Multiply the Ministry

INTRODUCTION

We are back in our series this morning, all about how God, through the hands and feet of a Gospel-centered, Spirit-filled people, brings the hope of glory from heaven to earth in everyday moments of grace and and love. This is the story of the early church, and, in many ways, it’s our story as well. We live in a culturally distant world, a more advanced technological society, a world crowded with more voices, more distractions, more divisions. And yet the same gospel message still captivates our hearts. The same grace and mercy still welcome us in. The same Spirit fills us, directs our movements, and empowers our activity. Because this is still God’s church and his mission has not changed. And so our mission has not changed. We still proclaim the hope of Jesus in everything we do, as we follow Jesus with everything that we are.

PRAY

THE PROBLEM

Acts 6:1 CSB

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.

CONTEXT

The church is growing, and many people on the lower rungs of society are showing up, and their needs are being taken care of. Remember Acts chapter 4? There is this movement of radical generosity going on. People are selling land and homes and giving the sales to the church leaders, and they give it to those who have need, who cannot feed or clothe or take care of themselves. Great grace is everywhere, and nobody has any need. I mentioned this before, but that sort of thing just didn’t happen… anywhere. Not in that society, not in that economy. The kind of self-less reordering of justice was unlike anything else going on, because when God is present and active in a community, that community is reoriented and realigned according to God’s plans and nature. It’s beautiful.

But there a problem. More specifically, there’s a complaint. Now, I will admit the first time I read this, I thought, What? Nobody complains in the church, ever! Especially not OUR church! (He said sarcastically to himself) Hey, complaints happen, for all different reasons. Sometimes it’s because our feelings get hurt, because we expectations that are unspoken and then unfulfilled (I’d bet good money that 80% of marital issues stem from unspoken, unmet expectations). Sometimes it’s because our preferences for style and music and carpet and programs aren’t being catered to. But often complaints aren’t selfish. Sometimes it’s because there’s a flaw in the system, sometimes its because there are real problems, sometimes its because leaders are falling short. This is why God asks for wise, self-less, gospel-centered people to lead the church, so that through prayer and listening to the Spirit, we can divide the minor molehills from the major mountains.

There arose a complaint. A grumbling, murmuring sound started making its way through the church, and it was causing major division. The unity of the church starts to fraction a bit. The Hellenist Jews are struggling with the fact that their widows are not being cared for.

Is this a petty complaint? Is this a grumbling because the music is too loud, or a murmuring about church dress code? No, this is actually an issue of injustice. Here’s the issue: every day, the church would distribute food and clothes and money to the orphans and widows, basically anyone who could not provide for themselves. So all the widows are gathered around, ready to receive what they need; some of them are Hellenist, meaning they only speak Greek, and others are Hebraic, meaning they speak Greek AND Hebrew. And what is happening here is that the Hebrew team in charge of handing out food just found it easier to talk to and get stuff to the Hebrew speaking widows, and all the Greek-speaking widows were at a cultural disadvantage, not because they were less worthy or less in need, just because they didn’t communicate the same. And so they were being overlooked, marginalized, neglected, in the very place where the gospel was supposed to change all of that.

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APPLICATION

Obviously today we may not have this exact issue going on (any Greek-speaking widows in the house?), but we don’t want to dismiss the reality that sometimes injustice happens. Sometimes, people get overlooked. It may not be intentional, but sometimes, for whatever reason (priorities, tired, poor organization, relational bias, human nature), we take the path of least resistance when it comes to distributing grace. And when the great grace of God is poorly stewarded, the dreaded “us vs. them” mentality creeps in, and the message of the gospel gets drowned out by the murmurs of discontent.

In your groups today, I want you to discuss how you’ve seen this creep into your own life. Have you ever been on the overlooked side? Ever felt neglected in the one place where you should feel noticed? That might be church, that might be family, it might be a sibling, or a spouse. But share a time where you’ve been put on the outside, and how it affected you.

THE SOLUTION

The problem is an unjust stewardship of Great Grace. Now, what is the solution?

Acts 6:2–6 CSB

The Twelve summoned the whole company of the disciples and said, “It would not be right for us to give up preaching the word of God to wait on tables. 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. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” This proposal pleased the whole company. So they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a convert from Antioch. They had them stand before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

What’s the solution? They multiply ministry. There’s a few things I want you to see here. First, they gather everyone in and tell them that moving on from the word of God is not the solution. The Greek literally says to leave behind the word of God. It would be as if they had said, you know, the whole gospel of Jesus thing was good for getting us going, but now we have more important things to do. The Twelve remind everyone that Jesus sent them to share the truth of Jesus to the world, not simply to pursue social justice.

But notice, they do not choose one or the other. Instead, they multiply. They tell the church to select seven men to take on the charge of “table ministry.” That word for ministry? Diakonos, where we get the word deacon today. But it literally just means to serve. A deacon is simply a servant. Someone who selflessly, genuinely cares for another. The apostles ask for seven men who will take on the ministry of distributing food and money and supplies to struggling people, so that the truth of Jesus can be taught, AND the care of people can be shown.

As elders, our job is not to do everything ourselves. As a pastor, if everything were to run through me, if all care and counseling and administrative decisions were to run through me, it would spell doom for the church. And it just so happens that God’s church isn’t supposed to run that way anyways. It’s supposed to multiply. Elders train and equip and prepare others to serve. The apostle Paul writes later to the church and he reminds them of this:

Ephesians 4:11–13 CSB

And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.

That word ministry? Diakonia. Serve. The elders of the church raise up brothers and sisters to serve, to build up one another. In our church, we do not believe in a tiny fraction of “ministers” (professional church people) and the rest are those ministered to. Instead, we believe that every member is a minister. Everyone has the opportunity to serve, to care, to love, to distribute great grace. Even now, God is readying you, strengthening you, filling you up with the resources you need to love your brothers and sisters well, to welcome others into the fold and multiply the church. A few months ago, during our weekly Bible Study, Bill St. John spoke up on this issue and he said something that stuck with me: Shepherds don’t multiply sheep. Sheep multiply sheep. Sheep reproduce other sheep. Shepherds reproduce other shepherds. That’s reasonable, right? So if you are coming to your pastor or your elders, expecting them to grow the church because its their job, it’s actually not—not entirely anyway. You are the ministers of the church, the counselors and the feeders and generous. You get the honor of multiplying.

But you need to be readied first. Back to the apostles. They ask for seven men to take charge in leading this ministry opportunity. Now, what kind of qualifications do they look for? Men with food service backgrounds? Men with good leadership qualities? Solid business experience? Men who volunteer for everything? Actually, no. They look for three things:

Good Reputation: “Reputation” here is not how well like they are. It’s the Greek word martus, meaning witness, and it’s where we get the word martyr. Servant leaders are those who hold fast to the truth of Jesus no matter what, and are willing to die for their faith in him.

Full of the Spirit: Servant leaders have a clear sense of the God dwelling within them, leading them, inspiring them, growing within them the character of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. They also lean on the direction of the Spirit, not their intelligence, not their pride, not their natural abilities. They seek to solve man’s problems God’s way.

Full of Wisdom: Proverbs describes wisdom as the fear of YHWH and a desire to follow him as he leads. They are Servant leaders who seek to understand the world around them and navigate it carefully, rightly, justly, humbly. It also means they are not fools. Paul describes fools in Romans 1 as those who exchange the truth of God for a lie. Servant leaders do not get caught up in the things that do not matter, they do not listen to the voices that distract. They are not wayward. Instead, they are secure, confident in the truth of God, and aligned with his heart.

That’s it. That’s what the Apostles are looking for. Unswerving witness to Jesus, Spirit-filled lives, wise and humble. What’s the solution to division in the church? How do we truly seek to meet the felt needs of people and care more deeply and love more generously? We cultivate witness, spirit, wisdom. And we lead through that. I think so often we have hamstrung the church because we have put organizational, business-oriented solutions forward in place of the spiritual direction of God for his church. It works well in the short term—roles get filled, things get done, the church starts to look busy and productive—but I have personally found that the long-term health of the church suffers, in part because the presence of God doesn’t have much to do with it. But what if we look to that first? What if we sacrificed some of the short term gain so that, long-term, we might grow and mature and spread because we have been prepared to multiply God’s church God’s way? I believe that, not only would we avoid division and heartache, but we would see the church grow deeper and wider than we ever have before, IF we are intentional about preparing and sending you to serve—not to stay busy, not to burn out, not to curry favor with God or build up your own brand—but to serve and love and bless the world through the generous life of the church.

And notice here, why do the apostles ask for seven men to be “table deacons?” So that they might devote themselves to prayer (to going before God in everything), and to the ministry of the word. Now, can you guess what that word ministry is? Yep, diakonia. The apostles asked for table deacons so that they could put all of their strength and energy into being Word Deacons. Servants. Every member is a minister, everyone in the church has a place to serve. You serve so that the gospel can be spread. So that the ministry is not muddled by murmurs. So that the transforming truth of Jesus can multiply, undistorted, untethered.

Seven men were chosen. All of them were Hellenists, Greek-speaking Jews. The exact sort of people who will notice and care for those who are being overlooked, disadvantaged. Now, this part is amazing. They stand before the Twelve sent one of Jesus, and they pray and lay their hands on them. For a Jew, familiar with the Old Testament, this is a powerful image, because this is how temple priests were appointed. They laid hands on them and gave them the authority to lead, to care, to serve on behalf of God. They were given power to minister. The twelve laid their hands on the seven, and the seven, foreigners, outsiders became priests. The Apostles’ did not choose for themselves men who were just like them culturally. They trusted that the right people would be led to serve, however different and distinct. What we discover later is that these men were more than just table servers. Stephen preaches a gospel that gets him martyred and leads to the spread of Church throughout the world. Philip becomes an evangelist, going from country to country, witnessing and testifying to Greek-speaking people throughout the known world.

Giving up authority can be scary for leaders. Because everyone is gifted a little bit differently. You will serve others exactly the way God has equipped to you serve, and that’s different from me, or other elders, or the person sitting next to you. But your impact will spread beyond my gifts, my sphere, it will touch the lives of the people in your school, your neighborhood, your home. The power of ministry is that it requires everyone to join in, but it because of that, it has the power to uniquely reach infinitely more.

Now, This blew my mind: the problem was not that the word needed to be taught, but that people needed to be served. The solution was to find people to serve. And what is the result?

THE RESULT

Acts 6:7 CSB

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.

The result of multiplying ministers to serve as the needs of people means that the gospel of Jesus could spread, and church multiplies. and it happens because the apostles are able to direct their full attention to prayer and to the teaching of the word. And the word of God spreads. It spreads because the burden of care is shouldered. The church raises up men (and eventually women) to love others well, it results in more teaching, more proclamation, more witness to Jesus than ever before. All because of the willing hearts of spirit-filled servants.