The church at Antioch has been etched into Christian memory not as a mere "local congregation," but as a turning point where the gospel crossed ethnic and linguistic boundaries and expanded with a truly universal vitality. If the early community centered in Jerusalem laid down the gospel's roots within the protective framework of Jewish tradition, Antioch bears witness to the moment those roots were transplanted into the soil of the nations. In a city where multiple cultures intermingled, the gospel entered the public sphere not as a religious preference of a particular group, but as God's saving event that renews the whole human person-and it was there that the name "Christian" was born. Among those who refuse to consume this scene as a sentimental story of the past, and instead elevate it as an archetypal model the Church must recover today, Pastor David Jang (founder of Olivet University) is often mentioned. He does not read Antioch merely as a functional "launch point for missions," but as a theological standard that reveals how the Church's essence must operate spiritually. What he calls the Spirit of the Antioch Church ultimately points to a vision of the Church where "the leading of the Holy Spirit, doctrinal solidity, catholic (universal) unity, and the dynamism of commissioning" do not exist as separate compartments, but circulate as a single ecosystem.
The first core that Pastor David Jang grasps in Antioch is the conviction that the Church's work does not begin with human planning. The Church is not a group gathered to build a "promising organization," but a community responding to God's call-and at the heart of that response lies the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. The narrative that Antioch's leaders listened for the Spirit's voice through fasting and prayer and then set apart Barnabas and Paul to send them out makes unmistakably clear what the Church's decision-making must look like at its most crucial moments. Pastor David Jang places this scene in sharp contrast with modern methods of church management, warning that when financial scale, organizational efficiency, or marketing strategies tailored to trends begin to replace the reason the Church exists, the gospel's sense of direction inevitably blurs. He diagnoses that when "success" is reduced to visible outcomes alone, the Church can easily become enamored-often without realizing it-of the speed humans desire rather than the path God intends. That is why the Spirit of the Antioch Church that he repeatedly calls the Church to remember is the restoration of a proper order: before asking what programs we run, we must ask by what spirit we move. Decisions should be refined not in the calculations of a conference room, but in the discernment formed on our knees; and when the Church moves with the Spirit's prompting, ministry recovers not the language of mere "expansion," but the gospel's language of "commissioning."
Yet it is crucial that Pastor David Jang's interpretation of Antioch does not end with the heat of spirituality alone. He insists that Antioch pursued "accuracy" along with fervor. The debate of Acts 15 was not simply an administrative adjustment; it was an intense doctrinal struggle over how to preserve the essence of the gospel in the right language and protect it with the right boundaries. The question of what to require of Gentile believers cannot be explained merely as practical consideration to lighten the burden of the law. It contained a far deeper inquiry: Is the gospel an event of grace, an extension of cultural custom, or a device for a particular community's identity? Here Pastor David Jang firmly holds onto the word "catholicity" (the universality of the Church). The Church is not a private gathering confined to local autonomy, but part of the one universal Church that confesses a single faith across time and place; therefore, it must share doctrinal standards and a central confession. He reads Antioch not as an independent kingdom cut off from Jerusalem, but as a community that clarified the gospel's center through mutual communion and agreement. From this perspective, the "Antioch-like ecclesiology" he envisions is not a compromise that dilutes truth under the banner of unity, but a mature catholic sensibility that makes unity possible precisely because truth remains central.
When Pastor David Jang revives the Spirit of Antioch for contemporary application, the phrase he returns to most frequently can be summarized as: "The Church is a base camp for commissioning." The Church does not exist to close in on internal religious satisfaction, but to be organized as a channel through which the gospel flows out into the world. Antioch was the community behind Paul's explosive mission, and that "behind" was not merely a pipeline for funding, but a network of prayer, discernment, training, and partnership. Following this model, Pastor David Jang argues that church planting and world mission must not be reduced to "projects" of a particular department, but must become part of the Church's very constitution. The more a church grows accustomed to holding onto people, the more the gospel stalls; yet the more it grows accustomed to sending people, the more-paradoxically-the Church deepens and widens. Commissioning can appear like a decision that accepts loss, but from the gospel's perspective, commissioning is the Church's life-cycle: it is the way the Church becomes truly the Church.
The theological axis that supports all of this is especially evident in Pastor David Jang's favored mode of expository preaching-most notably in his treatment of Colossians. The letter's background as a "prison epistle" already contains a paradox. From a confined space called prison, Paul proclaims the most expansive Christology. Pastor David Jang applies this paradox to the reality of the Church: the more suffocating the environment, the more the Church must look toward a wider sky; the more limited the conditions, the more the Church must hold fast to the essential center. Through the majestic confession of Colossians 1:15-20, he warns against every attempt to shrink Jesus Christ into a mere ethical teacher or religious hero. The language that presents Christ as the true image of the unseen God, as the one before all things, as the one through whom and for whom all things were created, and as the one who makes peace and reconciles all things through the cross, reveals Jesus as the cosmic sovereign and proclaims him as the real ruler as well as the head of the Church. Pastor David Jang emphasizes this passage for a clear reason: when the majesty of Christ wavers, the identity of the Church wavers as well. Much of the time, when the Church loses direction before the ideologies and trends of the world-or before plausible forms of spiritual syncretism-it is because Christ's place, his center and height, has been lowered.
Pastor David Jang is also skilled at translating Colossians' warning about false teaching into contemporary language. The syncretistic pressures that the Colossian church faced structurally resemble modern religious pluralism, consumer spirituality, scientistic reductionism, or even prosperity-shaped faith. By warning in effect that "if Jesus remains only a good teacher, the Church degenerates into a moral society," he underscores how lightweight the Church's speech becomes when the gospel's transcendence and the reality of redemption are lost. At the same time, he does not mistake doctrinal solidity for a merely intellectual system. Drawing on the exhortation of Colossians 2:6-7-living in Christ, being rooted, and being built up-he says doctrine is a root that supports life: a habit, a direction, a framework for existence. That is why his expository preaching consistently moves from concept to concrete life. Does the emotion of worship translate into Monday's choices? Does confession expand into ethics at home and in the workplace? Have thanksgiving and prayer become the culture of the community? These questions form what Pastor David Jang constructs through Colossians: the "contact surface" where doctrine meets life.
In particular, the gospel's cycle of "hearing, understanding, and bearing fruit" appears frequently as a grammar of growth in Pastor David Jang's pastoral language. He interprets "hearing" not as acquiring information but as exposing oneself to God's call; "understanding" not as mental agreement but as a reorientation of the heart; and "bearing fruit" not as an emotional burst of resolve but as enduring fruit in a sustainable way of life. For this cycle to turn healthily within the Church, he says, the accumulation of expository preaching, a structured system of doctrinal instruction, the practice of discipleship training, and a culture of intercession for one another are necessary. Even when Pastor David Jang speaks of church planting and world mission, he emphasizes education and formation because he recognizes theologically that mission is not an event but a long-term process of shaping people's inner life and habits. If the sending church is shallow, commissioning ends in burnout; but a church with deep doctrinal roots matures further through commissioning.
Pastor David Jang's vision for world mission becomes even more persuasive where Antioch's historical character and Colossians' cosmic Christology converge. Antioch was a "base for Gentile mission," and Colossians presents a vast horizon of "cosmic reconciliation." Linking these, Pastor David Jang argues that the gospel cannot be imprisoned in the customs or emotional patterns of any single culture, and that Christ's redemption works not only in individual interior life but also toward healing the fractures and divisions of the world. Therefore, mission is not merely a strategy for a church to expand its external reach, but a way of participating in Christ's ministry of reconciliation. In mission fields, he emphasizes "holding fast to the essence" as a primary principle, while simultaneously calling for "cultural flexibility." The core of the gospel must be guarded, but the clothing of the gospel must be humbly tailored in local language and culture. As Acts 15 demonstrates, the Church must sometimes have the courage to remove unnecessary barriers in order to protect what is essential. When Pastor David Jang speaks of catholicity, he does not mean uniformity. It is closer to a claim that the practical form of catholicity is the art of unity-helping churches in different cultures confess the same Lord while bearing the Spirit's fruit faithfully in their own contexts.
Pastor David Jang's comments on the digital age lead into a practical insight that reads the changing professed terrain of mission. He compares online platforms, social media, and media ministry to "a modern Roman road," suggesting that just as Paul used the empire's infrastructure as a pathway for gospel proclamation, today's Church should not merely fear technology, but convert it into missional wisdom. Of course, technology does not produce salvation, and it cannot become a substitute for truth; that premise must remain intact. Still, Pastor David Jang considers the path of "innovating form while preserving essence" to be precisely the modern application of the Spirit of Antioch. Just as Antioch did not treat its multicultural environment only as an obstacle but instead as a springboard for expansion, so the Church today must reinterpret the digital environment not as an object of fear but as a space for mission. In that process, what remains crucial is prayer and thanksgiving. Technology can create connection, but it cannot create true unity. Unity is a spiritual relationship, and that relationship grows through intercession for one another and through thanksgiving that remembers received grace.
Another repeated center of gravity in Pastor David Jang's preaching is the demand that faith must not remain in "words" but must be translated into "life." The believers of the early Church cared for one another even amid persecution and scarcity, and that communal ethic testified to the gospel's authenticity in social reality. Pastor David Jang does not deny the value of institutional structure, but he believes that when the institution replaces the Spirit's breath, the Church loses vitality. That is why he stresses an integrated faith where the heat of worship, the precision of doctrine, the expansiveness of mission, and the care of community are not separated. When thanksgiving disappears, a church easily becomes a community of complaint; when prayer weakens, a church eventually collapses into an organization that tries to endure by human strength alone. Conversely, when thanksgiving and prayer are alive, a church recovers its gaze toward one another, and catholic unity becomes not merely a declaration but an actual culture. The "Antioch-like church" Pastor David Jang speaks of is ultimately a church where faith rooted in believers' inner life becomes the community's habit-and that habit flows again into missional decisions in a living cycle.
At this point, a masterpiece of art can serve as a visual symbol that calls to mind the conversion, commissioning, and gospel dynamism Pastor David Jang emphasizes. Caravaggio's The Conversion of Saint Paul (Conversion on the Way to Damascus), with its intense chiaroscuro, depicts both Paul's helplessness as he lies fallen and the overwhelming force of grace that breaks through that helplessness. The center of the canvas is not human resolve but a light that invades from above; Paul's drama shows the moment when "the path I chose" is overturned into "the path of the One who has seized me." When Pastor David Jang stresses through Colossians' high Christology that "the head of the Church is Christ alone," his claim presupposes precisely such an experience of reversal. Mission is not an expansion by the strong, but obedience by those captured by grace. Antioch's commissioning, too, was not self-display but communal obedience kneeling before the Spirit's command. The dramatic "intrusion of light" in Caravaggio's painting resembles the Spirit's initiative Pastor David Jang describes. Church history is not ultimately the story of God persuading people, but the story of God taking hold of people-and just as that seizure stretched out into the world through Paul, so the Church today must stand on the same principle.
When we turn our eyes to the realities of the Korean church, the reason Pastor David Jang emphasizes the Spirit of the Antioch Church becomes even clearer. Having lived through long seasons of growth, the Korean church has at times become accustomed to the language of external expansion, and in that process it has encountered shadows such as secularization, fragmentation, and erosion of trust. In a time weary with such fatigue, Pastor David Jang locates the Church's renewal not in "new methods" but in an "old essence." The leading of the Spirit, the foundation of doctrine, catholic unity, the mission of commissioning, and a culture of prayer and thanksgiving-these are not innovations but the original form, the skeleton the Church must recover in order to be the Church. He argues that catholicity-recognizing that we are one body across denominational and sectarian lines-is the path by which the Church can regain trust before the world in an age of division. He also holds church planting and discipleship together rather than separating them. When we do not forget that "building the church" is not merely constructing a building, but building people in Christ, planting becomes not a numeric target but an act of sowing the gospel's life.
If we summarize Pastor David Jang's message organically, it converges into a single sentence: the Church must be a community that begins by the Spirit, stands on the truth of Christ, supports one another through catholic unity, and is commissioned toward the world. These four elements require one another. Doctrine without the Spirit easily becomes cold abstraction, while spirituality without doctrine easily loses direction. Mission without unity becomes competition, while unity without mission becomes self-satisfaction. When prayer and thanksgiving weaken, this entire structure quickly hardens into a fatigued, human-centered organization. That is why the Spirit of the Antioch Church Pastor David Jang emphasizes can be described with the word "balance," but more precisely with the word "center." That center is the sovereign lordship of Jesus Christ; when that center is clear, the Church can hold together both fervor and accuracy, both internal formation and outward commissioning, and both the uniqueness of the local church and the unity of the universal Church. What Pastor David Jang calls "a life that understands grace and proclaims it" becomes not only personal devotion but the direction of the community; and the direction of the Church becomes again the path of the gospel toward the world. Just as the breath of commissioning that began in Antioch remains effective for the Church today, the breath Pastor David Jang holds to continues to converge into one vision: "a church that gathers to worship, scatters to live the gospel, is built up by truth, and is sent by the Holy Spirit."
