When Good Men Disagree: Sermon Recap

This week in our series Unstoppable: The Church on Mission, we picked up right where the Jerusalem council left off. The apostles and elders had just ruled that Gentiles are saved by grace, not by keeping the law of Moses, and now that verdict had to travel from Jerusalem to the waiting church in Antioch. Acts 15:22-41 shows us how that news arrived, and then, in the very same chapter, how two of the godliest men in the Bible had a disagreement so sharp they never worked side by side again. Our title this week was "When Good Men Disagree," and the big idea was this: even godly, gifted leaders can sharply disagree, and God will still be glorified through it all, because the mission will not change.

The chapter opens with the church choosing two respected men, Judas called Barsabbas and Silas, to carry the council's letter to Antioch in person. They did not simply mail a ruling and let the Gentile believers sort out their feelings about it. They sent trusted men who prayed, prepared, and delivered the letter alongside real spoken words of encouragement. Verse 31 tells us the church rejoiced when they read it, and verses 32 through 33 add that Judas and Silas strengthened the believers there with many words before returning in peace. That is our first big idea: a Spirit-led church turns conflict into encouragement rather than division. A decision that could have fractured a young movement instead produced real joy, because the people delivering it cared as much about the delivery as the decision itself.

Meanwhile, Paul and Barnabas stayed on in Antioch, teaching side by side exactly the way a healthy church should look after working through a hard decision together. That partnership is worth pausing on, because it makes what happens next so jarring. Paul's first missionary journey, the one Acts has followed since chapter 13, had just ended. His second was about to begin. And right at that hinge point, the same two men who had stood shoulder to shoulder defending grace before the whole Jerusalem council discovered they could not agree on who should travel with them.

The disagreement was not about doctrine. They already agreed completely on the gospel. It was about a person: John Mark, the young assistant who had walked off the field back in Pamphylia during the first journey, for reasons Scripture never explains. Paul, remembering that Mark had abandoned them once already on a road that included being stoned and left for dead at Lystra, did not want to risk it again. Barnabas, ever the encourager, the same man who had vouched for a violent, formerly persecuting Saul when nobody else in Jerusalem would, wanted to give his younger relative Mark a second chance. Acts 15:39 says plainly that there arose a sharp disagreement, sharp enough that Paul and Barnabas separated and never appear together again in the book of Acts.

That brings us to the second big idea: even godly, gifted leaders can sharply disagree. Notice what Luke does not do with this moment. He does not referee the fight. He never tells us Paul was right and Barnabas was wrong, or the other way around. Both men had a real point. Paul was guarding the mission on a genuinely dangerous road. Barnabas was guarding a person, the same way he had once guarded Paul himself. Both loves were real, and neither man is painted as the villain. A manmade Bible would have quietly cut verse 39 and protected everyone's reputation. The Holy Spirit left it in, because Scripture was never written about flawless people. It was written about a faithful God who works through imperfect ones.

And that faithful God had the last word on both men. Later in his letters, Paul speaks of Barnabas's ministry with respect, calls Mark a fellow worker in Philemon, and welcomes him by name in Colossians. Then, near the end of his life, writing from a Roman prison and awaiting death, Paul asks for Mark by name: "Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry." The man Paul once refused to travel with becomes the man Paul asks for from death row. Early church tradition even holds that this same Mark, shaped and rebuilt during those years with Barnabas on Cyprus, later wrote the Gospel of Mark from Peter's own preaching. That tradition should be held with an open hand, since it is not Scripture itself, but it fits everything else we know about how God used this story.

Which leads to the third big idea: God will be glorified in everything, even a split. Count the teams. One team left Antioch back in Acts 13. Two teams went out from this disagreement in Acts 15, Paul and Silas heading overland through Syria and Cilicia, Barnabas and Mark sailing to Cyprus. The mission did not shrink because of the conflict. It multiplied.

We saw this same pattern play out much closer to home. The Crossings did not start from nothing. We trace our roots back to First Baptist Church of Brunswick, planted in 1906 by thirty charter members. In the 1970s, that congregation faced its own version of Acts 15, a genuine disagreement over whether to buy new property and build bigger as the town grew, or stay in a building that generations had paid for and prayed in. The church could not agree, and in January of 1979 a much larger group left with their pastor to start a new congregation, leaving only thirteen discouraged but faithful members at First Baptist the following Sunday.

Nobody in 1979 could have written how that story actually ends. The thirteen who stayed called a new pastor and grew their Sunday School past a hundred and eighty within two years, becoming the direct root of the church you belong to today. The group that left built their own building and grew past two hundred and fifty members within three years, drawing families from across the region. That congregation, Faith Baptist Church, still faithfully serves Brunswick today, feeding the hungry and clothing the homeless every week. And decades later, they are one of The Crossings' biggest supporters, even opening their new outdoor pavilion to our 30 Below students this past week when we lost our original location. Two churches, born out of one hard and sad split, are family again.

So what do we do with a passage like this? We stop expecting a conflict-free church and stop treating disagreement as proof that something has gone wrong. The early church had doctrinal unity in verse 25 and a personnel-level blowup in verse 39, in the same chapter. We can disagree, even sharply, without demonizing each other, the way Luke names this dispute honestly without ever trashing either man's motives. Some of us are wired like Paul, quick to protect the mission. Some of us are wired like Barnabas, quick to protect the person. Both instincts are a gift and both carry a blind spot, so it is worth naming your own default and thanking God for the people in your life who are wired the other way.

The team split. The mission didn't. Whatever has come apart in your own life, a friendship, a marriage, a family, a relationship in this church, does not have to be the last chapter either. We would love to have you with us this Sunday as we keep walking through the book of Acts together.