Reflections on Church Planting – Part 2
This series of seven reflections were shared by Josh Cockayne at the Plant Course 2022, hosted at St George’s Leeds.
“In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.
So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.”
We’re at what feels like a bit of a crossroads in our culture and in the church; if I had a pound for every time, I heard the phrase “the new normal”, I’d be a very rich man indeed by now. But it is true that we have suddenly been thrown into a new world, with very different expectations, with needs we hadn’t anticipated 2 years ago, and with opportunities to reach out and engage with people who are open in very unexpected ways. The reason we are all [at the Plant course] today, I would guess, is that we all want to see the church grow; we want to see a growth in discipleship, in mission, in prayer, and a reversal to many years of downward statistics.
It is heartening then, to hear in verse 7, that in the midst of their own “new normal moment”, as they adapt to shifting cultural expectations, the first Christian church planters saw God growing the church. In verse 7 we hear that “the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.” If we look throughout the history of chuch planting movements, growth is very often tied to times of great cultural upheaval and change.
But it is worth paying attention, I think, to what comes before verse 7 if we are to reflect on growth in our context.
With any growth or change, there come difficult decisions about priorities. I know this to be true on a much smaller scale in family life: Adapting to being a family of 5 means that we are sometimes faced with dilemmas: Is it better let the baby cry while the toddler wets herself? Should the five-year-old begging for someone to help him finish his Lego take priority over catching up with my wife about how her day has been? These sound trivial, but these decisions betray certain priorities that shape the dynamic of family life, they are the direct result of dramatic growth.
Similarly, the church in Acts 6 is faced with dilemmas of its own: Who’s cultural norms will be adopted into the church? Who will care for the vulnerable in the community as it sees an influx of new people? It becomes clear that their old ways of operating just won’t work, they don’t currently have the resources and structures to answer these questions. They are faced with a new normal, forced to adapt and embrace the pain of change.
The response of the church in this passage surprised me if I’m honest. The 12 disciples, the key leaders in the early church, in the midst of crisis say this:
“It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables”
This feels like a pretty callous response to the situation.
So, what were they getting at? A helpful way of framing this is by asking: What was the church committed to doing? And what was it called to be?
The apostles are not saying that serving the vulnerable is not important, but that if they are doing this to the neglect of pursuing God, then this is a problem. The church is not a social club to address everyone’s needs or to pick up what the state cannot. Above all else, the Church is the body of Christ, in which we join together through the power of the Holy Spirit to worship and glorify God. Unless we are led by the Spirit and unless we are united together with Jesus, then we are no different to any other human organisation.
Of course, we as the Church have a unique commitment to respond to the issues we face as a nation, but what distinguishes us from a charity is that we are equipped, anointed and called by God to do this work. So, if we neglect our pursuit of God’s word to our communities, then we stop being the church.
In response, the church in Acts go on to select and ordain a small group of individuals who have the responsibility to prioritise this vital task of seeking God’s word for the world, and of listening to the Holy Spirit. These are leaders called to a specific task by the Church. And it is a result of this change of priorities that brings about the growth we see in verse 7. When they were a community focused on God’s word, they begin to see growth and the spreading of the good news. While the passage doesn’t say this, I think it seems reasonable to assume that more widows were now being fed because the church had grown, even if it meant that for some, the right thing to do was to prioritise the life of prayer over the life of charity.
The reality is, we aren’t called to be the church on our own, even if we’re stuck inside on our own. It’s important to see that in Acts only a few were given this task of prayer and serving the word of God. If everyone in the Church had stopped looking after the widows and caring for the vulnerable to devote themselves to prayer, they wouldn’t have got it right either. We need to figure out where we are called to be and what we are committed to here.
I’m reminded of Paul’s image of the church as the body of Christ. We cannot all play the same role in the community of the church; just as the body needs hands, as well as lungs. While the church needs to respond in compassion and love to the issues it encounters, we cannot all wait on tables without losing something vital about what the church is. To respond faithfully to a crisis and to grow amidst the pain of dragging ourselves into the new normal we must embrace that we as the Church are truly a body of difference. It’s only when we realise this that we can champion and encourage one another to live up to our calling together and, ultimately grow through our struggle.
Joshua Cockayne
Joshua is the Team Leader at Holy Trinity Boar Lane: a Church with a midweek ministry to love and serve workers in the heart of the city. He is also an honorary lecturer in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews and a tutor at Westminster Theological College. He previously led the G2 Central church plant in York from 2016–2017.
