Itinerant ministries are not spiritual vagrants: they have home addresses. The Apostle Paul’s home church was at Antioch. An evangelist needs a home church because accountability gives him added credibility.
After returning from their first mission, Paul and Barnabas reported back to the church leaders at Antioch, from where they had been sent out prophetically and with the blessing of the church elders.
Three developments that affect travelling ministries today in Australia:
- HISTORIAN GEOFFREY BLAINEY’S “TYRANNY OF DISTANCE”
Australia, which has almost the area of the continental United States, has a population of only 29 million, compared to the USA’s 330 million. Vehicle fuel costs and air travel across our continent consume offerings taken up for evangelists. This makes travel uneconomical unless the Sunday ministry is preceded by a Saturday seminar. Selling ministry products can help cover costs, but not every pastor likes a book table located nearby the church entrance.
The answer: A personal income stream that covers travel and accommodation costs, or better still a supportive church as faithful and reliable as the Philippi church was in its support of Paul’s apostolic ministry. It made an agreement with the apostle that only the worst of circumstances could break (Philippians 4:15-17).
- THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY
This includes broadband access to sermons and articles online, digital TV streaming, Pay-Tv, and Wi-Fi downloads now available to laptops and hand-held devices in fast-food restaurants and shopping malls.
However, information is not revelation. These things can subject evangelists to personal performance pressure, in which discernment can pose as personal prophecy.
The answer: A prophetic edge that enables a visiting preacher to speak into the underlying condition of a local church. Revelation knowledge is most effective in bringing about needed change in a local church.
Pastors are agents of influence, and as such are less able to address long-term problems; but visiting ministries are agents of change, and “blow in, blow up, and blow out”! The Lord placed the prophet Barnabas, and later Silas, in the Apostle Paul’s ministry team. Apostles and prophets work well together: the first establishes churches and the second sorts out who will do what.
- DENOMINATIONAL CORPORATE IDENTITY
“In-house” attitudes and policies tend to push independent travelling ministries toward fringe groups and small churches in isolated locations. Mega churches are to independent ministries what Mega shopping malls are to local shopping strips.
The answer: Networking, which crosses denominational boundaries, and also niche ministries that may be more suited to the less obvious needs of local churches with limited economies.