One of my professors raised a question about an incident recorded in the book of Acts. Chapter 6 records the early church’s first ongoing service project to the community: the daily feeding of widows.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
This resulted in another first: the first known church squabble.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The Hebraic Jews were feeding their own widows but neglecting to feed those among the Grecian Jews. The Grecian Jews complained.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
So the Apostles pulled everyone together and made arrangements for seven men to be chosen to take charge of the ministry.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The Apostles instituted this because, they said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.”<\/p>\n\n\n
And that line, verse 2 of Acts 6, is what generated my professor’s question. Most theologians assume that this is a straightforward note on how the early church sought to organize itself by differentiating roles.<\/p>\n\n\n
But what if the Apostles are in the wrong here? They sidestep the conflict by not rebuking the Hebraic Jews! And their “solution” looks like a bit of pride. What kind of example are they setting?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“We’ve got more important things to do than feed widows!”<\/p>\n\n\n
I think the question of whether this was actually a bad move by the Apostles has merit. For one thing, it doesn’t sound at all like Jesus. It feels like he would simply command those in charge to do right. And then he would pitch in with serving lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n
And also, take a look at two of the seven chosen to wait on the tables since the Apostles were too busy: Stephen and Philip.<\/p>\n\n\n
Stephen gets the rest of Chapter 6 and all of Chapter 7 devoted to his “miraculous signs” and powerful preaching (which gets him killed).<\/p>\n\n\n
And Philip is the star of Chapter 8 with his own miracles and his successful evangelistic efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n
At the very least, these two men were better than the Apostles at multitasking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my professors raised a question about an incident recorded in the book of Acts. Chapter 6 records the early church’s first ongoing service project to the community: the daily feeding of widows.\u00a0 This resulted in another first: the first known church squabble.\u00a0 The Hebraic Jews were feeding their own widows but neglecting to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2965,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions\/2965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}