The first deacons

The first crisis in the early church is not persecution. It is not heresy. It is a food distribution problem.

The Jerusalem church has been growing fast — thousands of members, daily communal meals, widows and the poor being cared for from a common fund. And a complaint surfaces: the Greek-speaking Jewish widows are being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. The Hebrew-speaking widows are getting theirs. The Hellenist widows are not.

This is the kind of problem that can quietly fracture a community along ethnic and linguistic lines. The apostles recognize it immediately.

Their solution is both practical and significant. They call the whole community together and say: It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to wait on tables. Choose seven men from among you, full of the Spirit and wisdom, and we will appoint them to this task.

The community chooses seven men. Every single one of them has a Greek name — Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, Nicolaus, and Stephen. The community has chosen men from the overlooked group to fix the problem of the overlooked group.

Stephen is described as a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. He is the first named. He will not last long — but the few months he has will change everything.

The apostles did not try to do everything themselves. They recognized that their primary calling was the word and prayer, and that a different calling — serving tables — was equally holy and required equally Spirit-filled people.

The first organizational decision in church history was about making sure the overlooked were seen. The structure existed to serve the people, not the people to serve the structure.

What would it look like for your community to be structured around the people most likely to be missed?