When Teams Break

If apostolic teams were only ever a story of triumph, we’d have reason to be suspicious. The New Testament is too honest for that.

The previous posts in this series have painted a picture of something remarkable — Paul’s divinely commissioned, gift-diverse, Spirit-formed teams achieving extraordinary things across the Roman Empire. All of that is true. But it’s not the whole truth. Because Paul’s teams also fractured, faltered, and fell apart. People left. Friendships ruptured. Trust was broken. And the greatest missionary partnership in the early church ended not with a commissioning service but with a blazing row.

If we’re going to recover genuine apostolic team leadership, we need to be honest about what happens when teams break. Because they will.

The Sharp Disagreement

“Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company” (Acts 15:37-39).

Let those words land. This is Paul and Barnabas — the original apostolic team. The pair commissioned together by the Holy Spirit at Antioch (Acts 13:2). The men who’d been stoned, chased out of cities, and worshipped as gods side by side. They had history. They had fruit. They had a divine mandate. And they couldn’t resolve a disagreement about a young man called Mark.

The Greek word Luke uses is paroxysmos — a violent irritation, a paroxysm. It’s the word we’d use for a seizure or an explosion. This wasn’t a measured discussion that ended in a polite agreement to differ. This was a rupture.

And notice what caused it. Not theology. Not moral failure. Personnel. Barnabas wanted to give his cousin Mark a second chance after Mark had abandoned the first missionary journey at Perga (Acts 13:13). Paul refused. He’d been burned once and wasn’t willing to risk the mission on someone who’d already walked away.

Both men had a case. Paul was protecting the mission. Barnabas was protecting a person. Paul saw the desertion and drew a line. Barnabas saw the potential and extended grace. This is the kind of disagreement that destroys teams precisely because both sides are partially right.

What’s remarkable is what Luke doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell us who was right. He doesn’t resolve the tension for us. He just reports the rupture and moves on. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus. Paul chose Silas and went to Syria and Cilicia. The one team became two. The mission continued — but the partnership was over.

The Antioch Confrontation

If the Barnabas split was painful, the Antioch incident was dangerous.

“When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray” (Galatians 2:11-13).

Peter — the rock, the leader of the Twelve — caved to social pressure and withdrew from eating with Gentile believers. This wasn’t a private wobble. It was a public capitulation that threatened to undo the gospel itself. If Jewish and Gentile believers couldn’t eat together, the unity of the body was a fiction. And the damage cascaded: “even Barnabas was led astray.”

That phrase should stop us. Barnabas — the man who’d championed the Gentile mission from the beginning, who’d seen the grace of God in Antioch and was glad (Acts 11:23) — was pulled into the hypocrisy by the gravitational force of Peter’s example. If Barnabas could be swept along, anyone could.

Paul confronted Peter publicly. “I opposed him to his face.” This is team conflict at its most acute — one apostle publicly rebuking another because the gospel was at stake. Paul didn’t take Peter aside for a quiet word. The offence was public, so the correction had to be public. The integrity of the mission demanded it.

N.T. Wright argues that this confrontation reveals how seriously Paul took the social implications of the gospel. The table fellowship of Jewish and Gentile believers wasn’t a secondary issue — it was the living proof that God had created one new humanity in Christ. When Peter withdrew, he wasn’t just being socially cautious. He was denying in practice what the gospel declared in principle.

Demas Loved This World

If the Barnabas split was a fracture between friends and the Antioch confrontation was a fight for the gospel, the departure of Demas was something quieter and sadder — a slow drift that ended in desertion.

“Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica” (2 Timothy 4:10).

One sentence. No argument recorded, no dramatic confrontation. Just a man who had once been listed among Paul’s “fellow workers” (Philemon 24), who had sent greetings alongside Luke to the Colossian church (Colossians 4:14), and who now, when the cost of association with Paul became too high, walked away.

Paul writes this from a Roman prison, likely facing execution. The timing makes the betrayal sharper. This isn’t Demas disagreeing with Paul’s theology or strategy. It’s Demas choosing comfort over costly loyalty. He “loved this present world” — the now age, as the Greek puts it — more than the age to come.

And he wasn’t alone in leaving. Paul continues: “Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me” (2 Timothy 4:11). Some of these departures were legitimate ministry assignments. But the overall picture is devastating. The great apostolic team leader, near the end of his life, is almost alone. The team that had once stretched across the Mediterranean had thinned to a physician who refused to leave.

Mark’s Redemption

But here’s where the story turns

In the same letter where Paul records Demas’s desertion, he writes to Timothy: “Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry” (2 Timothy 4:11).

Mark. The same John Mark whose desertion at Perga had caused the rupture between Paul and Barnabas. The man Paul had refused to trust with a second chance. Now, years later, Paul doesn’t just tolerate Mark — he specifically requests him. He calls him euchrestos — “useful,” “profitable,” “helpful.” The man who’d once been written off as a liability had become, in Paul’s estimation, essential.

What happened in the intervening years? Luke doesn’t tell us directly, but the evidence points to Barnabas. After the split with Paul, Barnabas took Mark to Cyprus and invested in him. The encourager did what encouragers do — he saw the potential that Paul couldn’t see in that moment, and he refused to give up on it. By the time Paul writes Colossians, Mark is with him in Rome and Paul instructs the Colossians to welcome him (Colossians 4:10). By the time he writes 2 Timothy, Mark is someone Paul actively wants by his side.

The team broke. But the person who caused the break was ultimately restored. And the man who refused to give him a second chance eventually changed his mind. That’s not a failure of apostolic leadership — that’s the gospel working its way through the mess of human relationships.

What the Fractures Reveal

So what do we do with all this? Let me suggest four things that the breaking of Paul’s teams reveals.

First, team conflict is not evidence that the mission has failed. The Paul-Barnabas split was agonising, but it produced two missionary teams instead of one. Barnabas continued fruitful ministry. Paul continued fruitful ministry. And Mark — the cause of the rupture — was restored. God’s purposes are not derailed by human disagreements, even sharp ones. The mission is always bigger than the team.

Second, there are times when confrontation is an act of faithfulness, not a failure of relationship. Paul’s rebuke of Peter at Antioch was not a personality clash. It was a defence of the gospel. When the integrity of the mission is at stake — when people are being excluded, when the truth is being compromised, when leaders are acting out of fear rather than conviction — someone has to speak. As I explored in the previous post, someone has to lead. And sometimes leading means opposing a friend to their face.

Third, not everyone finishes the race. Demas is a sobering reminder that proximity to Paul was no guarantee of perseverance. You could work alongside the greatest apostolic leader in history and still choose the comforts of the present world over the costliness of the mission. Teams will lose people — not always through conflict, but sometimes through the quiet erosion of commitment that comes when the cost outweighs the desire. As I write in Empowered, gifts don’t automatically operate just because we have them — we activate them by faith, and we can also let them grow dormant through neglect.

Fourth, and most importantly, broken teams are not beyond redemption. Mark’s story is the heart of this post. The deserter became the helper. The man who walked away became the man Paul specifically requested. This didn’t happen overnight — it took years, and it took Barnabas’s willingness to invest in someone Paul had given up on. But it happened. And if it happened for Mark, it can happen in any team where people are willing to extend the same grace they themselves have received.

The Honest Church

Here’s the prophetic edge. We live in a church culture that is often terrible at handling team fractures. We either pretend they don’t happen — projecting an image of seamless unity that fools no one — or we catastrophise them, treating every disagreement as a scandal and every departure as a betrayal.

Paul’s letters model something better. He’s ruthlessly honest. He names names — Peter, Demas, Alexander the metalworker who “did me a great deal of harm” (2 Timothy 4:14). He doesn’t pretend that apostolic teams are immune to conflict. But he also doesn’t let the fractures define the story. The very letter that records Demas’s desertion also records Mark’s restoration. The same apostle who split from Barnabas later speaks of him with warmth (1 Corinthians 9:6).

Teams break. People leave. Friendships fracture under the weight of disagreement, pressure, and the ordinary failings of human beings trying to do extraordinary things. That’s not a reason to stop building teams. It’s a reason to build them with honesty, with grace, and with the kind of cruciform love that can survive the fractures — and sometimes redeem them.

Mark’s story proves it. The team that breaks is not necessarily the team that’s finished.