Details

Written by Lynne Hammond

There is one question people often ask me. “Lynne,” they say, “what are you praying about the Church?”

You might think the answer would change from month to month, or at least from year to year. But oddly enough, it doesn’t, because for many years, my prayers for the Church have revolved around one central theme. I’ve been praying about the emerging pattern of the apostolic church.

Although there are several good church patterns in the New Testament, the more I pray about it, the more certain I am that in the next few years before Jesus returns, the apostolic church is the one that will rise to the forefront of Christendom. That’s the pattern God will use to take the Gospel to every nation and bring in the last great harvest of souls.

The very idea that God might have several different patterns for the Church may sound strange to some people. “God has just one way of doing Church!” they might say. “He wants it done the way it was in the Bible. He wants our churches to be like the churches in the book of Acts.”

Certainly He does. The questions is, which church in the book of Acts does He want us to use as our pattern?

The Jerusalem Church? The church at Antioch? Or the church at Ephesus?

Each one of those churches was wonderful. Each one furthered the plan of God. But as we will see this week, it was the church at Antioch that set the standard for the end-time Church.It’s Antioch that gives us as praying Christians today a scriptural pattern to hold in faith before the Lord.

It’s the Antioch pattern that shows us what God can accomplish when the apostolic church begins to arise.

Scripture Reading: Acts 11:19 – 36