Shared Ministry

Intro

Good Morning Friendship Church, how is the Eklessia of God doing today? It’s important to remember that when we are talking about “Eklessia” we are not just talking about the early Church, but about how Jesus has built His Church from those early days all the way up to our local expression of the Church today.

I remind us of that because as we look at the story of the Church’s beginnings there are a lot of statements about how the power of God was manifested in those days that seem unfamiliar to us today. Certainly we would never say that God could not do what He was doing in these early days, but just that we don’t see it as “routinely” as it seems to be presented here in the early Church. We wonder about statements like:

Acts 2:43 (ESV) And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

Acts 5:12a (ESV) Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles.

“regularly done” seems to say it was common place. It was a daily experience, not something that we see once in a while and point back to year after year but something they experienced “regularly”

On top of these general statements of many wonders and signs we have the specific stories of Peter healing the lame man, Ananias and Sapphira being judged and struck down dead, and healings happening when even the shadow of the Apostles fell on the sick. There is just no denying that this was a time when God was powerfully working in the early Church through signs and wonders…but that is not been our experience of Church.

Even those of us who have experienced a miraculous recovery, surprising healing or anonymous financial gift for the perfect amount at the perfect time...we still would not say that it is something that we experience “regularly”.

Tension

So what does that mean? Should we conclude that we are off track as a Church? Should we assume that the Holy Spirit just isn’t working in our midst because we are not seeing these same kinds of “signs and wonders” that they “regularly” did back then?

This could ignite a heated debate depending on the make up of the group you are discussing it with, but let me offer a couple of insights for you to consider as we move forward. We know that every time and place is unique, so the idea that our all powerful all knowing God would see value in operating in unique ways at unique times and places shouldn’t be that hard for us to accept.

Not to mention that this time that is clearly marked with the Holy Spirit working through “powerful signs and wonders” is also marked with persecution that included physical violence and even martyrdom. But I don’t think that is what many people are hoping for when they are crying out for the “good ole days” of the early Church. What makes us think that we can “order up” one aspect of those days but be spared the others?

The reason we are looking at this today is that many people mistakenly believe that the evidence of the Holy Spirit’s movement is found exclusively in dramatic and spontaneous acts of power...but our text today shows that as the early Church began rapidly growing, the Holy Spirit was just an involved in seeing the Church “miraculously” come together in disciplined and organized acts of planning.

Because the Unstoppable movement of God was growing very large very quickly and it was nothing short of a miracle that this diverse group of new believers were able to continue to grow despite the presence of conflicts amongst the “regular signs and wonders” that Jesus used to build His Church.

So open your Bibles with me to Acts Chapter 6, p 914 in the Bibles in the chairs. As you are going there I will pray and then we will see how the Holy Spirit moved to bring discipline and order to this exciting time of growth in the early Church.

Truth

Remember last week we talked about how one of the themes of the book of Acts is how Luke shows the Christian Church and the Second Temple to be two faith systems that are operating side by side with distinctly different results. (Slide) At this point, literally “side by side” as the Christian Church often gathering in the Temple complex, still deeply connected to their Jewish roots even while they are watching God do these “signs and wonders” among the Apostles outside the Temple sacrificial system and the religious leaders who presided over it. That just wasn’t happening in the Temple anymore…but it used to.

Throughout the story of the Hebrew people, God met His people at the Temple. It was the place where the glory of God’s presence dwelled, particularly in the Holiest inner chamber where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. God’s presence was found there between the two Cherubim on Arc of the Covenant and that place was called the “Mercy Seat”. But that was the Old Temple. This second Temple was a rebuild and while many of the articles of the ancient Temple were returned - the Ark was not.

It was lost… until the Nazi’s found it and Indiana Jones took it back from the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and now it is hidden in a government bunker somewhere…or not. But that is where that movie got it’s premise. That somehow the evil Nazi’s thought they could harness the “Power of God” that they hoped was still traveling with the lost Ark of the Covenant. The apparently didn’t understand about the “holiness of God”.

And of course, symbolically the Temple was still the place that represented the presence of Jehovah God during Jesus’ lifetime, because you remember how the curtain of the “Holy of Holies” ripped from top to bottom at His death…but ultimately even then Jesus said in Matthew 23 that the house of the Lord that was once filled with the Glory of the Lord (2 Chron 5:13-14) is now left to Jerusalem desolate.

My point is that the “signs and wonders” that the Holy Spirit is doing through the Apostles at this time is serving to give them Divine support and affirmation of their message that that Jesus is the Christ. In this way the people were not hearing the message as a break away from their Jewish faith in Jehovah God, but as the next chapter in Jehovah’s promised plan to send the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ to rescue them.

And we can see this when we take a step back to get a running start at Chapter 6 from the last verse in Acts chapter 5 where it says:

Acts 5:42 (ESV) And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus.

This was their message and we will soon see how the teaching and preaching of this message is of utmost importance to the Apostles. They could not and would not let anything get in the way of it…even the really good problem of seeing the Holy Spirit grow the Church larger and larger every day.

This is what we see here at the beginning of Chapter 6 we read:

Acts 6:1 (ESV) 1 Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

This gives us our first theme for the week which is that...

A growing church with a diverse membership will have many needs (Acts 6:1)

Again we see how looking back at the early Church as the “glory days” is looking through rose colored glasses. They had complaints, conflicts and disputes just like we do today... so we should not let the “powerful signs” and “exponential growth” distract us from the reality that growing Churches will have many needs. We can count on it.

Most people would say that they want their Church to grow…but we aren’t always ready to pay the cost for that growth.

I remember when I was 17 years old and I was a member of my Church at the time and the Church was looking to call a new Youth Pastor for my youth group. The Pastoral candidate was a guy that I knew of. He was well known in our city as he had been involved in Youth Ministry for a long time there.

One of the things that he said that I heard loud and clear was that he warned us saying, “If you don’t want your Youth Ministry to triple in size then don’t hire me.” And I don’t think he was trying to be arrogant, I think he was just pointing the fact that their is a cost that comes with seeing a Church grow and were we ready to pay the cost that will come with that kind of growth.

Fully disclosure…I voted “NO”. That was my youth group and my friends and I didn’t want him bringing in a bunch of community kids that frankly I was coming here to get away from. I didn’t want the Church to grow because it would bring in new people, new needs, new conflicts.

Of course I see things differently today, but I wonder how many of us, if we were honest can relate to that? Do we really want our Church to grow? Are we ready for the conflict that is guaranteed to come? Something to think about.

So let’s look at the specifics of this particular conflict even as we look to apply the Church’s response to the various shapes, shades and scope of our conflicts.

So this is not talking about a hunting widow where your husband will be back next week, but full widows where their husband has passed away and they are left alone. And at this time there wasn’t options like life insurance, Social Security checks, or even employment opportunities for widows.

This means that they needed special care from their extended family or faith community. This was a patriarchal society so younger widows might be able to remarry, but most widows would move into the household of another family member. A widow with no where to turn would often be taken advantage of or turn to immoral lifestyles just to survive.

Both the Old Testament Law and the New Testament Church prescribed specific ways in which the faith community should protect and care for widows, however this was another area where the “Second Temple” and the “Christian Church” were responding very differently.

One of the things that Jesus condemned the Religious Leaders for was their approving of “loopholes” where people were able to work around this command to care for their extended family members.

The Christian Church, however, did not abandon this responsibility but there were “daily distributions” for widows, it’s just that some had noticed that it seemed that one group of widows was consistently getting the short end of the stick.

The “Hellenists” were those Jews who had largely adopted the universal language and even many customs of the Greeks but the Hebrew widows were from families who primarily still spoke only Hebrew and held tighter to the Jewish culture and practices. As the young Church grew, the message of salvation through Jesus the Christ was reaching Jews from many different backgrounds - which is great news but with growth comes a guarantee of conflict.

Truth is, this was a common division that will continue to be battled as the young Church grows forward - at some point later on we will not just be talking about Jews who adopted the language of other cultures, but adopting into the the family of God people entirely from those other cultures. That growth step will bring even more conflict and there will be an even greater need for the movement of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church.

But first let’s see how the Holy Spirit leads the Apostles to handle this conflict...

Acts 6:2–4 (ESV)

2 And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. 3 Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

Our second theme for the week is that...

A growing church acts quickly to resolve conflict and to focus on ministry (Acts 6:2–4).

Theologians of all stripes agree that this was not a case where the Apostles were putting down the role of serving tables, but this was about protecting the important work of the “ministry of the word”.

So the Apostles did not ignore the problem, hoping it would just go away nor did they overreact to the conflict, by stopping everything that they were doing and re-allocate all their time, energy and focus to this new issue. Both extremes are dangerous and Satan will work overtime to get any Church in the trap that lays at either end.

If Satan can’t get a Church to ignore their conflicts…so that they grow and fester under the surface until it blows up into a much bigger mess…then he will get us to overreact so that all of our focus is now there and all anyone is talking about is who is upset with who about what. Because if that is all that is happening, the in that moment... no one is “communicating the life-giving message of Jesus Christ” anymore. And for the enemy of God, that is a win.

The Holy Spirit leads the Apostles away from this trap, and there is much for us to learn in how they responded. First of all we see that the Apostles did involve the entire Church - but not to get everyone’s feedback on how they feel about the situation. They brought them together to remind them of the primary focus that God has given the Church…“the ministry of the word”

They were not saying that this problem is not a thing for them, just that it is not going to become the Church’s main thing. So they suggest to the people a solution where the “full number of the disciples” had an opportunity to get involved by choosing from among themselves seven qualified men who could serve the Church in this way…so that they could continue to lead the Church in the ways God had called them.

The Apostles did not pridefully think that they had to do everything, they were not afraid to share the ministry of the Church with others because they new that the same Holy Spirit was working in them was operating in others in the Church as well. So they quickly proposed this solution so that the problem would not be ignored but they would not be overwhelmed by it either.

So how would the “Church” respond?

Acts 6:5–7 (ESV)

5 And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. 6 These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

This brings us to our third theme, where…

3. A growing church equips members to serve God by participating in ministry (Acts 6:5–7).

Of course here at Friendship Church we refer to “membership” as “Partnership” to emphasize this very idea. To belong to Friendship Church is to be engage in ministry with us in some way. There is no other way to be a part of what God is doing through us.

D.L. Moody used to like to say that, “It was better to put ten men to work than to try to do the work of ten men.” And of course even the idea of one man doing the work of 10 seems a bit exaggerated…but many men have tried.

Unlike the Apostles who trusted the Holy Spirit to work in the lives of other leaders as He was working in them, some Pastors or Church leaders attempt to do all the ministry of the Church themselves. Either because they pridefully believe that “no one can do it as good as they can” or because others in the Church choose to believe that same lie. “They are doing a good job, lets leave it to them they seem better suited for this kind of work than I am.”

Even if that were true in a few areas with a few people, at the end of the day we are all given the same 24 hours, so if we are ever going to be a “Growing Church” it won’t be because the people who are already serving just continue to do so. It will be because more of us have grown up into a readiness for an area of ministry that we are not already serving in.

Over time the Church has come to call these 7 men the first “deacons” of the Church. Mostly because the word for the office of deacon, diakonos is found in noun form in verse 1 and verb form in verse 2. This past summer we went over the role of “Overseers” and “Deacons” especially the very detailed qualifications that we find in 1 Timothy chapter 3 for these offices.

But the word diakonos as a common noun simply means “a servant” of another. It is found this way elsewhere in the New Testament and even in other secular Greek literature.

Jesus taught that all believers should follow His example and voluntarily become a diakonos for other believers.

Matthew 20:25–28 (ESV)

25 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 26 It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, (diakanos)27 and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, (doulos - an even deeper level of sacrifice and submission) 28 even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus came to “serve” to “diakoneo” and to lay down His life for us. I wonder what it would look like for us to follow in His example like this? That when we came to Church each week the orientation of our hearts, minds and actions are to be a “servant” to one another for the glory of God and the good of one another.

In reference to Jesus “building His Church” the Apostle Paul in Eph 4...

Ephesians 4:11 (ESV) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds (which are pastors and overseers) and teachers,

and you might be thinking wait a minute Pastor Dan…I don’t sense God calling me to serve in any of those rolls...That’s OK. Not everyone is. But that doesn’t mean you are not called to some form of ministry because the sentence continues. Jesus designed the people in those roles…verse 12...

Ephesians 4:12–16 (ESV) 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,

Scripture could not be more clear, we are each to find our place of ministry, a ministry that serves to build up the body of Christ. But stay with me here in Ephesians because there is more and as much as I would love to unpack this all for us, we don’t have time but I wanted you to hear it.

13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that WE may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, WE are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part (partner) is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

We will not grow as a Church without this. And we have the example of the early church to learn this from. For what happened when the Apostles and the new diakanos and the rest of the saints were working together to fulfill their ministry calling as the Eklessia?

Acts 6:7 says

7 And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

Gospel Application

And as I look across the gathering here this morning and even as I consider those who were not able to make it this morning I know that many of you already share is some aspect of ministry here at Friendship Church. Whether that is bringing food during coffee fellowship time, mowing the lawn this past summer or taking your turn at cleaning our building and many others…but I wonder if there may be some of you that God is calling into something more.

Obviously since the very beginning the Church has need people in the “serving tables” roles, but growing requires changing and I wonder if the Holy Spirit might be calling even more of us into opportunities to minister in areas that of leadership and teaching of God’s Word.

A great start is just to faithfully participate in the Table Talk groups after the service. We share our insights on God’s Word as a group so that no one is put on the spot but everyone is given an opportunity to share what God is teaching them through His Word.

But maybe God is calling you to consider something more. Like hosting a small group Bible Study during the week. Or helping with the younger kids Sunday School Classes. Or maybe getting a team together to do a special teaching series like the “Cold Case Christianity” series we did last winter.

Or maybe the next step for you would be more personal, like choosing to be baptized or deciding to commit to this local expression of God’s Church through becoming a Partner here. I don’t know what it might be for you - but what we see here from Scripture is that when each part is working properly, [it] makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Landing

I firmly believe that the Holy Spirit still works in dramatic and spontaneous ways in the lives of God’s people, but sometimes He is doing a different kind of miracle. Sometimes He is drawing you into a simple “yes” to something that can be planned and organized.

And I wonder what would happen if we were bold enough to just ask Him about it?

It will probably grow us as a Church. And that will bring us more needs. And that will bring us more conflicts. But it will also bring us closer to being the Church that Jesus wants to build here in Mondovi, WI.

Will you pray into that with me.