A couple of weeks ago, as part of our ongoing examination of the life of the early church, I spoke about being a disturbing church, and one of the examples we looked at was in chapter 5 of Acts. What was the outcome of the early church disturbing those around them? It grew.
This is the context for the passage that we are looking at today. I want to take a slightly different approach to the one that I usually take in a morning sermon. I’d like us to look at it almost a verse at a time, take a bit of time over each verse, and then try and draw some general principles out of what we’ve read.
So, we pick up in verse one, as I said a moment ago, the background is that the church is growing. The number of disciples, those who are choosing to follow Jesus, is increasing. This is a good thing, isn’t it? More people wanting to be Christians, to acknowledging their sin, turning to God for forgiveness, being filled with the Holy Spirit, committing to live their lives in a new way. That all sounds good.
Well, not totally. Growth is often accompanied by growing pains. In this case there was a rise in tension between the different nationalities in the young church.
Later on in Acts we find tension between the Christians who came from a Jewish background, and those who were from a non-Jewish, a Gentile, background. But here it’s not that. The vast majority of early Christians were Jewish. Here the tension is between the Hellenistic, that is to say Greek heritage, Jews, and the Hebraic Jews.
Where is this tension coming from? Some of the Greek widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. How often in church life over the years have problems arising out of a situation where a good thing is being done, but someone has got left out. Especially when a church is growing and the systems and ways of doing things haven’t caught up with the growth?
So, we’ve got a church which is doing the things that we talked about a couple of weeks ago – caring and sharing, and which is growing, but has found itself falling short in its life together. What are they going to do about it?
Let’s have a look at verses 2-4. Who have we got here? We’ve got the twelve – eleven of the apostles chosen by Jesus and a twelfth, chosen in Acts chapter 1 to replace Judas. They were the ones charged with preaching the message of Jesus, and they are keen to focus on this ministry. So, they get the whole church – all the disciples – together, and propose a solution. They suggest that seven people be chosen to organise the pastoral care of the church, and its practical outworking.
I think it’s worth spending a moment here looking at the qualifications that the twelve lay out for this role. They want people who are known to be full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. It seems to me that this shows that these ministries were in no sense less important or second class. They were vitally important to the life of the church, and that is why they wanted people who were wise and full of the Holy Spirit to do them.
It is not that the 12 thought that preaching was more important than pastoral care and hospitality, but that they recognised that preaching was what God had called them to, and that God had other people, equally spiritually gifted, that were called to other ministries that needed fulfilling in the
church.
In verses 5 and 6 we find the reaction of the members of the church, and the implementation of this suggestion. It seemed like a good idea to all the disciples, and they chose seven people to fulfil this role.
Let’s just pause there a minute, and reflect on those two words. They chose. Who are they? The members of the church. How did they choose? We don’t know. We know that the 12 had recommended they choose people of wisdom and the Holy Spirit, but nothing about how that went in practice. I wonder if there were some of them really keen to do it, and as they volunteered everybody kinda nodded. I wonder if there were some who sat quietly, and when their names were suggested looked a bit surprised but were happy to go for it. I wonder if there were some who were completely unsure that they were the right person, but allowed themselves to be persuaded? We don’t know. What we do know is that the people of God, together, chose those they believed God was calling to this ministry.
We don’t know much about many of the seven were chosen. They all have Greek names, but that wasn’t uncommon across Palestine, so doesn’t tell us anything particular.
As we read through Acts we find both Stephen and Philip exercising other ministries, as well as this ministry of organising the day to day life of the church. It strikes me that this is similar to the 12. We know all their names, but apart from appearing in the lists of apostles we know very little else about what they did or who they were. All we have is their names. God knows exactly who they are and what they did as they were obedient to God’s call on their lives. Not everybody in any kind of ministry becomes well known, or visible to others. God knows their names, and everything about them though, even if people don’t.
As we get to verse 6 we find more evidence that this ministry was valued by the apostles. Those who had been chosen were prayed for and commissioned for the work and ministry that they were to do.
And what was the result of all this? In verse seven we are back to the beginning – even more growth. The word of God spread and the number of disciples increased rapidly, even some of the priests were coming to believe in Jesus. Happy days.
The easy conclusion to draw from this is that the apostles called to preach the word were freed up to spend more time on the ministry of the word, so the word spread and more people came to faith. But I wonder if there isn’t something a lot richer going on here. It seems to me that in parallel with this, the church’s life was healthier, people were welcomed in and integrated more effectively, the church as a whole was working better, and this added rocket fuel to the growth rate.
The church as a whole was working well. Conflict wasn’t allowed to fester or turn into bitterness. It was brought to the surface, talked about, and dealt with. People were exercising the ministries that God had called them to, that they were good at, that others in the church had invited them to consider. People stepped into roles that needed doing, some with a high profile, some happy just to get on with the behind the scenes stuff. Different ministries were valued equally, and people fulfilling them were prayed for and recognised. The church as a whole was working well.
I wonder how you feel we are working at All Saints? In some ways we are in a similar situation. The church is growing, new people are joining us, people are coming to faith and wanting to follow Jesus. This can be uncomfortable, especially for those who have been around a while, and suddenly find that we don’t recognise everyone. Are we willing to do what is needed and actively welcome those who are joining us?
We have a very full life as a church, there is lots going on. We are blessed by the number of ministries that we are able to be involved with. There is certainly plenty to organise. I know that I can’t keep track of it all.
It feels to me that there is much that is working well and that we can celebrate, the progress we’ve made recently in our Ecochurch project is just one example of this. There are always some teams and roles that are running a bit thin on the ground, and could do with additional support. We had a really helpful conversation about this at our recent PCC away day, which will inform some of our approach to this in the new year. In the meantime, if there are areas of ministry that you feel called to, please do talk to me or one of the action group chairs, and we can get you going.
In the verses we looked at in Acts today we saw a church that was working well, but as it grew discovered that one area if its life stopped working as well. They addressed it, got it working well again, and continued to grow. It seems to me that in general All Saints is working well and we are growing. We’ve not got everything 100% right, but one of the keys to continuing to grow is to be open, honest, and gracious with each other when things go wrong, and to tackle problems together, so that we can learn to work even better, and grow even more in faith, love, and discipleship.
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