This chapter gives us an interesting view into the early church and some of their activities.
First off we see that the church is providing food daily for the widows in the church.
In case you aren't aware, the church at that point is made up completely of Jewish believers and based on previous chapters we see that they are mostly congregated in Jerusalem and that there are probably around 10,000 by this point. There are two main groups of the Jewish believers - those who are Jews who are from the nation of Israel who speak Hebrew (Hebrews) those who are Jews from other countries - some of them being Hebrews who now just speak Greek and others who are converts to Judaism who also speak Greek (the Hellenists or Hellenistic Jews). Greek at that time was the universal language similar to English today.
The Greek Jewish believers were complaining that their widows weren't being provided for in the daily food distribution. This is not too different from what we might see today where you have differences by language and culture as believers are coming together. Unfortunately, some of the biases and discrimination can come into church life, especially as many new believers are there who are still in the process of having their worldviews and attitudes sanctified and renewed (e.g Rom 12:2).
The apostles bring everyone together and say that they need to focus on the task of preaching and prayer and that the people should appoint some persons to oversee the distribution to make sure that it is being done fairly and completely.
Here is our first example of ministers/workers being selected for church activities beyond the initial apostles (and of course Mathias). I think that it is interesting the qualifications that the apostles choose for selecting the ministers: 1) good repute 2) full of the Spirit 3) full of wisdom
It is also interesting because these qualifications are not for someone preaching and teaching, but overseeing and helping to distribute food to widows, yet the qualifications include "full of the Spirit". To me this is very instructional when looking at qualifications for ministers in general and certainly Paul elaborates on these qualifications in his letters to Timothy.
The first qualification relates to how they are perceived by others (NIV just says "known to be..." where as ESV spells out "of good repute"). In other words, since these ministers were going to be working with other people, they needed to be people that others trusted and had earned a good reputation with others.
The second qualification relates to the spiritual character of the person that the Holy Spirit is living and active in the person's life in such a way that others can see the Holy Spirit's work in character and action.
The third qualification "full of wisdom" has both a spiritual and personal character dimension. Again, since these ministers were going to be working with people and especially since there could be/have been complaints and probably arguments and disagreements, a person with wisdom would be needed to help diffuse problems and work to a good solution.
In this situation the church members themselves (note that they are all called disciples - v.2 :) ) selected the ministers based on the qualifications the apostles provided. In Timothy we see Paul instructing him to choose the elders, so both mechanisms are valid.
It is interesting to see that all of the ministers selected had Greek names (as opposed to Hebrew names).
It is also interesting that the apostles prayed and laid their hands on the ministers in a way of approving and sending them into their ministry.
I also thought it interesting the comment that a large number of priests were now following Jesus as well.
This is immediately followed by the account of Stephen, one of the seven ministers selected to help with food distribution, preaching and performing signs and wonders. While some of the Hebraic priests are now coming to Christ, this opposition is now being stirred up in the Hellenistic Jewish communities.
We kind of get cut off in the middle of the story in the chapter divide. :( A good place to remind ourselves that the chapter breaks were not a part of the original Biblical books (they were added in the 13th century) and are really more used for reference in finding things and they sometimes break things up in the middle of a thought or story.
All for now... :)
I was also thinking about how the church selected men who would be in charge of distributing food to the widows and other members. I think it was a wise choice that the men selected were of Greek ethnicity because it was the Greek widows who were feeling slighted. Also, the food distribution seems like a basic task that any man or woman would be capable to perform, but the qualifications for service are high. It makes sense that the people who are of good reputation and full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom would be qualified to do many tasks in the church. I hope and pray to be a man who has these qualities so that I can be trustworthy to serve in the church and serve other people in my community.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think at ordinary working positions (like food distribution) in ministry, we can still do excellent service for the Kingdom of God and honor God.
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