In Acts 6:1-7, we are introduced to deacons. This is not a new passage for anyone sitting in this room, but we do want to highlight what God is doing here. When Jesus comes into this world, he comes as a prophet, a priest, and as a king. As a prophet he comes teaching and preach the good news. As a priest he connects people with God and shepherds them. As a king he is about building the Fathers kingdom, sharing vision, revealing the mission, giving values, raising up leaders, and building structure.
As we enter into chapter 6, we see that the Holy Spirit had come down and the church had exploded – the disciples had become the speakers of prophetic truth and the people were responding. These were exciting days in the church – people were being connected to God in a way that had never been seen. But while the prophetic and priestly parts of the kingdom were met, there was a storm brewing on the kingly side - their efforts in caring for the people were beginning to fall apart. They had a king issue – a organizational issue.
What’s interesting in this section is that when Luke tells the story, he gives us the details that ‘the Greek speaking believers complained about the Hebrew speaking believers, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.’
As we can imagine, the organizational complexities that occur by adding 3000 people to your church in a single day must have been enormous. But the sad thing is that their organizational complexities, left unchecked, were leading to other grievances like that of favoritism - even ethnic favoritism - and the inability to care for those who had no one else to care for them. In the story this seems largely unintentional – they were not even aware of the problem. But this helps us to realize that left unchecked, not dealing with the kingly side of the church can lead to many other problems.
It’s great for us to pause here and remember Jesus’ focus was on all three: prophet, priest and king. Although most leaders are really good in one area, okay in a second, typically the third one is not even on the radar. This gives us opportunity to involve others who are great at the things we aren’t.
There could have been several responses here. First, they could have said “stop talking about the food issues – we are busy preaching God’s word”. This would have been an unkind response, and one that was not coherent with God’s heart – especially in terms of orphans and widows. To ignore an organizational complexity (even with what seems like a godly response) doesn’t make the need go away. Second, they could have said “let’s stop and start a prayer group about this and see how God wants us to respond”. While prayer groups are great, the problem was very practical – it didn’t take praying to figure this one out. To over-spiritualize an organizational complexity only leads to frustration.
Their response was not to ignore the issue or to over-spiritualize it, but rather to respond. They realized the differences between their roles as Elders (word and prayer) and deacons (managing). They raise up deacons to manage the work, so that their priority would not be compromised. One thing to note – the elders set up this system – they didn’t abdicate it to someone else, but they fixed it and let someone else manage it.
As we look at Jesus as prophet, priest and king, we realize that the need in our churches are the same.