Building Antioch Churches in The Southeast US and Beyond
An update from Ricky Alcantar, Lead Pastor of Cross of Grace Church in El Paso, Texas, USA. Ricky serves on the National Church Planting Group with Sovereign Grace Churches and leads the Antioch Program…
Our most recent Antioch Retreat was a wonderful example of our Sovereign Grace Partnership. Men from churches across the Southeast US, from Virginia, the Caribbean, and even from Germany gathered recently in Orlando. We spent two days studying Acts 11-13 and the Antioch church, discussing, dreaming, praying, and planning together.
Highlights of This Year
Different Context, Same Scriptural Principles // We had churches from the US South, from small churches and larger churches, and even from four countries. But it was wonderful to see how the principles of Acts apply cross-culturally in every place.
New Relationships and Old Partnerships // One of the things I love about Sovereign Grace is that there are rich deep relationships cultivated over time, and there are always new people to connect with and learn from.
Ministry of the Word and Spirit // We labored over parts of Scripture together in God's unchanging word but also found the Lord speaking specific encouragements to pastors during our times of prayer. A beautiful blend of expository ministry and Spirit-filled ministry.
Regional Flavor // This retreat was unique because nearly the entire Southeast region of US churches participated together, attaching the Antioch retreat to their regional assembly. This was the first time we'd ever tried this and it seemed to work really well - something we'll look at doing in the future where it serves churches.
Footgolf! // We were introduced to the sport of "Footgolf" by Pete Shefferstein, which is essentially golf played with a soccer ball. (Yes, really.) I think one of our shared values should be laughter because we certainly laughed quite a bit on the course, especially when Joel's ball landed in a pond and had to be fished out.
What Is Antioch?
Antioch retreat aims to equip churches at the intersection of our ecclesiology (nature of the church) and missiology (mission of the church). I like to joke that if Sovereign Grace Churches exists to plant and strengthen churches, Antioch is the "and" that connects those two actions together. It has become a two-day retreat held annually in the US and includes a unique component of follow-up coaching and support for churches that attend the retreat.
Where Do We Go From Here?
We are planning to hold our next Antioch retreat next Spring in the Northeast, but are praying about other ways to use this material as well. Antioch is a tool from our family of churches for our family of churches, so we'd loved to see it used in whatever ways our churches find most helpful.
