Acts 13:1-3 Saul and Barnabas depart Antioch with John Mark

Acts 13:1-3 Saul and Barnabas depart on their first missions trip.  Quite a teaching team; five men devoted full time to teaching the word of God. And then through prayer, the Holy Spirit gives instruction for Saul and Barnabas to be set apart for another ministry. No details on how they discerned this call, but they went through a process that included fasting, prayer, and laying on of hands. The biggest challenge they faced is probably that there was no precedent for this kind of evangelization in foreign lands. The early disciples had scattered throughout Judea and Samaria in response to persecution and had shared the gospel there (Acts 8:1,4), but this was a deliberate call and plan to go, more in response to Jesus' final words (Acts 1:8). Antioch was a better place to begin this journey because it was much more culturally cosmopolitan than Jerusalem and Samaria. The church in Antioch included Gentiles (Acts 11:20-21) and they were surrounded by a culture that was doubtless a mixture of Hellenism and Roman. Going from this culture would not have been such a huge transition as if they had started in Jerusalem. We find out in Acts 13:5 that John Mark also went with them as a helper. He was not listed as a teacher, but he had come from Jerusalem with them. Perhaps as a young man this was an adventure, or perhaps he was also called but not mentioned. Or perhaps the subsequent events suggest the risks of going without being called.