabas and Saul across new ethnic boundaries.
The gospel had been received and flowed among them. It had taken root within a church. Now the Spirit was carrying it through that church to others.
This is not merely an ancient story. As I spend time with church leaders in Africa, I hear stories of how the Holy Spirit is calling their members. When I spend time with those members, I hear them expressing the desire to go, but they’re not sure how.
When I was in Cameroon, a group of church leaders told me that after fasting and prayer, the Spirit had impressed on them that their nation was to be a “trigger” unleashing a tide of gospel workers to all nations. If you hold Africa in the shape of a gun (their analogy, not mine), notice where Cameroon sits. It’s the trigger position.
Later, I told this story to church leaders in Kenya. “If Cameroon is the trigger,” I asked, “then what is Kenya?” The room laughed. Then answers rang out: “The sight!” “The hammer!”
Do you see how the Spirit of God is stirring his people?
And for good reason—the need remains enormous. Across parts of the Sahel, the Nile Valley, the Horn of Africa, and the East African coast, growing Christian communities live remarkably close to peoples with little meaningful access to the gospel. In East Africa, Kenyan believers already share Swahili, regional history, and cultural instincts with lost peoples nearby, assets that an outside missionary would need years to even begin understanding.1
That proximity is a gift, though it does not remove the challenges of crossing difficult boundaries. The Spirit through the church must form and send believers who are ready to navigate ethnic wounds, religious barriers, and generations of suspicion with humility, courage, and endurance.
But this is not enough.
The Spirit is unlikely to stir African churches only toward Africa. He may send Kenyan believers toward nearby peoples in the Horn of Africa or north toward the Sahel. But he may also send them toward Asia, Europe, the Middle East, or the Americas. Even now the 2000 unreached people groups of India await the gospel just across the sea from Mombasa churches. Could this historic entry point for inland missions also be a great harbor for missionary sending?
Last month, as I stood on the shore of the Indian Ocean for the first time, a massive cargo ship disembarked from Mombasa’s port and slowly disappeared into the night. I couldn’t help but imagine the parallel: African sent ones carrying the precious goods of the gospel to the wide world beyond.
A great tide has come in. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, it’s getting ready to go out.
I found Bud Houston’s article very helpful on this subject.
This is so good and you ask a great question: "How are they to go?" Are they supposed to wait for money from America or depend exclusively on finances from their African sending churches? In my view, we must all lean more into a "co-vocational" sending model. When necessary, even the great apostle Paul made tents. Perhaps us Western goers could better model a more reproducible, co-vocational way of making disciples in cross-cultural contexts if we also would leverage our various professions as we go.