Acts 6:1-7
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Additional context: Watch the theology teaching video, What is Prayer?
Transcript
My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in Acts chapter 6. We're working our way through the book of Acts. We are going to see, as we've been going through the book of Acts, the way that Luke writes it is there'll be this kind of short paragraph that tells a little bit about what's going on, but in some way sets up what's coming next.
And we're in one of those spots this morning where we're going to see this paragraph. It's actually going to introduce us to Stephen and to Philip, some men that we're going to get to read a good bit about in the coming chapters, but it's its own story. So we're just going to take the first six verses here and try to understand them this morning, first seven verses, and just see what's going on in this story. And we're going to see some conflict that arises in the church. So far, the church has been largely peaceful.
We had the incident with Ananias and Sapphira, but the congregation together has been working well. And we're going to see some conflict that rises in this church and how they handle it. We're going to see some disorganization that's going to be disruptive to the church. We're going to talk through that disorganization in the church can lead to disunity in the church and has the potential to derail the mission. Or another way of looking at that is we're going to see that good administration, good organization in the church protects the church, protects the church family, and guards the mission to see the gospel proclaimed.
But good administration, good organization is a blessing to your soul. And I don't care where you are. If you're having to work out something with your insurance company and it's disorganized, that's problematic. That's hard for you. Practical disorganization issues always become personal issues.
But when you're somewhere where they're organized and they're working and they're laboring, it's a blessing.
Zesto in West Columbia is like that. When you show up, there's 20 people and they are working. They are organized. There's a massive group of people just standing in the room. And if they're just standing there, they've already have their order taken.
You just walk right in. You go ahead and get your order in. This place is moving.
But disorganization is painful. People talk about going to the DMV like they're having surgery coming up. They'll be like, yeah, I had to take a day off work Friday. Be praying for me. I'm going to the DMV.
Because it's complicated and difficult and slow and problematic. And so we're going to see how much of a blessing it is when it functions well in the church. We're going to see how problematic it can be in the church.
And then we're going to take a moment to just consider our situation this morning because we are in the process of working forward, Lord willing, planting a church in January. We're going to be launching out a church. And that is a wonderful blessing that we are excited about. But it's going to make everything more difficult here and there. And so we're going to talk a little bit about how does that work and how do we handle that well and hopefully gain some wisdom this morning.
So let's pray and then we'll jump in verse one. Lord, we're thankful for your word. We're thankful for the example of the early church and the apostles. We're thankful for the work of your Spirit in them and in us. And we ask that you'd be at work this morning as we study this word, that Christ might be magnified and glorified and that we might walk in obedience of faith, following after him.
In Jesus' name, amen.
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.
— Acts 6:1 (ESV)
So a handful of things we need to define here. When it says the disciples were increasing in number, it is not talking about the 12 disciples. Sometimes we'll refer to them as the 12 disciples. Well, they were the first 12 maybe, but they're going to be called the apostles. They're 12 apostles.
Sometimes they just get called the 12. When it refers to, in the book of Acts, disciples or believers, it's talking about the church. It's talking about Christians. They weren't called Christians at this point. They were all coming out of Jewish faith.
They were all coming out of Judaism. They're all coming out of the God, following the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Mosaic law. And Jesus was the completion. He's the fulfillment of the promises. He's the Messiah.
So they're all coming out of this understanding of their need to obey the law and realizing that Jesus has fulfilled it, that he's the Passover lamb, that he's the hope. And so they're all placing faith in him. And so they're being called disciples, meaning they're disciples of Jesus or believers in Jesus as the Messiah. And so that's what it's talking about there. So they're continuing to grow.
The church is growing. A complaint by the Hellenists, we're going to talk about them in a second, arose against the Hebrews. We're going to talk about them in a second, try to understand who these people are, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
So we've already been told in the book of Acts that they were sharing all things in common, that they were taking care of needs so that nobody had needs. They were making sure every need was met and that people were cared for. And now we see a little bit of the logistics of that. This was a daily thing. In a place where they don't have refrigerators, they don't have canned goods, like they had some way to store things.
But if you didn't have a home that you could grind your own wheat and bake your own bread, like they're just daily making sure that people have their needs met. And it's possible that someone got enough for a couple of days and came back three days later. I don't know, but this is a daily process for them. And the Hellenists come and say that their widows aren't being cared for.
Now, widows were particularly vulnerable in the first century. It's difficult at all times in human history, but particularly here where there was less movement and agency for women in culture, they were able to own land, they were able to do some things, they were able to have jobs, but it was just less and it was harder. And so, and especially if they had children at home at the time, they needed to be well cared for. And so they're just saying, hey, the vulnerable among us aren't being helped.
But now we need to understand who are Hellenists, who are Hebrews. And then I'm going to throw in an extra one just because while we're learning, we might as well learn this one because it's going to show up later. So we're going to learn about Hellenists, Hebrews, and proselytes. A little flannel graph, people. All right.
Hellenists, Hebrews, proselytes. This is who would make up the church. The Hebrews were the majority. Hellenists were a minority. And then the proselytes were like a very small minority of who was in this.
So I'm going to go to the next slide so we can talk through this. So you basically have their ethnicity, their language, their culture, and their religion.
Hebrews, it's Jewish all the way down. So their ethnicity is they're Jewish. They speak Hebrew. Their culture is Hebrew, Jewish culture. And they practice Judaism.
So they would have been the ones that were most centralized around the temple. And it was the Jewish people who had pretty well defended themselves against Greco-Roman influence. And that's the majority of believers at this time. Because remember, everybody who's following Jesus is coming out of belonging to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and practicing the Mosaic law. That's who all of the believers are.
They're all Jewish in that sense.
Hellenists were Jewish by ethnicity, but they spoke Greek as their primary language. And they had kind of a hybrid culture. So they were Greek-influenced Jewish people. So they had Jewish culture, and they also had Greek influence. And they look a little different in the picture, but it's really not clear in history or in the text.
You might not have been able to tell them apart by looking at them. It's possible they had a little more Greek influence, and they had a little less of the things that were some of the trappings of Jewish followers with the tassels and some of those things. But it's also possible that they all just looked about the same. You had to talk to them and realize, oh, this person speaks Greek. Or you had to interact with them and find out that they had some Greek influence.
Now, the Hellenists, if you ever read about where it talks about the diaspora, what that is is the Jewish people who've been spread over the Roman Empire, many of them would have been Hellenist. So they're Jewish, they're practicing Judaism, but they're speaking Greek. And when they were in synagogue, they would have read the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Whereas the Hebrews would have read the Hebrew scriptures and spoken Aramaic Hebrew. Okay.
So there's a decent amount of Hellenists, but they are a minority. And in some ways, they're the same ethnicity, but the culture is different.
So I think one of the best ways for us to picture this is if you've ever been around families that have immigrated to the U.S., most of the time, grandparents, great-grandparents, have the most home country culture, speak the language, maybe don't even speak English. They think about things kind of the way that they used to think about things. They approach life that way. And then the younger you get, the more westernized American the people become in clothing, speech. I remember there was a Japanese restaurant my wife and I loved in Lynchburg, Virginia.
We used to eat there once or twice a week. And they had gotten my order wrong. And it was one of the grandchildren of the family there. And when they were trying to sort it out, the lady realized that it was wrong. The one who I usually work with, she's running the place.
And she turns and she yells in Japanese. I don't speak Japanese. It sounded corrective, you know, at a young, it looked like maybe her granddaughter or daughter. And her daughter pulls an earbud out and goes, oh, for real? My bad.
And then puts her headphone back in and goes back to work. Same family, same ethnicity, probably same belief systems on a lot of things, culturally kind of different with some language differences. And that's the situation you have between Hellenists and Hebrews.
A proselyte is someone who has converted to Judaism fully. So sometimes the Bible talks about a God-fearer, and that's someone who's trusting in God, but has not been circumcised, has not done all the things to actually be brought into Judaism. A proselyte has done all the things, and they could be really ethnically anything. A lot of them would have been Greek, but they're Gentiles. They're non-Jewish peoples.
So they might have been Roman. They might have been Greek. They might be coming from North Africa. There's really no, they just kind of tell you where they came from. And they could be kind of ethnically anything, Greco-Roman culture, slash any culture that had been claimed by the Romans, and would speak really any kind of language, but most likely would also speak Greek for their ability to kind of understand and be brought into the faith.
Okay. Very few of them. Mostly Hebrews, some Hellenists, very few proselytes, but all of them coming out of Judaism, all of them following Jesus. Okay.
So the Hellenists come and say the Hebrews aren't feeding our widows. So there's conflict. Now, I spoke of it earlier as disorganization. And the reason I spoke about it that way is that the way they're going to try to fix it is through organization. They're going to come to a plan to let's systematize this.
Let's put some people in charge of this. That's what's going to happen. And so there is disorganization that led to disunity. Now there's also possibly sin, because whenever you have cultural differences, the ability for preference and prejudice to come in is very easy. It's very simple for preference and prejudice to show up.
Now preference on its own isn't bad. You actually probably, hopefully, prefer some of the cultural things you were brought up with. Like for me to prefer grits over cream of wheat, that's fine. Biscuits over bagels. Like I can prefer that.
And if you prefer something else, you can be wrong. That's okay. But these are preferential. So if you have language preferences and music preferences and flavor preferences, that's fine. Those things are okay.
When you begin to show preferential treatment, specifically in the church, when you begin to show prejudiced treatment in the church, there's no place for it whatsoever. It's unacceptable among the people of God. So they have preference and prejudice potentially at play because whenever there's a language barrier, whenever there's a cultural barrier, that stuff can show up. But even if it's not showing up, there can be just logistic things that still are personally hurtful. And when it runs along a language line or runs along a cultural line, it becomes hurtful.
And you have to try to figure out, I don't exactly know what's going on here, whether or not this is prejudice or y'all just don't speak Greek well, so you're not doing this well. But they're trying to fix this problem. And so it's an organization problem or a sin problem, but they've got to fix it. And they come bring it to the apostles and they say, this is a problem. So now we're going to get to see how the apostles respond.
Verse 2, and the 12, so that's the 12 apostles, summoned the full number of the disciples. So they have a family meeting. Say, everybody here. We have a family meeting coming up next Sunday. We want everybody here.
Everybody's got to be here. We got to talk to everybody. We got to figure this thing out. So they get everybody here.
It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.
— Acts 6:2 (ESV)
Now that's interesting because when they start the sentence off, it is not right. You would think they would say something like the Hellenist widow is not being cared well for, but they have introduced a new problem that they foresee in the middle of this problem that's actually going on. So they say, they're addressing this problem. Everybody knows this problem is going on. But what they say is, if we, the apostles, go to fix that, then we've missed what we've been commissioned to do, which is to preach the word.
And that'll actually, this disunity will derail the mission. And so they say, we can't do that. So they come in and say, there's actually two problems when this stuff starts happening is that we could, the apostles could fix it. But they, and that seems like that was one of the things they talked about. Well, let's go in there and fix it.
And then they realize, but if we go do that, if that's what we spend our time doing, then the thing that we were told to go do, which is to, to proclaim this, to see people baptized, to teach them to obey everything that he commanded, we're going to stop doing that. And that's going to derail the whole thing we're trying to do. And so they say, well, we can't do that. So they start off by saying, there's actually another problem that we're going to avoid. And so then they give a solution.
Therefore, brothers, this is verse three
Pick out from among you seven men of good repute.
— Acts 6:3 (ESV)
So they have a good reputation
Full of the Spirit
— Acts 6:3 (ESV)
and then evidence of faith, Spirit's at work in them, they're gifted
And of wisdom.
— Acts 6:3 (ESV)
And have good sense, need to handle things well. We need seven men, good reputation, full of the Spirit, full of wisdom
Whom we will appoint to this duty.
— Acts 6:3 (ESV)
So caring well for your church family is a duty. It's a responsibility. It's something that has to happen. But proclaiming the gospel also has to happen. And so I think there's times, I just want to pause for a second.
I think there's times for us, we'll, we get in these debates inside the church over, well, should we be meeting needs or should we be preaching the gospel? Should we be caring for people or should we be preaching the gospel? A lot of times that's on the, how do you do outreach side of things? This isn't outreach. This is just them loving and caring for themselves as a church.
And so a healthy church has to, has to, has to do both. That if we don't care well for each other, if we're not providing for needs, if we're not loving one another, if we're not checking on each other, if we're not providing and helping and serving and, and organizing ourselves well, we're missing out on duty, a responsibility that we have. But if you just have a local church that's just loves each other so much and there's no gospel proclamation, there's no obedience to the word, there's no evangelism, there's nobody that you're trying to reach, you've missed the point. Because the church isn't just a nice club where everybody's happy.
That's not what it's meant to be. We're supposed to do both. We have to do both. And so they say, look, we're going to do the thing that Jesus set us aside to do. And we need some other people to step in and take on this role.
And what happens here, let me read verse four, is it says, but we, this is the apostles
Will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.
— Acts 6:4 (ESV)
And so what happens in this moment is that basically the church in Jerusalem, the first church, gives a prototype for how the rest of churches are going to function going forward. And it's actually spelled out a little more in the, in the New Testament letters, it's organized a little more, but basically what's going to happen is you're going to have some, some leaders who are going to oversee the church, help make decisions on behalf of the church, help organize the church that are primarily tasked with prayer and the ministry of the word. And the New Testament is going to refer to those as overseers and elders, and they're going to be told to pastor.
And that's where we get our word in English, where we refer to them as pastors. And so we use those interchangeably here, elders, overseers, and pastors, primarily organizing, helping lead the church and tasked with the ministry of the word, prayer and the ministry of the word.
And I'll let you know, this is things that we want to grow in as a church. We've set aside specifically to grow in prayer. We've started praying more on Sundays. As groups, we've always prayed together, but we've started taking specific weeks to just pray together as community groups because we need prayer.
As I was studying this and I was reading Eckhard Schnabel on this, he says that in wealthier countries and more well-off areas, you see often that prayer becomes perfunctory. It's just something we do when we get together. It's part of how we perform our thing. We have little transition prayers. We have a prayer here, a prayer there, but it's just this kind of rote.
It's just the thing that happens. And then he had this quote, he says, but it's not surprising that in countries where many believers are poor or persecuted, the prayers are long and fervent, persistent, and extended. And we want to see Jesus do things that only he can do. We want to see him claim people for life and eternity. We want to see him rescue people out of sin.
So let's become people who have prayers that are long and fervent, persistent, and extended.
And I'll let y'all know that as pastors, we have six pastors right now. We plan to send two with the church plant, but we have three that are staff pastors, get paid full-time to serve our church. And we have three that are lay pastors that work other full-time jobs. We get together four times a month. One day a week, we have some time to get together.
We have a meeting where we get together. And during those meetings, we have two of those meetings, it's every other one, where we just, we pray over some things that are going on in our church. And then we talk through, are the things we need to organize, lead, plan? We just kind of try to help oversee our church.
And then the other two meetings, every other one, we pray. We pray over all the care issues in our church. We pray over everybody who's homebound. We pray over everybody who's sick. We pray over everybody who's having financial issues.
We pray over everything that anything we know about, we pray. And then the other one, we pray over our community group leaders and our community groups. We get together four times, and over half of that time is spent praying because we want to see God do things that we can't do, that he has to show up for. So we set aside, we're going to do this. We're going to devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.
That's the kind of the model that got set forward.
And then there's going to be people who step in to lead things, to take on tasks, to organize and to administer, to bless the church, to protect the church from disunity. If someone, if we've ever just not sent you the email, even if it was just the clerical error, does that keep your feelings from being hurt? Does that keep you from being annoyed? Practical issues often lead into personal issues. It's just what happens.
And so we, the church needs people who are going to step in and take on roles and help organize and help plan. And then the whole church gets to move forward on the mission.
So let's see what happens. They say, send us these seven men. We'll devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. Verse five.
And what they said pleased the whole gathering. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith.
— Acts 6:5 (ESV)
So we're going to get—
And of the Holy Spirit.
— Acts 6:5 (ESV)
We're going to get to see more of him in a moment. Not today, but as we keep going in Acts. And Philip, now that Philip is not the apostle Philip, he's Philip, this new guy, that's one of the seven.
There are some people who go, yeah, but it doesn't say he's not the apostle. It just says Philip. And the only Philip we know is an apostle. And it's like, right. But the apostles just said, we're not going to do this.
Y'all go pick some people. And if when they went back to people and they were like, with our second round draft pick, we pick Philip, one of y'all, the apostles would have been like, you don't hear so good. We just told you no. Philip doesn't get to come do this. And so there's going to be listed Philip the apostle, and then there's going to be Philip.
And sometimes they'll even call Philip one of the seven, which means he's one of the seven, not one of the 12. Okay. Anyway, I'm sorry. I may be more arguing with some other things that I read this week than with you guys. But anyway, that's Philip, one of the seven.
Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.
— Acts 6:5 (ESV)
That's why we included that earlier. Let you know what that guy's up to.
So an interesting thing that I learned this week as I was studying this, all of these names are Hellenist names. We didn't get a single one that was just a straight up aggressive Hebrew name. They're all Hellenist names. So when the majority Hebrews and Hellenists and proselytes go back, it's mostly Hebrews, but they got Hellenists and proselytes and Hellenists are saying this isn't going well. And they come up with seven men to help lead this whole ministry for the church.
When they come back, it's tilted Hellenist, at least Hellenist culture, Hellenist grandmama, something, maybe just straight up Hellenist. But these are guys that would probably speak Greek or spoke it at home. They have a proselyte from Antioch, somebody who's not even Hebrew at all. He's not Jewish at all. He's from some other complete different ethnicity.
And so when they go to plan this, you can almost feel the church going, hey, we don't want to get this wrong. We don't want to handle this poorly. We don't want this to go bad. We want to be able to be understanding and gracious and helpful. And so they come up with this, let's handle it well planned.
And it's really a beautiful thing that you see kind of come out of this.
So they put these forward. It says, verse six
These they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them.
— Acts 6:6 (ESV)
So they set them aside for this work. So then what happens? That's all they tell us. They set some people aside. We're going to fix this problem.
These are the ones they give them. They set them aside for it. Verse seven
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.
— Acts 6:7 (ESV)
Now, again, you would kind of expect it to say, and then Stephen and Philip and Nicanor and Timon got in there and they fixed it. And this is how that, like, they don't go into anything that tells us, they just say, the apostles say there's, the word is in danger. If we don't handle this well, we could, we could, we can't give up the ministry of the word. And then it says, they fixed this problem. They sent these men in.
And then it says, the word increased greatly. So I think sometimes we're looking and going, oh, it's a, it's a unity issue. It's a disorganization issue. And we're missing out that it's a word issue. It's a gospel proclamation issue.
It's a mission of the church issue. Because the reason you fix those things is so that the gospel can move forward, so that people can come to know Christ, so that the mission can advance. That's why you worry about these things. That's why you organize yourselves well.
Okay. So I said earlier that we were planting a church, Lord willing, in January, second week of January, third week of January, somewhere around in there, will be two separate churches. And we're so thankful for the way the Lord has been at work in this. We're so thankful for what this is, how this is progressing. It's, it's a joy and a blessing for us.
If we were just sending out some pastors, it'd be a joy and blessing for us. We just send out a little team to go somewhere that they do what's called like a parachute plant, where you just drop in and you get to work.
But that's not what's happening. What we decided to do and what the Lord's led in is we're going to send about 60 people from our church to go help this church get planted. We're sending eight group leaders. We had 21 groups. We're sending eight of our group leaders.
We're sending a ton of people who've been volunteering and leading and serving. We're sending two staff members.
Remember last week when Mike told you that it was Katie's last day? And some of you were like, did she get fired because of the way it was worded? The reason it's her last day is that she was, she's transitioning to go help the church plant. She's stepping off staff here to, to go help, to go find another job, to move and to try to help get her life in that direction so that they can go be a part of that church plant. Like we're, we're, we're sending and we're excited, but I want to tell you something.
If I could make eye contact with all of y'all with my one good working eye this morning, everything's about to get harder. That's what's going to happen first is that everything's going to get harder because what's going to happen is there's a whole lot of things that we're doing right now that is day one. It's the same amount of people, but we've doubled up on things to do. Not completely, but a lot of it will be doubled up.
Like Kid City right now we have five classrooms. That toddler room, sometimes 15 to 20 toddlers in it. If we send out five of those or seven of those, that toddler classroom still has to exist. You got 10 toddlers, you still need two adults watching them. And you can't just be like, we'll stick the babies in there.
Anybody who's ever been in the toddler class knows that you cannot do that. So we can't smush that classroom together. We, we, we're going to need the same amount of volunteers, the same amount of adults. But guess what? If you send seven toddlers or five toddlers with Oak Ridge, they suddenly need some adults to help care for and watch and protect them and share the gospel with them.
And so what happens is week one, we just need more people doing more things. And a whole lot of the stuff that was smooth and nice and smart and well-run was smooth and nice and smart because smooth and nice and smart, well-run people were running them. And those people left. I don't know if you've paid any attention to the majority of the emails you've received, but if you scroll to the bottom, it says Katie Mertz or Isaac Hill. And in January, those two people don't exist here.
They exist over there. And we're so excited for y'all, but they've done the bulk of organizing us. Ms. Louise helps. She writes, gives our calendar, make sure that we're communicating that.
She does our newsletter, make sure that people know ministries that are going on, but there's a whole lot of, inter ministry communication and organization and, planning that has happened by Isaac and Katie.
Now, Shari Atkins came to us a few months ago. She said, Katie's leaving. We were like, yeah. And she was like, we can't go back because she remembers what it was like before in the wasteland of communication. Emily Teagle was our events team leader.
We were just surprised her with events that she was in charge of. And I would have conversations with her that were similar to conversations with my wife where I'd go, I told you this. I feel like I told you this. We talked about this, right? She'd never heard of it.
I don't even know what you're talking about. It's like, well, you got an event to pull off in a week and we're, we're on board. We're on your team. We're going to help. Like we just, we didn't do a great job.
Shari's stepping in. She's trying to help organize. We got a lot of things to cover, a lot of places to step in, a lot of things that need to be communicated and organized well so that we can love one another well, care for one another well, and so that the mission can advance. And there's going to be some room for people to step up.
Also, there's just going to be some stuff that isn't as good. That's okay. Well, we're going to labor together. Some things are going to be harder. We're going to labor together.
My oldest son from like, this is like first grade, second grade, third grade, somewhere around in that range. If I ever had to wake him up and tell him that we were running behind, like I had overslept or I'd gotten up and was doing something and forgot to wake him up. And now it's like, oh, it's 6 30. And if I went and woke him up and said, Hey, it's 6 30. We're 30 minutes behind.
I need you to hop up. I need you to move. We got to go. That's like his ultimate nightmare. It's the worst thing that third grade Archer could have to deal with.
Like I, when I would wake him up and tell him that if I woke him up 30 minutes early and was just like, I'm doing this for no reason, he'd have just been like, okay. And gotten up. Like he didn't care. It's not that he needed his sleep. It was, but the idea of being late.
And so what would happen is I'd wake him up and I'd go like, I'm in a hurry. Like I overslept. It's like, Hey, I got to go to this. You got to get up. We go.
I'd come back sometimes. And he'd just be like, look like a World War I shell shock. Like he just a thousand yard stare, just like, and I'm like, what are you doing? And I would handle that super well with like a lot of aggression. Hey, I said, we're late.
But it's like, what is happening? What normally, if you just wake him up, he gets up, he gets dressed, he eats breakfast. If you tell him you're late, he goes, and it's like, what happened? And I would tell him, I had to talk to him a lot. I would say, in the moment where I tell you everything's, you're running behind, we've got problems.
You suddenly start giving less. You're not even giving what you were normally giving. You're not even bringing forth this energy you had on a normal day. And what I'm saying is we need more.
And I say that to say to y'all, there's going to be a temptation with Oak Ridge or with Mill City as we move into the future for you to want to go, this isn't as good. This isn't as nice. This doesn't work as well as it used to. Right. Saying it out loud is just like, good, nice observation.
But now we need more. We need more grace, more energy, more prayer, more kindness. We need you to roll with it a little better.
Because the point isn't just that this would function well and we would like it. The point is that people would meet Jesus. If the purpose of our church was that everything would function well and we would like it, we would not plant a church. We would not do that. But the reason why we're willing to look and go, this is going to be more complicated.
This is going to be more difficult. There's going to be things that are harder about it. There's going to be people that we miss. It's so that we can see people meet Jesus. And there are going to be people that we miss.
And we miss them because Jesus was at work in them and because they were lovely and they were wonderful and they were gracious and they were helpful and they were kind.
Has your group ever multiplied? I feel this every time our group multiplies. And I have to tell our group. But like your group right now maybe has that person where if they see a teardrop, they just switch on. Someone just breaks down and they're like teleport next to them.
They're so gracious. They're so loving. They're so wonderful. It's like this is their moment. They were waiting for you to cry.
I don't know. But they're so good at it.
Then your group multiplies and they go with the other group. And the first time someone cries in your group, there's this 30 second lag where all of you are waiting for that person to be like good at this. And you just stare at the crying person. Then you start going, oh wait. And you start looking around like who's going to, oh my goodness, look at this bunch of scrubs.
Who's going to talk to this person? And you figure it out. And the Spirit goes to work in you to love and to care and to serve and to labor. And is it as good? No.
Not at first. Maybe not ever. That might not be what y'all are good at. But you miss these people. But then you labor, you grow, and it becomes good.
And the Lord works in it.
And y'all, we're going to send a church plant. And not because we want everything to function perfectly all the time. Not because we want to be administratively the best, most organized, whatever. We're doing it because there are lost people who will never step foot in this building. But they'll get baptized at Oak Ridge.
And they'll place their faith in Jesus at Oak Ridge. And they'll repent of sin at Oak Ridge. Because they're over there and they're laboring there. And if this is more uncomfortable or more difficult or we have to do more, but people end up in the kingdom at the table that never ends in front of the king who has room for all of his children and then praise God, let's do it.
And then let's do it again. Let's do it again a few years from now. Let's Oak Ridge do it again a few years from now. Like let's continue to see that happen. And every time it'll be difficult.
And every time you'll have to step up. And every time we'll have to grow. And every time we'll have to lean into the work of the Spirit. And every time we'll have to pray. And every time it'll be worth it because the word will advance.
And by God's grace, it will multiply greatly. And there will be people who are obedient to the faith. That's the point. That's the reason why we would do that.
And so, yeah, there's going to be opportunities to serve. There's going to be opportunities to step in. There's going to be areas where you need to labor. But we do it so that we can see people come to know Jesus. That's the point.
So that people would be obedient to the faith. And I love that phrasing. Because they trust in Jesus. That's the hope. And then he changes their lives.
You become obedient to it.
And y'all, I think if you went and talked, if you've read this and you're like, oh my gosh, let's go find out what Stephen did. Like after this happened, the disciples multiplied. This is amazing. The Lord's at work. And you went and grabbed Stephen and were like, what are you doing?
I think he'd say something like, well, you know, people bring stuff and then we organize that into categories. And then I get over here at seven and I bring a couple other people with me. And then we just make sure it's organized for the day because people are going to start showing up. And then, and that's really, we do that. And then we work with Philip.
You should go talk to Philip.
You go talk to Philip. And he's like, yeah. So we sit at this table. We got Nicolaus. He's a proselyte.
So he speaks one of the languages that we don't speak, which is great because he can speak Greek. I can talk to him, but then there's some people in our church that, you know, he talks to them in their home language, which really fixes that problem. I can speak Greek fine. And my Hebrew is passable, but we got a Nicanor and he speaks Hebrew. Great.
So we all sit at this table. Nicolaus is usually here on, at least on Thursdays, because that's when that family comes by. But most of the time he's here if he can make it, but he does have to work on Tuesdays. Wow. I think at times if you had him describe it to you, it would sound kind of tedious.
Sound just like, you know, doing stuff.
There's someone in Kid City right now, a blue shirt warrior. You know what they did? Click the drop down box on our website, typed in, I'd like to serve. They received an email, 0.5 seconds later that said Katie Mertz at the bottom. They got connected.
They got planned what day they were going to come. They were sent training on how to keep children safe. They had to watch a lot of videos that are hard to watch, but they watched them because we want to keep children safe. They got to read a handbook. They signed a thing saying, I read the handbook.
Is the handbook fun? No, but it tells you how we're going to handle bathroom policies and it tells you what we're going to do if there's a tornado. So it's necessary. It's not exciting.
They read the handbook. They showed up and shadowed for a little while. Then today they showed up early. They've already read their lesson. They've planned on it.
They've prepared for it. They got together. They prayed. They talked through some main things. And they're right now trying to articulate the gospel to some children.
And guess what? You've been building with somebody on the soccer team. Your kids play soccer together. You were there. You got somebody that you've been trying to connect with and you were like, I'm going to talk to them about it.
I'm going to invite them. I'm going to build this relationship. And then the soccer season ended a little early. You thought you were going to go further in the playoffs than you did. And then you were like, okay, well, I didn't really do great.
I kind of feel like I missed an opportunity there. But guess what? Well, next soccer season rolls around. They're on your team again. And you're like, okay, Lord, you got them in front of me again.
I'm going to do better this time. I'm going to actually make sure I...
So you start having those conversations. You invite them to things. You start trying to share the gospel with them. You start trying to connect with them. Y'all have finally some kind of a breakthrough conversation where things go really well.
They find out about the church. They find out about your faith. You're having these conversations. And then last night, on a Saturday night, they text you and say, hey, I'm bringing the kids. We're coming tomorrow.
And you text back, I'm at a wedding in North Carolina. And they're like, well, we're coming.
So they show up. They whip that minivan door open. Six children pile up. They come walking around. Well, there's a handful of volunteers who this morning poured coffee, made coffee, moved a little table out, set some things up with a bag.
You know, they're there to say, hey, they're people who are willing to have awkward conversations. Because awkward conversations at a church are better than no conversations at a church. Just so you know. They've practiced. They've said, they've made the conversation you have with them is less awkward than the ones they were first having when they joined host team.
They've gotten better at it. But they've figured out how to try. They're there. So that your friend walks up and there's some people to talk to them. Who are doing what?
Just serving.
They turn the corner into a sea of blue shirts. And there's a bunch of volunteers there who read a handbook, signed up for a thing, studied how to keep children safe, and who are welcoming and help them get their kids transitioned in. Why? So that they might believe in Jesus. So that the children might, so that your friends might, so that we might be organized in a way that keeps unity, but also proclaims the hope of the gospel.
And if you are here and it is your first time here, and you're that friend I just described, we want you to know Jesus. It's not about what they do. They said the main thing here is the proclamation of the word, which is communication about what Jesus did. These people begin to follow Jesus because of the work of Jesus, because of the hope of Jesus, because of the death of Jesus that pays for sins, because of the resurrection of Jesus that gives us hope, because of the return of Jesus that promises judgment. We want everyone to know Jesus so that you might be brought in, saved, redeemed, claimed, kept, and rescued.
And if you don't know Jesus, the hope is not that you would get your life together or that you would work things out. The hope is that you would come to him and you would know that you need rescue and you need forgiveness of sins. And those are all found only in him.
And we organize ourselves and we send emails and we plan and we structure and we block out dates on Planning Center so that we can keep unity in the body, love one another well, so that we can proclaim the gospel. And that's the hope. And that's what happens here. And so by God's grace, we're going to get to plant a church. And by God's grace, we're all going to go through growing pains together.
And by God's grace, the name of Jesus will be proclaimed and people will come to know him.
Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, you are King over all things and you are our hope of salvation. And we ask that you would bless us to use our gifts to love you, to serve you, to love your church. That you would bless us with people who are administratively minded, to organize us well, so that we collectively as a body can proclaim the good news of Jesus. We ask that you would help us to with generous hearts send Oak Ridge. That we would miss people fiercely, but that we would miss them for a really, really good eternal reason.
And that's the glory of your name. The sake of the obedience to your name among the nations. We love you. We ask for your help. We praise your name.
Amen.