May 2018

1. From Our Declaration of Faith (Section 11)

“Missions: We believe that God’s glory and fame must be spread to the ends of the earth for the joy of all peoples. We believe that apart from conscious faith in Christ, there is no hope of salvation for the nations. We believe God has laid upon the members of the local church the primary task of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost world; and that God, in His sovereignty, has placed us in this city, among these people, at this time, for the advance of His kingdom.

“We believe that missions is the process of evangelising the lost and planting churches; and we believe that it is our great privilege and responsibility to participate in this cause both locally and internationally. (Ps. 47, 67; Matt. 16:18; 28:18-20; Acts 1:8ff; 17:26-27)”

In other words, we want to live up to our name as a church:  “Antioch”, the sending church of Paul and Barnabas, one of the greatest missionary churches ever, that served as a gateway to the ends of the earth and model for all time (Acts 11:19-30; 13:1-3).

2. The Desperate Need of the Unreached Harvest Fields
       (Source: https://joshuaproject.net/)

3. Strategic Places for Antioch Mission Work

As we seek to obey our Lord’s Great Commission, there are four areas we need to impact for the Gospel, by His enabling grace:

1) Foreign Missions – Outside South African Borders

The equipping, releasing and supporting of our own qualified people or assisting those from doctrinally like-minded churches, who relocate in the long term or medium term, with the goal to strengthen the church and/or plant new churches. Priority is given to those peoples who are: unreached, minimally reached, superficially reached or partially reached geographic locations.

2) Local Missions – Inside South African Borders

The equipping, releasing and supporting of our own qualified people or assisting those from doctrinally like-minded churches, who relocate long term or medium term to strengthen the church and/or plant new churches across language, cultural, religious barriers. Priority is given to peoples within our borders who are: unreached, minimally reached, superficially reached or partially reached.

3) Local Outreach

Each member at Antioch ought to be dedicated to the proclamation of the Gospel. Therefore, Antioch must also allocate resources to support, equip and train all saints to evangelise those who they daily come into contact with – at home, work, school, etc. It includes follow-up with the ultimate goal, that they are assimilated at Antioch Bible Church, or a doctrinally similar church in their area.

4) Church Strengthening

The supporting and equipping of pastors and leaders in approved strategic associations through training, resource procurement and distribution and conferences.

4. Strategic Focus For Antioch Missions Work

  1. We will use strategic means – we must prioritise that our resources are allocated to church strengthening and/or church planting, with the goal that target people groups will have a church led by qualified local leadership, and is doctrinally sound and financially self-sustaining.
  2. We will seek strategic time-limited partnerships with other like-minded churches, requiring that any missionaries released by these churches be known, accepted and affirmed by our elders and members.
  3. We will send out and partner with biblically qualified persons. “Qualified” means those who are released from Antioch or other partner congregations should not only be well known among the people, but proven persons who are spiritually-gifted and morally above reproach – men who are elder-qualified, since their goal is to plant and pastor a new local church (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Tit. 1:5-9).The local assembly from which they come ought to support their missionaries well, including financially, so that they will be free to devote themselves to the ministry essentials of intercessory prayer and the preaching/teaching of the gospel (3 John 8; Acts 6:4;18:5).

5. Strategic Funding For Antioch Missions Work

  1.  Antioch must create an ethos of prayer and awareness of the need for missions work, through information, meetings, sermons, testimonies, conferences, and news and accountability of those we send out or partner with in missions.
  2. Biblically, all local churches must take responsibility for missions work. Antioch Bible Church can recognize and commission those released to undertake the work as defined above (Acts 13,14; Rom. 10:14-15; Matt. 28:18-20; Luke 24:33-48).
  3. Antioch may also seek strategic, time-limited funding options from partnerships from like-minded individuals and organizations.
  4. Antioch, under the guidance of its elders, must therefore allocate funds from general giving and encourage giving over and above the giving for general running of the church to missions work as defined above. However the goal will always be self-supporting local churches. Released funds may then be directed to the next strategic missions area.