That's interesting Perg. Could I have a few chapter and verses examples of how this was actually God's better idea? Are you claiming that what you said in your post is an actual doctrine of God to be believed and obeyed? I know most about Reformed Confessions, and I don't remember seeing this. I also know I have read the Bible well over--and I mean well over--a hundred times, and I still see Paul appointing elders in every church. What did I miss?
In the very least it is descriptive in the New Testament practice. I would see it as an example; there is no indication that the early church was straying from God's design when they did this. They received no rebuke.
I often meet Reformed Baptists who say that a missionary must be an ordained elder-qualified man sent from one church and even maybe supported by that one church and reporting back to that one church. He must only be involved in direct local-church planting. Sometimes major decisions are sent back to the sending church so that this church may help the missionary decide upon an issue. And that church then sometimes sends an elder to visit the missionary on the field.
How this often plays out is that the sending church then becomes the boss of the missionary in an unhealthy way that exceeds normal "accountability" - and when elders visit the missionary the missionary is often "checked up on" sort of like a superior checks up on an inferior. This is particularly true when a Reformed Baptist church in America supports a poor Indian or Filipino pastor and an American elder goes to visit that pastor. The visited pastor cannot exert himself as the authority at his post contrary to his visitors because he is, in essence, under review by American elders who decide upon his financial support. He who holds the money holds the power. The pastor on the field then supports the narrow agenda of the sending church and sometimes is not even free to associate with others who are not of his particular denominational stripe.
But we see in Acts that, yes, the local church at Antioch was very important. Even though the Apostle Paul was an Apostle, the church laid hands upon them. This was not ordination to the ministry but commissioning to the missionary task. Then he was sent out from Antioch on the first missionary journey.
But we see that once on the field Paul made his own plans and set his own particular strategy (although the goals of the first missionary trip seem to have been laid out beforehand and Paul returned "home" to Antioch once his mission was completed, which was to explore the possibility of God calling the gentiles to like precious faith). The decisions were field-led.
Many churches financed Paul, and Paul even financed himself. He was never dependent upon a single church, and he seemed to handle his own funds rather than Antioch handling it for him.
Paul chose to recruit and work with many people. These people did not go through Antioch for approval, "On his second missionary journey Paul set out with Silas (15:40) and recruited Timothy in Lystra to join their team (16:3). In Troas, Paul and his companions were joined by Luke..." Paul always worked as a team (Acts 9:28-30; 13:1- 5, 13–16, 44–46; 14:1, 7, 20–21, 25; 17:1–15; 18:5–8). Not all of these fellow-workers, or Sunergois were elder-ordained men. And their tasks were broader than merely direct church-planting. Mark came in a support role. And women also traveled with the band and "co-labored" in the task and accomplished things for Paul (chapter 16 of Romans, for example, gives some of their names). Paul returned to Antioch and reported, but it was not an inferior reporting to his boss, but like a family member coming home to report on the news of his travels.
It was a semi-autonomous mobile missionary band, after the manner of the the bands of mendicant monks and missionary societies of today.
A lesson from William Carey: William Carey taught me that I should have a vigorous theology regarding the use of means.
In Carey’s “Introduction” to his
Enquiry, he urges readers to “use every lawful method to spread the knowledge of his Name.” Carey was no pragmatist, but he was a practical innovator within the limits of Scripture. Carey was not merely academic but activistic. He did not merely theorize and defend missions with his pen, he initiated new efforts. He urged “fervent and united prayer” and encouraged the continuation of the Concert of Prayer. He tabulated all the known people-groups of the world and their state of existence in “Section Three” of his Enquiry, so that he could both pray for them, and so that others might become aware of these teeming masses of unevangelized humanity and efforts could be made to reach them. This extraordinary effort in “people-group mapping” predated modern missiological efforts like the Joshua Project and
Operation World by 200 years. He wrote extensively in an effort to promote missions and also advocated “penny subscriptions” to fund the work of mission societies.
In “Section Five” of his
Enquiry, Carey proposes that Christians band together into voluntary associations for the advancement of the Gospel:
"Suppose a company of serious Christians, ministers and private persons, were to form themselves into a society, and make a number of rules respecting the regulation of the plan, and the persons who are to be employed as missionaries, the means of defraying the expense, &c.&c. This society must consist of persons whose hearts are in the work, men of serious religion, and possessing a spirit of perseverance; there must be a determination not to admit any person who is not of this description, or to retain him longer than he answers to it.
"From such a society a committee might be appointed, whose business it should be to procure all the information they could upon the subject, to receive contributions, to enquire into the characters, tempers, abilities and religious views of the missionaries, and also to provide them with necessaries for their undertakings."
And then he concludes:
"I would therefore propose that such a society and committee should be formed amongst the particular baptist [sic] denomination."
In 1792, The Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen was formed, and within the lifetime of Carey, dozens of missionary societies sprang into being, giving legs to local churches. If trading companies could organize travel to far flung shores, surely our charter is much greater. An explosion of missionary sending resulted.
CONCLUSION: In essence, William Carey rediscovered the voluntary associations of Christians that we see from New Testament times. He was not only the Father of Modern Missions because he went first (there were missionaries already in India when he landed). But he stressed the "MEANS" of going (his very book speaking of those means, i.e., voluntary assocations of Christians committed to the missionary task. Missionary societies in other words). In the decades following Carey missionary societies sprang up like mushrooms. Reformed Baptists LOVE William Carey, but they reject his methodology and reject the means of accomplishing the task so very often.
Later in life after Andrew Fuller died, William Carey and Marshman, and Ward began to have conflict with the board at home. The home office folks began to lord it over these long-time vets on the mission field. The letters back and forth grow more and more in conflict with one another. Finally, the Serampore guys broke with the home office because the home office kept trying to lead from the rear. Theirs is an example that we can learn from, even the Father of Modern missions ran into conflict with the home office.
So, there is a direct line from the Jewish prosyletizer bands to the NT missionary bands to the orders of monks and Jesuits....with a pause at the Reformation when those structures were disbanded in Protestant regions...to Carey and the re-launch of missionary bands, to the Greatest Century of Christian missions, to the present day.