Good Evangelism and the Need for Spirit-Filled Complainers ~ Acts 6:1-7 (Thirty Years that Changed the World: the book of Acts series)

Anyone who has been in the church awhile understands complaining. It’s inevitable in such a community that cares so deeply and rubs shoulders together every week. Nevertheless, I imagine that many of us think of complaining like this 

But I would like to suggest that complaining can be a “Spirit-led”  and “Spirit-filled” activity and that engaging in such a practice has everything to do with practicing good evangelism. In fact, the Bible tells us so in Acts 6:1-7

What does this text teach us about evangelism and Spirit-led complaining?

First, churches that practice evangelism well are willing to complain about their brokenness and name their mistakes.

The early church was a messed up church. If you want to hear something bad about believers, you don’t need to talk to an atheist just read the New Testament.  No writer of the New Testament appears to have any interest in idealizing who they are – guy sleeping with his step-mom (1 Cor. 5:1), people lying (Acts 5:1-3), fighting between Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:36-41), believers suing one another (1 Cor. 6:1-11), some Christians visiting prostitutes (1 Cor. 6:12-20, not for the purpose of evangelism), ethnic strife (Acts 6:1-7, Gal. 2:11-14), etc. – you can read all about this in the NT. This was clearly a church with problems. Yet, part of their problem was success – they’re growing, it tells us in vs. 1. More people meant more problems and more needs to be met. It reminds us to ask ourselves a fundamental question, “Do we want to grow?” “Are we willing to accept the problems of what more growth might mean?”

And part of their problem was “neglecting” the “less-than-Jewish” members of the church (vs. 1). Hellenistic Jews were Greek-speakers, often immigrating from outside of Palestine away from their traditional networks of support. This tension surrounding these immigrants had leaked into the church with the more established Aramaic speaking Christians favoring their own.   These foreign widows, without family to take care of them and neglected by the church, were thus in dire need. So the church was clearly in the wrong and the complaint was serious – it was not about the coffee, or drums in worship, it wasn’t merely a mistake, a silly oversight, an incidental problem, but the result of ignoring a minority group within the church or as one commentator translates, “slighted”. Neglect or slighting implies intentionality, and the text illustrates ethnic and cultural tensions simmering under the service of the new community.

How might wrestling with the early churches sinful “neglect” (and our own) help us think about evangelism?

Simply put, broken churches can evangelize. And if brokenness is not a barrier to evangelism, then we can be ourselves – faults in all. I don’t believe that we should ever excuse sin but neither do I believe that the confession of our own sins or problems publicly will keep nonbelievers away. What shows us to be a Spirit-filled church is less about what we don’t do and more about how we handle what we shouldn’t do when it comes. This is best illustrated by the following story from Philip Yancy’s book Vanishing Grace:

“For a number of years Craig Detweiler has been bringing his communications students from Biola University and Pepperdine University to the Sundance Film Festival, the premier showcase for independent films. One year Sundance featured a sold-out showing of a scathing portrayal of American evangelicals. The film tells the story of a white-bread suburban family killed in a car wreck on the way to a Southern Baptist church meeting. Upon their arrival in heaven a tattooed Jesus dispatches them again to earth, this time stripped of original sin, and they celebrate their new shamelessness by walking around naked and doing things that shock their friends and neighbors. Scandalized, other Christians at a Bible study hatch a plan to give the resurrected family an apple pie laced with poison, sending them promptly back to heaven.

The Sundance audience laughed uproariously throughout the film, relishing the depiction of Christians as repressed, intolerant, even homicidal. The director received a standing ovation and then fielded questions from the audience. Someone asked if any conservative Christians had seen it. “I’m ready for that fight,” he declared, prompting more applause. Without thinking Craig Detweiler stood to his feet with a response. I’ll let him relate what happened next: I struggled to compose my words. My voice cracked slightly. I eked out, “Jay, thank you for this film. As a native of North Carolina, a fellow filmmaker, and an evangelical Christian . . .” I never use the word evangelical. It is so loaded with negative baggage that I usually attempt to distance myself from such associations. But in this instance, it seemed quite right. I was speaking for my community, responding to a particular stance we’d staked out for ourselves. Jay stepped back, ready for that fight. He tensed up, preparing to launch a counterattack. The crowd sensed that things were about to get ugly. My next words caught them off guard: “Jay, I apologize for anything ever done to you in the name of God.” The entire tenor in the room shifted. Audience members turned around. “Did I hear that correctly?” They craned their necks. “Who said that?” Jay fumbled for words, not knowing how to respond. He was ready to be attacked. He was not prepared for an apology. He offered a modest, “Thank you.” The audience was literally disarmed. . . . Audience members approached me afterward with hugs. A lesbian couple thanked me. Gay men kissed me. One person said, “If that is true, I might consider giving Christianity another chance.” Tears were shed far and wide. All it took were two little words: “I apologize.” My students leaped at the occasion, talking to the cast and crew, inviting them to join us for further conversation. Our “enemies” became fast friends, joining us for lunch. The cast came to our class the next day, answering questions for an hour. An actor admitted how scared he was to enter our church meeting place. Onstage, he confided, “Coming into this building, my heart was beating more than at any audition I’ve ever had.” The producer said, “This was the most significant moment of our week.” A simple apology set off a series of conversations and exchanges about our faith and how we live it. Experiences such as these convince me that the approach of admitting our errors, besides being most true to a gospel of grace, is also most effective at expressing who we are.”

In this day and age, any practice of evangelism must deal with sin and the church will offer a more authentic witness if it can first admit to its own. Complaining about our mistakes and neglects regularly reminds us that evangelism is not some PR campaign to make us or God look good. It’s telling and acting out the story that God is forgiving sins, bringing justice, offering grace, setting all things right, and doing that first through us.

So we will be more effective in evangelism if we publicly and genuinely admit our own brokenness and sinfulness. But more than simply naming their problems, the church in Acts were leading the charge of critiquing their own community.

Second, churches that practice evangelism well are churches where the critique comes from the inside rather than the outside.

The complaint happened because this minority in the Christian community were willing to share their painful reality, willing to give voice to internal problems within the community. This critical complaint, in other words, didn’t come from outside the community but from the inside. In our current culture, however, I’m not sure that this is always the case.  In today’s world there is a legitimate critique from the outside that is often met by those inside the church with a certain defensiveness and a refusal to acknowledge or repent. Can we be a place where we ask hard questions, raise challenges, point out things that aren’t working, among ourselves? Our text invites an openness that is unnerving – there’s no posturing, no justifying on the part of leadership or recounting of why the neglect happened in an attempt to explain it away. Luke appears intent on reminding us that being good evangelists requires that we are to be our most ardent critics, a fellowship of complaining; a way of belonging whereby people without power feel capable of expressing their honest and heart-felt needs or neglect and know that they can be heard. Complaints are critical for our spiritual health and remain a fundamental element of the gospel story and the sharing of that story.

In what many New Testament scholars say is probably the “oldest” set of lines in the New Testament (1 Cor. 15), the Apostle Paul pronounces what the gospel is - the “message” through which we “are being saved”: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of who are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” This is, Paul is saying, the gospel that we proclaim. But what I would like to point out is that when the early church talks about sin, it uses the profound pronoun “our” rather than “your” or “their.” And the scriptures are critical for this knowledge!

This is why the Apostles, on the one hand, will recognize the serious need within the community to address the inequities of food and money distribution, without, on the other hand, neglecting the word of God.

Now it’s time for Greek of the Week! There are two words which are translated in the NRSV as “neglect” that are used to describe the distribution of food to Hellenist widows as well as the word of God; both are considered bad and can’t simply be traded off. The first is παρεθεωροῦντο, though the NIV uses “overlooked” for the food distribution, I do believe that “neglect” is the better word). BUT, it is also true that the second word translated as “neglect” for the word of God (καταλείψαντας) is a bit stronger than the word used for the distribution of food – it translates better as abandon, depart from, or forsake. So both are spiritual activities but the Apostles seem to worry that the one task might pull them away from the very important work of prayer and “serving the word” which are also for the community.

I think the Apostles’ concern answers a very interesting question: How was the community capable of both critiquing itself and maintaining unity? The answer, I believe, is this: the Spirit-filled complaint of calling for greater justice toward the Greek-speaking widows was born out of a culture anchored in the Bible –a community where the Bible speaks not simply to us but sometimes against us. That’s the point of Psalm 119 that was read earlier – while sins are often “ours” most of the time the Bible is not, it is the outside voice in our midst which critiques our own sense of justice, grace, love, etc. The Bible tells us the story of the gospel that we are to live out. And unlike sins, which the Bible states are first and foremost “ours,” the Psalmist tells us that the Bible is not “our” book, “our law, “our statues,” but God’s.

Third, churches that practice evangelism well ordain complainers.

The Twelve’s solution to this new dilemma was an interesting one. Rather than trying to solve the problem themselves they asked the whole congregation to “select from among yourselves” wise, Spirit-filled people. This move itself was already astounding. In the ancient world, much like our own, those with political power generally repressed complaining minorities: while here the Apostles hand the whole system over to the offended minority.

When we look at the process and their list of candidates, some interesting things emerge – first, the whole congregation is asked to participate and the issue that they are asked to consider is character rather than special talents or abilities. It also means that we have to think carefully about wise administration. In our passage, administration is a spiritual task of ferreting out neglect and addressing it. 

Second, the people who are called to address the issue directly all have Greek speaking names. They are themselves Hellenists. In other words, the group who makes the complaint becomes the group empowered to serve. It makes sense that the people who see the need are some of the best to meet it. Complaining by itself is just complaining but complaining coupled with responsibility is always called diakonia or ministry.

The point is that complainers are more than people with needs, whether legitimate or not, they are also people who need to be needed, people whom God can use. As we talk about those who are marginal, let’s never forget that we are talking about people –people with gifts to give, talents to share, skills to offer. Our story reminds us that complainers aren’t simply problems to be solved but are also those used by God to solve problems. People are gifts that need to be utilized, empowered and released. They need to be recognized and prayed for. “Full of the Spirit” means that God uses them, God anoints them, God calls them. If God does that, shouldn’t we? If God always uses people, how are you being used, you complainer? What do you feel called to complain about?

Finally, it’s Spirit-led complainers who convert clergy. Why? Why does Luke tell us at this point that “a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith” in vs. 7? Because these priests saw a new spiritual reality where they were not the arbiters of everything within the life of the community. They looked and saw a new community where everyone, with different tasks, shared the same role of priesthood. They saw an empowered community of priests!

Friends, church will never be easy but it can be healing. And to be a healing community the church must authentically declare and address “our” sin. When we do so, we will be better evangelists.