Prayer Leadership (Acts 6:1–7)

SCRIPTURE VIDEO OF ACTS 6:1-7

Introduction

Today, we're going to talk about leadership in the church, and since we are in this series called “A Praying Church,” we going to look particularly at prayer leadership. It's really important to understand what the Bible says about the priorities of leadership within the church because leadership can really either improve a situation or make it really worse.

It's ironic to me that I'm saying this and preaching this before election day on Tuesday. People are saying about this election the same thing I've heard about every election in my life: “This is the most important election of our lifetime.” I'm pretty sure the next election will also be the most important election in our lifetime.

But to quote another often said statement, “Elections do have consequences.” Why is that? Because leaders take nations in a direction that they believe that people want. Leaders say these are the priorities I see for the nation, and if you elect me, I'm going to lead this nation according to those priorities.

I do believe Christians should be good citizens, so vote this Tuesday.

Church leadership is different than the leadership of a nation. Church leaders are responsible for congregational care. Just like any other Christian church leaders should love God and love others, and that should be particularly evident in the leaders of the church.

But church leadership is different than the leadership of a nation because church leaders cannot be led by the priorities of the congregation. Christian church leaders must be led under the authority and will of Jesus Christ.

Church leaders have a book, and the priorities of God in his word must be the priorities of the church. Remember, it is not our church. It is his church, and his people. The Lord Jesus sets the priorities for his church.

The Bible tells us a lot about the structure of a church. It tells us a lot about the leadership of a church and what the priorities of leadership within the church should be. We're going to look today at the priorities of biblical leadership within a church. What are the priorities of biblical leadership, especially when it comes to prayer?

We're going to be looking at this through the lens of Acts 6:1-7. If you have your Bibles, you can go there. We're still in the early days of the church. This is still a very Jewish-centric movement. The early church is growing in the Jewish community and they are going through some growing pains. The Apostles are going to give a leadership solution for a challenge within the early church.

Pray

The Problem in the Early Church

Explanation

If you think problems in the church are new, they are not. A problem arose in the early church between two groups of Jews. This is still at a time when the church is a is a primarily Jewish church. There has not been this big movement into the Gentile world yet.

Acts 6:1 CSB

1 In those days, as the disciples were increasing in number, there arose a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against the Hebraic Jews that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.

In Acts 6:1 “There was a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against the Hebraic Jews": Now the Hellenistic Jews were a group of Jews that had probably come from the diaspora

the diaspora refers to the Jews who had migrated out of Israel into the surrounding areas outside of Israel in the first century

These Jews who had migrated out had come back into Jerusalem,

for instance, Jews would travel back to Jerusalem for major Jewish holidays like Passover

but now these Hellenistic Jews spoke Greek, perhaps had picked up some of the culture outside of Jerusalem.

The Hebraic Jews spoke Aramaic, so there was at least a language barrier that separated the two groups of Jews. Even today when there is a language barriers, that can sometimes often cause one group of people to be overlooked by the majority group.

Now the complaint quickly arose that, as it says in Acts 6:1, “widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.” Now in understanding this verse you have to picture a society that does not have a social safety net. Women depended on men, specifically their husbands, for their financial security. And when the husband died, the widow would often be left to seek the charity of others. Widows were very poor because they no longer had their husbands to support them.

Contemporary Judaism within the first century realized the need to protect the needy, and they had a system of distribution for the needy. And the early church may have followed what was the practice of contemporary Judaism in helping out the needy.

The Jews had a weekly distribution called the quppah that they gave out every Friday. It consisted of enough money for fourteen meals.

There was also a daily distribution called the tamhuy consisting of food and drink for nonresidents and transients. (1)

Early Christians may have embraced elements of both systems and sought to excel in it. They realized that a love for others, a love particularly for the needy, was an essential part of their faith.

An early Christian leader, particularly in the Jerusalem Church, James, said this in James 1:27,

James 1:27 CSB

27 Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

And the basic complaint that we're seeing from the Hellenistic Jews is: Take care of our needy as well. Christianity is a pure and undefiled religion that takes care of everyone. So take care of our needy as well.

Transition

Now, the response from the Apostles teaches us some incredible lessons about church leadership. They gather all of the disciples around and they tell them in Acts 6:2 that, “It would not be right for us to give up preaching the word of God to wait on tables.”

Now this sounds awful, until you realize that God has not called a single person to do everything in the church. If a single person is doing all of the work in a church, you are sitting in an incredibly unhealthy church.

The Apostles realized that there were people among them that would do a much better job at serving the widows in need than they would, because God has uniquely gifted and designed people in the church for the task.

Furthermore, if they did that work, it would rob the church of the giftings that they had as men who had spent three years in the most incredible seminary any Christian has ever gone to, men who had walked and talked with Jesus Christ and learned from him. Their unique role was to share the gift of those teachings and the preaching of God's word to others.

Each persons role in the church is valuable and needed. When you work according to the giftings and power of the Spirit of God in your life, the work that you do in the power of his Spirit gives glory to God.

Key Insight

There will always be a legitimate needs that arise in the church. The key is to have the right people serving in the Spirit of God focused on the responsibilities that God has given them.

Application

You can see this in your own life. I mean, we all have tremendous demands on our time and our energy (and all the tired people of God said amen).

If you're a parent, you're trying to juggle all of these different things. You're taking kids to school and you're taking kids to sports and you're taking kids to this thing and that thing. you're trying to juggle your own health and your own family responsibilities.

And all of these things, what I'll call the tyranny of the urgent, can suck the life out of a person, because what ends up happening is you fail to prioritize the things that you realize center your life in the first place. Time in the Scriptures. Time in prayer. Time seeking the presence of God.

And I know this is happening to you because it happens in my own life. The tyranny of the urgent always wants to take us away from our primary responsibility of taking time each day to worship God through prayer in his word.

We only have so much time and energy, and our priority is to be with God. Commit to seeking God’s guidance in setting healthy priorities.

Delegation for Prayer and the Word

Explanation

Now, in a stroke of biblical genius, the Apostles chose to delegate. Delegation is biblical. They said this in Acts 6:3,

Acts 6:3 CSB

3 Brothers and sisters, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom, whom we can appoint to this duty.

A good leader is good at delegation, but the key to delegation is that the right people need to be in the right seat. They wanted “seven men of good reputation.” Saving others is an important and vital role for the church. So take a look around you. Look at their resume.

I don’t mean to look at their resume for their past job duties. What I mean is, what is the resume of their Christian character? Are they men who already serve others? Can we affirm through their reputation that they are men full of the Spirit of God? Let me tell you that a person full of the Spirit of God is recognizable, because the God spoken about in the Bible is evident in their life.

Are they men full of biblical wisdom? Every church needs strong Christian men and women. But the church is blessed when men stand up and say, “I will be the man that God has called me to be.” The church is blessed when men say I love Jesus, and I want to follow him with my life. Men, be the husbands, the fathers, the church members that God has called you to be. Love Jesus with every ounce of your being, and let his love shine in your family.

If God has called you to lead, be willing to lead. Ephesians 4:11-12 says this,

Ephesians 4:11–12 CSB

11 And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ,

When you serve in the role and the responsibility that God has called you to your leadership will build up the body of Christ around you. If God has called you to lead, be willing to lead.

We delegate responsibilities in the church because when primary roles of leadership are not lived out, it takes away from the equipping and the building up of the body of Christ.

Transition

And that brings us to an interesting point in Acts 6 where the Apostles outline their primary responsibilities of congregational care. It says in Acts 6:4,

Acts 6:4 CSB

4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

Now I’ve got to be open and honest and tell you that this verse has rocked me in 2024. I tend to have a verse that drives me through the year, and this year it has been Acts 6:4. I came upon this verse earlier this year, and it has shook me all year. I cannot get my mind off of Acts 6:4.

Because as I would understand this scenario, the apostles are acting in the place of what we would describe today as elders or pastors of a church congregation. They have just delegated responsibilities to strong leaders in their church who have the gift of service.

These leaders would be equivalent to what I would describe as deacons or deaconesses today. We have deacons and deaconesses at our church who are incredible leaders and serve our church well.

And according to that understanding, they've said our primary responsibilities as elders over this congregation is prayer and the Ministry of the Word.

Now I have read Acts 6:4 multiple times in my life. And as I've read it, I contextualized it in modern day church culture. I said, “Okay, these apostles were very prayerful men who would work hard in preaching God's word. That’s great.” But is that what it says? Because I think if that is all it was, I would be okay.

When you're reading Scripture, you have to ask yourself, “What did the author intend to say in this text?”

If you are ever in a Bible study where people start saying, “To me, this means this, or to me, this Bible verse means this,” throw that out. It doesn't matter what it means to you. What matters is, when the Spirit of God was moving in the author, what did the author intend to say in this text? I want to know what God is saying in this text, not what it means to me.

So I took a look again at Acts 6:4, if you're looking at this in the Greek, there are a couple important things to note here. The Apostles are devoting themselves to two things, and each of these things have equal weight in the text. The two things are joined together by the word “and.” It's like someone saying, “I play baseball and soccer.”

The word “prayer” and the term “Ministry of the word” both have the same article. So for the Apostles, they saw their primary responsibility as they were devoting themselves to the prayer and to the Ministry of the word. They weren’t just preachers of the church. They were prayer leaders of the church. They led the church to pray. So they were devoting themselves to leading the church to pray and to leading the church in the ministry of the word.

Now we've been looking in the book of Acts at times of corporate prayer, but what I want to find out today is was Jesus a prayer leader? Because the disciples would be following the practice and leadership of Jesus.

Did Jesus lead people to pray?

Jesus as a Prayer Leader

Explanation

Jesus modeled prayer throughout his ministry.

Think if you were one of the disciples. You are spending three years with Jesus and you're seeing him do incredible, amazing things What would be the one thing that you would ask him to teach you?

Would you say,

Jesus, teach me how to heal people. That's incredible.

Jesus, teach me how to cast out demons.

Jesus, teach me how to preach amazing sermons.

What would you ask Jesus? What did the disciples ask Jesus? Luke 11:1,

Luke 11:1 CSB

1 He was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.”

They see Jesus praying, modeling prayer for them, and they say, “Jesus teach us how to pray like that!”

The Scriptures on Jesus’ personal prayer life is just so convicting. Think of this: If someone were to write a story of your personal life, would your personal prayer life be part of the subject of that story?

It was for Jesus. His personal prayer life stands out so much that the gospel authors write that Jesus was a man who prayed. In Mark 1:35, Jesus goes out “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark” he goes “to a deserted place; and there he was praying.” In Luke 5:16, Jesus “often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.” In Luke 6:12 Jesus “went out to the mountain to pray and spent all night in prayer to God.” He does this before choosing his twelve disciples. Jesus was a man who prayed.

But how about leading corporate prayer? Does Jesus do that? Does Jesus take a group of people and lead them in prayer. Take a look at Luke 9:28-29,

Luke 9:28–29 CSB

28 About eight days after this conversation, he took along Peter, John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.

Jesus takes Peter, John, and James up on a mountain for a prayer meeting, and it is the most incredible prayer meeting anyone has ever been to. Jesus is leading his disciples in prayer.

If you look in the gospels, John 17 is an entire chapter of Jesus praying. Did John listen in while Jesus was in his prayer closet? No. The chapter starts in John 17:1 “Jesus spoke these things, looked up to heaven, and said...” and then goes into a prayer before the disciples. Jesus was a prayer leader for his people.

What about the frustration that Jesus had with his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane? Listen to what he says in Matthew 26:40-41,

Matthew 26:40–41 CSB

40 Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. He asked Peter, “So, couldn’t you stay awake with me one hour? 41 Stay awake and pray, so that you won’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

At the moment of being on his way to the cross, Jesus is leading his people to pray. He’s telling them, “Stay awake and pray so that you won't fall into the temptation!” You have a weak flesh, and you need prayer.

And this is why the Apostles understood that one of their priorities in Acts 6:4 was to be a prayer leader for God’s people. Before them was a congregation of people whose spirit was willing, but flesh was weak. And to fight a weak flesh, you need to align your spirit with the Spirit of God.

How do pastors help their congregation fight a weak spirit? Pastors need to tell their congregation to stay awake and pray, and to feast on the Ministry of the Word of God. The priority for a pastor must be to lead God’s church in the ministry of God’s word and to lead God’s church to pray.

Our lives are very much like a marathon.

If you're running a marathon, in a marathon, they set up a water station every 2 to 3 miles, or about every 15 to 20 minutes as you're running. When you're running the marathon, they encourage you to drink water even if you're not thirsty at the water station.

According to some research, If someone were to never drink water during a marathon, they would certainly get dehydration. You would get muscle cramps, you would get a heat stroke, fatigue, and you would put your heart at severe cardiac risk if you were to never stop and drink water.

And as we go through this marathon we call life, we can find ourselves constantly on this treadmill, constantly running after the tyranny of the urgent. We wake up barely making it to work, running in, running out, trying to get the kids, going to this place in that.

We can run for miles without realizing we need to stop. And we wonder why we have stress and anxiety and pain. This is why God instituted the Sabbath, because we’re not meant to be always on the go. Like the runner we need to stop every two to three miles, get in God's word, and pray.

Are you someone who is constantly on the go? If that’s you, set priorities. Set regular times for the sustenance you need of God’s word and prayer? Make that your priority this week.

As we speak of priorities, what happens when a church has biblical leadership and biblical priorities?

The Fruit of Biblical Leadership and Priorities

Explanation

As the apostles remained faithful to their calling, the church grew, both numerically and spiritually.

Think of what's just happened in Acts 6. The right people are in the right seats. God has gifted his church with incredible servant leaders and these servant leaders are serving the congregation according to the gifts that God has given them. The church is blessed through these servant leaders. I believe Acts 6 is the beginning of the office of deacon in the church.

The apostles are focusing in on their priorities, the priorities of the elders or pastors of the congregation to lead the church in prayer and the ministry of the Word. They are faithful prayer leaders and they are faithful expositors of the Scriptures. They're pointing people to Jesus.

And what is the fruit then of a church where the leaders of the congregation are people of Christian character? You see the Spirit of God in their life, and they are leading the church according to the gifts that God has given them.

The fruit of a church with biblical leadership and biblical priorities is the spread of the gospel. Take a look at Acts 6:7,

Acts 6:7 CSB

7 So the word of God spread, the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly in number, and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith.

Here’s an important thing to know: Healthy things grow. A church that is healthy in its biblical leadership and healthy in its biblical priorities will grow. The word of God will spread. And when the word of God spreads, a church with healthy, biblical leadership and biblical priorities calls people to be obedient to the faith. And to be obedient to the faith means to be a people who are in God's word and to be a people who pray.

Paul said to the church in Colossae in Colossians 4:2-4,

Colossians 4:2–4 CSB

2 Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving. 3 At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains, 4 so that I may make it known as I should.

Let's work backwards here. Paul has a priority to make the gospel known, to make the mystery of Christ known to the world. And in order to speak the mystery of Christ to people, he is asking for the church to be a people who pray, who stay alert in prayer. So he says to them, “Devote yourselves to prayer.”

I read this, and I wonder. America is in a spiritual decline. Our cities across the country, including San Diego, is in a spiritual decline. Less people are coming to church. There are less people in America today who would call themselves Christian than at any other point in our history.

Could this be because the church has forgotten what it means to be a people who devote themselves to prayer? Spiritual problems need a spiritual solution. It's not a business plan.

Because the people devoted to the ministry of the word of God and devoted to prayer will inevitably be people who spread the word of God.

People are tired of being marketed to. They’re tired of being sold the next best thing. They want to know, is this for real? And when the church doesn't pray, they church doesn't act like this is for real.

When the church prays, the church shows that they have faith that God hears him.

When the church prays, the church shows that they depends on God alone.

When the church prays, the church shows that they have faith in a God that answers them.

When the church prays, the church shows that they want God to lead them.

When the church prays, the church shows that they are preparing for an eternity with God.

The world doesn’t need a church with good production qualities and a fancy business plan. The world needs a church that believes what they say. The world needs a church the preaches God’s word boldly, courageously, without fear. The world needs a church devoted to prayer, a praying church.

Conclusion

Summary

Healthy things grow. The health and growth of the church depends on biblical leadership and biblical priorities. We need the right people in the right seats.

Our church needs each other. We need leaders who lead according to their spiritual gifts, to the way God designed them.

Biblical priorities means that we have a faith in God that's shown through the ministry of his word and by a people devoted to pray.

I ask this week that you will pray for the leaders here at Catalyst. Pray for me, for Pastor Johannes, for the Deacons and Deaconesses. Pray for the people in our children's ministries, our volunteers. Pray for all the things happening here.

Pray that we will be a church of people devoted to prayer.

Prayer

Communion

We will have communion, remembering Jesus and his sacrifice for us. Meditate on the Lord and where your heart is with him.

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 CSB

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Last Song

Doxology

Numbers 6:24–26 CSB

24 “May the Lord bless you and protect you; 25 may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; 26 may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.” ’

Jude 24–25 CSB

24 Now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, without blemish and with great joy, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen.

You are dismissed. Have a great week in the Lord!

1. Polhill, John B. Acts. Vol. 26. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992. Logos: https://ref.ly/logosres/nac26?ref=Page.p+180&off=291&ctx=ution+to+the+needy.+~The+Jews+had+a+weekl