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Growth, The Problem of \\ Mark Mitchell – Acts: The Rest of the Story – No. 3
How to counter challenges with sound leadership and encourage growth
Introduction
The map of global Christianity our grandparents knew has been turned upside down.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, only 10 percent of the world's Christians lived in the non-Western world; nearly 90 percent of Christians worldwide lived in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
But now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, at least 70 percent of the world's Christians live in the non-Western world.
More Christians worship in Anglican churches in Nigeria each week than in all the Episcopal and Anglican churches of Britain, Europe, and North America combined.
There are more Baptists in the Congo than in Britain.
There are more people in church every Sunday in communist China than in all of Western Europe.
Nepal is the birthplace of Buddhism and the only official Hindu kingdom in the world.
But several years ago, the Lord saved Lok Bhandari, a revolutionary freedom fighter and national martial arts champion, whose father had groomed him to become prime minister.
Today Lok shares with crowds of 65,000 how Jesus revolutionized his life.
He's been arrested more than 30 times for preaching the gospel.
Christians in Nepal now number more than 700,000—an amazing number considering 50 years ago there were no known Christians in the country.
These statistics make us wonder why the Word of God spreads and grows in some places, while it remains stagnant in others.
The author of Acts is deeply interested in the spread of God's word and the growth of the church.
• "So those who received the word were baptized and there were added that day about 3,000 souls" (Acts 2:41).
• "And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved" (Acts 2:47).
• "Many of those who heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to about 5,000" (Acts 4:4).
• "More than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women" (Acts 5:14).
• "And the word of the Lord spread throughout all the region" (Acts 13:49).
• "So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily" (Acts 16:5).
• "So the word of the Lord grew and prevailed mightily" (Acts 19:20).
Luke is concerned about growth.
Interestingly, I find most of us are concerned about growth until we experience it.
We pray that our numbers will increase, but we get uncomfortable as soon as the little church we love starts to grow.
Growth means change, and we don't like change.
Growth also brings problems, and those problems can be painful.
Pretty soon we find ourselves longing for the good old days when everything was so simple and we knew everyone's name and they were all like us.
Then, because of our discomfort and all these problems, we end up sabotaging the very growth we thought we wanted, and we end up back where we started.
Acts 6 relates a story from the early church that begins and ends with a statement about growth.
It begins with the phrase, "the disciples were increasing in number," and it ends by reiterating: "the number of disciples continued to increase greatly."
But between these phrases, there was a big problem that threatened the vitality and growth of the early church.
It's a problem that has plagued the church ever since.
The question is, how did they overcome it, and how can we?
The Problem: Growth threatened by division and distraction
Luke describes a two-part problem in Acts 6:1.
The first part is division: there is conflict between the Hellenists (the Greek-speaking Jews) and the Hebrews (the Hebrew or Aramaic-speaking Jews).
In other words, there seems to be a cultural rift in the church, resulting in discrimination against the widows of the Hellenists.
Widows were especially needy in those days.
It was common for widows to move to Jerusalem toward the end of their life, because it was thought to be good to die and be buried in the Holy Land.
They would normally be taken care of by the Jewish synagogue, but if the widow was a Christian, the responsibility fell to the church.
Unfortunately, the benevolence system described in Acts 4 was not working for this minority group.
If that were to continue, Christians would fall into disrepute, and the spread of the gospel would experience a serious setback.
That's the first part of the threat to the spread of the word.
This kind of thing happens all the time in churches.
It's not uncommon for one group to feel neglected.
Sometimes neglect occurs along racial lines.
Sometimes the older people in a congregation feel neglected, or those who are not married feel all the church's resources are directed toward couples and children.
Sometimes wealthy members are given preferential treatment.
Today we tend to deal with such problems by leaving: we just find another church that suits our taste better, where we get more of our needs met, or where people are all like us.
For some, finding a church is like choosing which supermarket you want to shop at.
We evaluate our church experience as consumers—it's all about me.
It's all about what meets my needs.
But the early church didn't have options; there wasn't another church down the road.
Instead, they had to deal with issues head on.
The second threat to growth is what happens when the problem is solved the wrong way: distraction.
Luke describes this danger in Acts 6:2.
Apparently the apostles themselves had been criticized for the inequalities in food distribution, or for failing to give more hands-on time to addressing the problem.
Either way, Luke identifies this threat as distracting those called to the ministry of the Word to leave their calling in order to serve tables.
Such distraction is a major threat to the spread of the gospel.
In verse 2, Luke indicates that encouraging the apostles to leave the ministry of "the word of God" would be a big mistake.
In verse 7, he reports the effect of their continuing in the ministry of the Word.
His point is that the word of God continued to spread because the apostles didn't make the strategic mistake of neglecting it.
In other words, anything that threatens the ministry of the word—even a pressing need—is distraction.
At first glance, it seems like a great idea for the apostles to show their humility by serving tables and getting involved in the nitty-gritty of caring for the physical needs of widows.
After all, didn't Jesus teach us to be servants?
Isn't this what "servant-leadership" is all about?
Wouldn't you be impressed if you went into the bathroom one Sunday morning and saw me cleaning the toilets?
The trouble is, such servitude can lead to neglecting the call to leadership.
So there were two parts to the threat: 1) division as seen in the conflict that resulted in neglected widows, and 2) distraction as the apostles are tempted to move away from the ministry of the word.
The Solution: Growth enhanced by good leadership
Luke offers a solution to this problem in verses 2–6.
First of all, leaders must listen.
The apostles diffused the threat by strong leadership that began with listening; they took the complaint seriously.
There were plenty of things they could have done besides listen.
They could have thrown the complainers out or ignored them.
That's a favorite of leaders—just don't respond at all.
Another thing they could have done was to pass the problem off to a committee.
But the apostles didn't do any of those things.
It's clear that they listened; they took this complaint seriously.
Bill Gates writes:
You have to be constantly receptive to bad news, and then you have to act on it.
Sometimes I think my most important job as CEO is to listen for bad news.
If you don't act on it, your people will eventually stop bringing bad news to your attention.
And that's the beginning of the end.
The willingness to hear hard truth is vital not only for heads of big corporations but also for anyone who loves the truth.
Sometimes the truth sounds like bad news, but it is just what we need.
While the apostles took the problem seriously, they didn't get sucked in by the temptation to fix the problem themselves.
Instead, they stayed focused on their calling: to be devoted to prayer and the ministry of the word.
It's not as if one responsibility was better than the other.
Rather, the point is that Jesus called them to be apostles, and that meant being devoted to prayer and to the word.
The apostles used an interesting wordplay in their response to this threat.
They used the verb "to serve"—/diakoneo/—twice.
The first time they used it was in referencing to serving tables in verse 4. But they again in verse 4, they talked about the ministry (literally "service") of the word.
In essence, what they were saying was: Instead of serving tables, we're called to serve the word.
In both cases, they were serving.
The issue is simply a matter of what they were called to serve.
Someone once paid a compliment to Lee Iacocca, the former Chairman of Chrysler Corporation.
"Mr.
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