Sharing Ministry Together

I wish to begin our message by sharing a personal account contributed by a pastor who was serving at a church in Washington State during the wake of the Mount St. Hellens eruption. This pastor said,

After Mount St. Helens blew up in May 1980, [the] church needed cleaning up. Ash was in the parking lot and all over the inside, because of the open windows. A woman met me in the hallway on Friday and asked “Why don’t the High School and College kids come in and help poor Fred [our custodian] clean this place up? Let’s get them involved.”

I asked, “Would you be willing to get some women together to cook lunch for us?” “Well,” she said, “We’d planned to go to the lake tomorrow to work on the cabin cleanup, and I don’t know when we’ll be back.”(1)

This pastor noted, “It’s always easier to volunteer someone else, than to help out yourself.” For some reason or another – whether fear, lack of time, or just plain selfishness – many Christ-followers refuse to serve in the church, hoping that someone else will meet the existing needs. However, when the volunteer workload is dumped on the shoulders of just a handful of people, then these individuals get burnt out; and since they can’t do everything, then a lot of needs go unmet. This morning we are going to look at how ministry is something intended to be shared among all believers.

Some Overlooked Widows (v. 1)

1 Now in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution.

We read here about trouble brewing among the disciples; “disciple” being a designation given to Christ-followers before they were called Christians at Antioch.(2) A complaint arose against the Hebrews by the Hellenists; a complaint that threatened unity and growth in the New Testament church. The Hebrews were native-born Jews, and the Hellenists were Jews “who either spoke Greek rather than Aramaic, or had adopted Greek customs.”(3) The daily distribution of the bread was being neglected among the widows of the Hellenists; therefore, they were offended, taking it as discrimination.(4)

The distribution of bread worked like this: There were appointed collectors who received every day from every court, a piece of bread or any sort of food, or even money from whomever offered it; and then they divided that which was collected, in the evening among the poor, giving every single person his or her daily sustenance called the “Tamchui.”(5) This distribution of bread became a huge task as the number of new converts grew into the thousands; therefore, people were being neglected, not because of prejudice, but for a lack of human resources, or rather man power.

Many of the disciples considered the distribution of bread as an apostolic responsibility that should not have been neglected for any reason; and as we can see, this turned into a misunderstanding resulting in people feeling devalued and underappreciated. The root cause of both problems – the problem of insufficient distribution, and the problem of hurt feelings – can be traced to a lack of understanding concerning the main calling and responsibilities of an apostle.

Similar misunderstandings occur today when Christ-followers lose sight of the primary responsibilities of church leadership, especially the responsibilities of the pastor. For example, many church-goers believe it is the main task of the pastor to visit every single church member in their homes, in the hospital, and during times of crisis; which is a good idea and somewhat possible in a smaller congregation, but as the membership grows, one man simply can’t do it all. If he tries, then he will have to neglect some other important areas of ministry.

Bro. Paul (the former pastor) shared with me how he was able to keep up with the visitation and his studies when he first arrived, and when church attendance was around sixty to eighty people; but when the attendance began averaging around one hundred forty people, it became much harder to manage. Mark Chaves, in an article I recently read, tells us:

If people expect a visit from a clergyperson every time a member is in the hospital, or if they expect a host of professionally organized youth activities, or, more broadly, if people expect that every member will be personally known in a meaningful sense by their minister . . . then congregations will have to add [volunteers] about as fast as they add people.(6)

Adding ministry volunteers, is precisely what needed to be done in the New Testament church in order to resolve the neglect occurring in the daily distribution of bread; and we will come to see that this is exactly how the apostles handled the situation.