Who should send church planters?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about going. The best “going” scenario is “being sent.” Here’s a story of a man who was sent.

Sending starts with prayer. In Matthew 9: 35-38, we get the picture of Jesus looking out upon the people of this world in great need of hope and commands disciples to pray that the Lord send laborers out into that harvest. So now we disciples are praying that the Lord would throw laborers out there. Yes, “throw out.” The word Jesus used here is ek-ballō, which means to throw out. So the word here has the sense of sending with some amount of force to get the laborer out in the field. So who gets to be the victim of this prayer of the faithful disciples.

One such victim from our history is Saul, also known as Paul. You remember his story right? He aggressively persecuted Jesus' disciples, he got knocked down, blinded and confronted by the living Christ. There was indeed some force in that sending. Inasmuch as Paul had been victimizing the church, it's only fair that he became the victim of the faithful churhes' prayer?

Paul regularly referred to himself as an apostle. The word apostolos means “one who is sent.” However, it was actually several years before he was sent to the field.

In Acts 13:1-4, we find the story of Paul’s (and actually Barnabas’s too) entry into the field as we think of it. In verse 4 we read that the Holy Spirit sends him out. Here the word is ek-pempō, which, excepting the prefix, is a common word for sending. The prefix “ek” means “out.” So the Holy Spirit is the one who sends Paul out. We also find here that the Holy Spirit is not the only sending agent.

In verse 3 we find that the church also sent Paul. Antioch had become Paul’s home church. Paul had been teaching at Antioch for a whole year. You know how the church always loves to send their most gifted teachers right? Right! The word here for sending is different yet. It is apoluō. This word means to “let go” or “release.” It happens to be the same word used for a divorce. The church at Antioch released Paul with a blessing.

There’s one more type of sending that this victim of prayer seeks. For example, Paul wrote to the Roman church, a church that he had never visited, and asked them to send him (Romans 15:24). Paul explains that he plans to pass through their city as he seeks more places to do the work to which he was sent. This time Paul asks a church, not his home church and not a church that he had planted, to pro-pempō him. Pro-pempō means to “send supplied.”

All churches everywhere need to pro-pempō their victims of prayer.