Growth Means Change

Last Sunday at the Team Leader Summit, I gave a talk titled “Growth means change” and I thought it would be worth sharing a little of it with everyone as it will give you another insight into our life together. My passage was Acts 6:1-7 and you may benefit from pressing pause and grabbing your Bible so you can read along with me.

I have often heard people say, “I wish we could get back to the days of the early church.” They usually mean something like, I wish we could get back to when times were simpler, when church was uncomplicated and when there were daily gatherings, sharing of possessions and lots of love. I wish for that too, except that those times never existed. The story of the early church is the story of problems a plenty, difficult decisions and daily gospel threats. Life in the church has never been easy and nor ought we expect it will be; we are the people who really believe in the doctrine of sin!

When you read the book of Acts you see a church that was growing massively (I had some more thoughts about numbers while preparing this talk which you may hear another time) and a church that was constantly encountering and overcoming obstacles to growth. And Acts 6:1-7 details one of the more subtle obstacles to growth - distraction. 

The first thing we see is that a good and serious need threatens to undermine gospel progress. Due to gospel growth, some of the widows were not receiving assistance from the church in the way of food (v.1). It appears that the apostles themselves, those sent to be witnesses to the gospel (Acts 1:8), were deeply involved in this caring work, but it was becoming so big and complex that it was causing them to neglect the ministry of the word of God (v.2). Growth means change and in this case, the change was initially bad - less gospel work was happening. 

So instead of tolerating the gospel loss, or neglecting the widows, they decide to implement change. Tolerating either loss or neglect would have been a devastating indictment on the church, and could easily have caused a split, undoing so much progress and bringing the mission to a grinding halt. Implementing change can be harder to do but it is often imperative to preserve the gospel.  

So in light of all this, the second thing we see in Acts 6 is the apostles prioritising word ministry by delegation (v.3-4). It’s not that they think the widows are unimportant or someone else’s responsibility. It’s not that they think this work is below them. It’s not that they just want to be left alone to get on with their quiet work of sitting in their homes preparing sermons and contemplating God. It’s because they want to see more and more people hearing the gospel and being saved. So they need to safeguard the gospel ministry of preaching and teaching and prayer (v.4).

They did not spiritualise it and call a prayer meeting or preach a couple of sermons on sharing. They did not wash their hands of the responsibility. They took responsibility and re-organised the church. They initiated a plan. They made management decisions. They came up with an organisational solution. They recognised people with the required gifts. They put a team together. They recognised certain people for certain roles. And they handed responsibility over to them.

And they did it not to laud themselves but to ensure all the good work of making wholehearted disciples continued and the preaching of the gospel was protected and maintained.  

So how does this all impact Christ Church St Ives? No doubt you will have noticed in recent years that we are seeking to recruit more and more people to serve in various ministry roles. There are currently 569 people serving in various ways and by the end of the year we are praying for 600. We’ve been working hard to make role descriptions clearer, team structures helpful and responsibilities manageable. This is not because we want to be more business-like; to the contrary, it’s because we want to preserve the priority of gospel preaching and help more people become wholehearted disciples of Jesus. There are many people in our church doing 6 or more hours a week of volunteering to help build wholehearted disciples of Jesus. Some leading kids and youth, some in tech teams, some in welcome teams; in fact, there are people like this in all our teams. This is glorious. 

Just as the apostles recognised that at key phases of growth, re-organisation needed to happen, so we see this and know that if we want to continue to grow and serve God’s people with the gospel, we need to change and keep changing. What could once have been done by a paid leadership team now needs to be delegated to other leaders, ensuring the gospel continues to go forward as a priority.

So that’s Acts 6. The passage was not given to us as a matter of historical interest. It was given to us so when danger points caused by growth come, we can have the wisdom to overcome them and courage to make the changes we need to make for the glory of God and the growth of the gospel.