Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” And what they said pleased the whole gathering, Acts 6:3-4 ESV
If you hadn’t read the beginning of this chapter you might think that these guys were being selected to be missionaries, teachers of theology or pastors of large churches. But in fact, they were picked to serve food at the tables of widows. They were in charge of a first century “Meals on wheels”! We rarely stop to think that ministry is so mundane and unspiritual. But the early church considered feeding widows and supplying the needs of the poor as the front-line duties of the leadership. When these so-called “unspiritual duties” were neglected by the apostles, the entire church began to complain. Notice they didn’t complain about the lack of sermons or the rarity of miracles. They got mad because no one went to feed the elderly widows. The church felt that the most important ministry was to act as the family to the widow and as mothers and fathers for orphans.
When we are ready to help with for the most needed ministry in our local church, we just might be amazed to see what happens next!
Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem…Acts 6:7
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I find it interesting that the apostles were looking for men with certain qualities (the Spirit and wisdom), not just anyone who might be roped into doing the job. 😉
Yes and what is interesting is that this serving of tables formed the basis for the rest of the ministries of Stephen, Philipp and the others. Maybe their words carried weight because people were willing to listen to table servers rather than rock stars.
Amen!
Why we minister to people’s perceived needs, their hearts are opened and we can then minister to their deeper needs. The men who were chosen to wait tables were well qualified to do that.