Acts Series · Acts 13

Bring me
Mark.

John Mark got off the boat at Perga and went home. Paul and Barnabas kept walking. Everybody in the room has been on one side of that story or the other.

July 5, 2026  ·  Garrette Milliken

Paul, Barnabas, and John Mark sailed together from Cyprus. They landed at the port town of Perga, on the coast of Pamphylia. Then John Mark left them and turned back for Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas kept walking, inland, toward Antioch of Pisidia, without him.

That's the whole plot in two sentences. Garrette Milliken preached from it anyway, because almost everybody in the room already knows what it feels like to watch somebody get off the boat.

Sent, not just going

The story starts at Antioch, with the church fasting and praying over Barnabas and Saul before anyone boards a ship. Brother James read the passage from the King James that morning.

As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

Acts 13:2-3

Garrette pointed at one word. Barnabas and Saul were sent. A few verses later, when the team reaches Perga and John Mark turns back, the text says he went. Two different verbs for two different people in the same sentence.

"Paul and Barnabas are sent. John Mark went," Garrette said. "Not the same thing."

The port at Perga

Scripture never says why John Mark turned around. Garrette didn't pretend to know for certain either, but he offered a guess worth sitting with: excitement had gotten John Mark on the boat, and excitement runs out long before the journey does.

Paul and his companions then left Paphos by ship for Pamphylia, landing at the port town of Perga. There, John Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem.

Acts 13:13

"Excitement will get you on the boat," Garrette told the church, "but it's conviction that'll keep you going to the next town, even when you have to bleed in order to do so." Paul and Barnabas had an unction on their lives, a sense of being caught up in something bigger than a good idea. John Mark, Garrette said, may have only seen a ministry opportunity.

This is for anybody who's ever been left on the way

Garrette turned the passage on the room early and stayed there. Everybody in it has, somewhere between a starting line and a finish line, gotten left. A marriage. A friendship. A mentor. A pastor. People come and go, he said, and it happens to all of us.

The first thing he wanted the church to hear: it is not always your fault. Even Jesus watched people leave.

"If they left Jesus," Garrette said, "then you can't expect them not to come and go in your life too." Many of Jesus's own disciples turned back and stopped following him, and Jesus let them go without chasing them down (John 6:66-67).

The second thing: sometimes people leave not because you are too much, but because where God is taking you is too much for them to carry. "It's not always because you're too much," he said. "Sometimes it's because where God's calling you is too much." Not everyone has the lung capacity for the altitude of somebody else's assignment.

John Mark leaving can blind you to Barnabas staying.

That line did more work in the room than any other one. Garrette's point: it is possible to spend so much energy grieving who walked away that you fail to notice who never did. Somewhere in every life there is a Barnabas still in the boat, and he is easy to miss if all your attention is on the empty seat.

Bring me Mark

Garrette carried the story forward to the last chapter Paul ever wrote. Years later, aged and near the end, Paul is alone. Demas has deserted him. Crescens and Titus have scattered to other cities. Only Luke is still there.

Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry.

2 Timothy 4:11

The man Paul asks for by name is the same one who got off the boat at Perga. "Bring me Mark," Garrette said. "Bring me the one who left me at first. Because time has a way of softening the heart."

He didn't resolve the tension between the two men into a tidy lesson. He landed on something plainer: the assignment does not change based on who is present or who is absent. John Mark's leaving didn't put Paul on the boat, and John Mark's leaving never had the power to take him off it either.

Garrette closed by asking the room to think of the person who has been through it with them and never left. Not a summary point. A name. He asked whether they had said thank you to that person lately, or whether the John Marks in their life had taken up so much attention that the Barnabases went unthanked.

He didn't hand out a next step. He just asked who that person is for you, and whether you'd call them today.