The Value of the Church (Acts #10)
Justin and Trisha Davis moved to Indianapolis in 2002 to plant a church, and it exploded. Within a year, hundreds of people called Genesis Church home. Within eighteen months they had launched a million-dollar fundraising campaign to buy land and build a building.
Everything was taking off. They were getting invited to church planting conferences. Planters were traveling to Indianapolis to learn from them.
And underneath all of it, Justin was struggling with a sexual addiction. It didn’t stop at pornography. He had an affair — with their children’s director, who also happened to be his wife’s closest friend.
When it all came out, everything collapsed. Justin went through the darkest night of the soul: humiliated that he’d let this take hold and destroy everything. He lost his marriage. His job. His identity. The respect of everyone around him.
And Trisha had built her whole life on this. This was her dream man, and he turned out not to be who she thought. This was her best friend in the world, and her best friend had slept with her husband. She had always dreamed of being part of a church, and that was being taken from her too.
What you expect to hear next is that he left ministry, the marriage ended, and that was that.
That’s not the story.
The reason most people know their story is that they survived it. It took four years. Trisha didn’t shrug and say it was no big deal — it was four years of deep, gut-wrenching counseling. But they came through it. Their marriage survived. They have three children. They’re still married, and still trying to make a difference. They didn’t want other people to go through what they went through, so they started a ministry with the goal of helping couples on the brink of divorce see their marriages healed through the gospel.
If you asked Justin whether he’d go back and undo it, I’m certain he would. He’d never have the affair. He’d never keep the addiction hidden. Trisha would probably name things she’d do differently too.
And yet if you talked with them today, they’d likely tell you that the health they now have in their marriage — the love, the connection, the commitment — exists because of what God did in that darkness.
Grateful for the Worst Thing
Have you ever come through something so awful that, when it was finally over, you found yourself grateful?
None of us want the tornado that swoops in and levels everything. And yet sometimes, in the middle of the wreckage, something new gets rebuilt — and it’s stronger.
Nobody wants their private sins made public. Nobody wants the rejection or the betrayal. Nobody gets giddy about a dark night of the soul.
And yet on the other side, people say the strangest things: I would never wish that on my worst enemy — and I’m grateful it happened, because it made me who I am. We have the relationship we have today because of that.
So far in Acts we’ve watched the early church go through some genuinely hard things. Twice we’ve seen outside pressure from the religious leaders trying to stop the whole movement. And a couple of weeks ago in chapter 5 we saw a couple inside the church lie in order to gain influence — a moment that could have metastasized like a cancer.
What we’re going to see today is by far the worst. This has the potential to throw the church into a full identity crisis. It’s the kind of thing that destroys churches.
And like Justin and Trisha’s story, the church is going to emerge stronger.
The Text
Open your Bible to Acts 6, verses 1 through 7.
Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. 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, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.
And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
Let’s Call It What It Is
Verse 1 gives us the problem, and it comes down to discrimination. I’ll go further: it’s racism.
I’m reading the English Standard Version, which leans toward word-for-word translation, so it keeps the term Hellenists. A thought-for-thought translation might render it “Greek-speaking Jews.”
Hellenists were Jews who spoke Greek as their first language. Most of the apostles grew up in homes where Hebrew was primary. They’d know Greek — it was the economic language of the day — but they thought in Hebrew. It was who they were. The Hellenists, speaking Greek, tended to think and dress and carry themselves more like Greeks.
Now, the “daily distribution” is food. Remember chapters 2 and 4, where people were selling homes and land and giving the proceeds to the church? That money was buying food for the poor. And who is poorer or more vulnerable than a widow with no family? So the church was meeting basic needs for these women.
But over time people noticed a pattern: this group of widows always receives food. That group doesn’t. And it didn’t take long to work out that it was the Greek-speaking widows going without.
So the Hellenists are offended — rightly. This is racism, and racism is completely antithetical to the gospel. And they speak up.
If this happened today, this is the kind of thing that makes people leave. In Iowa we’re too polite to even lodge the complaint — we’d just quietly stop coming, and there’d be a slow exodus while the leadership had no idea why. Or sometimes the complaint gets made, and nothing leadership says or does matters. I can’t believe this is happening here. We’re out.
Instead, the complaint comes to the apostles. And look at verse 7 — the church grows, and even some of the priests come to faith.
How on earth does a church move through an identity crisis over racism and come out the other side with priests wanting in?
They did it by holding to their values and keeping their priorities straight. And a laser-like focus on the right priorities will carry you through your personal struggles too — a marriage crisis, a job crisis, a health crisis — and it can carry us as a church family through whatever comes.
The apostles reveal two values: God and people.
Value One: God
The problem is brought forward, and in verse 2 they call a full church meeting. Everyone gathers, and they lay it out honestly: here’s the issue, and it isn’t right.
But notice what they say: It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. And in verse 4: We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.
Yanked out of context that sounds heartless. But we know they’re addressing the issue — they called the meeting, and we’re about to see their plan.
What I want you to see is that even though this is a genuinely important issue, they refuse to get sidetracked. Jesus said in Acts 1:8 that they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. He told them to go and make disciples. So if they’re to make disciples, they cannot let a food distribution ministry pull them off the mission.
Their priorities are straight. The most important thing is putting God first — drawing people to God through the teaching of His word and seeking God through prayer.
It’s embarrassing how often I don’t do that. How many times I’ve skimmed my daily Bible reading, or skipped it, because I had more important things to do — while somehow always finding time for my phone. Or I start to pray and think, God, You understand, I’ve got tasks — and blast through it.
That isn’t valuing God first. That’s saying, God, I know You’re there, You love me, I love You, but I’ve got things to do.
The apostles don’t do that. Here is an urgent, important crisis, and they say: this matters, and we’ve been called to something even more important — the word and prayer.
This passage is part of why our elders start every Wednesday meeting with prayer. It doesn’t matter how long the agenda is. We always pray, and we pray for you.
It’s also why we push those connection cards every Sunday. Write your prayer requests down. Here’s what actually happens with them: they’re never shared outside that meeting. One of us reads a request aloud, and someone says, “I’ll take it.” That card goes to him. We read the next one. “I’ll take that one.” We distribute all of them. Then we ask if there’s anything else — from a conversation on Sunday, from a growth group, from anywhere. And then we pray.
Not, “God, You know what’s written on the cards, take care of it so we can get to our agenda.” We pray specifically for you. Most weeks it’s ten or fifteen minutes. Some weeks twenty. I think we’ve gone thirty a couple of times.
And I don’t think any of us has ever walked away thinking that was a waste of time. You are the priority. One of the primary things we’re called to do as elders is pray for you.
So if you think something isn’t a big deal — write it down anyway. We’d be honored. And when something wonderful happens, write that down too, so we can praise God with you.
Value Two: People
Studying this week, I noticed four groups of people the apostles valued.
1. They valued all people.
Most of the apostles came from Hebrew-speaking homes. It would have been the most natural thing in the world to side with the Hebrew widows — that’s my grandmother, I’d really like to see her fed.
They don’t. And they don’t overcorrect either — no “to make it fair, we’ll cut off the Hebrew widows for two months to balance the books.”
They say the Greek-speaking widows need to be fed and the Hebrew-speaking widows need to be fed, because all of them matter. All of them have value. Jesus died for all of them.
So even while saying “we ourselves can’t run this,” they insist something must be done — because these women matter.
2. They valued leaders of people.
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.
Nothing gets done without leadership.
I’ve been in full-time ministry for nearly thirty years, and I’ve sat in a lot of rooms with groups of pastors. They share personal things, church struggles, all of it — but the single most common topic I’ve heard is the need for more leaders.
It’s no different here. To accomplish what God has given us, we need leaders — to disciple our kids, to run the cafe, to lead growth groups, to serve as elders.
Last fall, at what we called a volunteer roundup, I shared a desire to see a fifth- and sixth-grade class start. It happened — because two people stepped up and said they’d lead it. Now, twice a month, those kids go to their own room and learn about Jesus.
At that same meeting I shared a desire to start another adult growth group. That didn’t happen. Because we never found the leader.
John Maxwell is famous for saying everything rises and falls on leadership. I used to hate that quote. The longer I’m in ministry, the more I understand it. We believe God wants to use us to help plant another church within five years — and that will require leaders.
But notice two things about the leaders they’re looking for.
First, they weren’t looking for warm bodies. They needed character. “Men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.”
This is a fundamentally administrative, task-based role — these men are the church’s first deacons. So why such high standards?
Because they can’t afford someone who bungles it. Or who lets the problem continue. Or who overcorrects so that only the Greek-speaking widows are cared for. Or — worst of all — someone who uses the position for himself, so that suddenly his family and friends always have plenty and he gets richer off it.
They need men they can trust. If the apostles can’t be the ones running it, they must entrust it to people who are genuinely qualified.
I’ve been connected with campus ministry for over twenty years, and here’s a bizarre phenomenon: college students graduate. Which means these organizations are perpetually recruiting new leaders. In just two years at one campus I’ve watched two entirely different leadership teams cycle through. If you’re blessed you get two years out of a student; if you’re very blessed, three.
And when student leadership teams look for replacements, the first thing they look for is faithfulness — who showed up every week. Faithfulness matters. But showing up consistently does not automatically qualify someone to lead.
You need character. That’s what the apostles are asking for.
Second, they weren’t lazy about it. The apostles are the key leaders here, and they don’t get casual. They don’t say, “Here are three or four ideas we might try.” They don’t say, “Give us a few months and we’ll come up with something.” They don’t even say, “We’re just going to trust God and watch what happens.”
They step up and build a plan, because leadership can’t be done lazily.
So if you lead anywhere — at church, at work, on a team, in a club, or simply leading your children at home — don’t be lazy with it. Because lazy leadership is putting yourself first instead of them.
Think about it: if the apostles had been putting themselves first, they would have handled this themselves. They could have swooped in and been the heroes. Look how caring they are — not only the great teachers of the church, but willing to serve tables. What servant leadership.
Instead they said: we can’t do everything, and we must keep doing what God called us to. So they entrusted it to people who would see it through.
If you’re leading, ask: what am I doing to set others up to succeed? Because leadership isn’t about you.
3. They valued a unified people.
I love the first phrase of verse 5: And what they said pleased the whole gathering.
That line helped me enormously as we were establishing how Riverwood would be governed.
The Bible doesn’t say a great deal about church governance. There’s some, but not much. It would have been convenient if God had given us a third letter to Timothy specifying that every church should have twelve elders to represent the twelve apostles and nine deacons over these particular areas, and that voting rights belong to these categories.
That isn’t there. Which means there’s real wiggle room. Just because we do something one way doesn’t mean another church is wrong, or that we are.
But some churches take that wiggle room to extremes.
At one extreme, the pastor holds all the power. I served on staff at a church like that in my first two years of ministry. I lived in genuine fear that any week I could walk into a staff meeting and be fired on the spot for no reason — I just don’t think your voice is that great anymore. No cause needed.
At the other extreme, the staff has no authority whatsoever. I know of a church where a man told the pastor, “You work for me. I’ll be here longer than you — you’ll move on, I’ll still be here. So you’ll do what I say.” He wasn’t joking. In churches like that, the congregation decides everything, right down to service times and children’s curriculum, and staff simply execute.
I don’t understand either extreme.
The second makes no sense because if God has given someone the spiritual gift of leadership, that gift is meant to benefit the church — so let them lead. But the first makes no sense either, because the church is the people. If the church is saying the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few, why would you not let the church speak into these things? Because as you interact with the church, you discover things, and you start seeing who the leaders are.
That’s why we use the word partner rather than member. We believe it’s a partnership between our church family and the leaders who are themselves part of that family.
Look at what the apostles actually do. They lead — they build the plan. And then they submit it to the people, and it pleases the whole gathering.
And then notice: you pick the seven. They set the qualifications, but the apostles don’t hand-select their own. The congregation nominates, because they’re solving this together.
That’s why our church family nominates elders. Any time you notice someone with the character Scripture describes — someone you trust, someone with a genuine heart to love and care — you can bring their name to one of us.
Then we go to that person and ask if he’d consider it. If yes, there’s a questionnaire. If that goes well, an interview. If he’s married, we talk with his wife. Then reference checks, because we want to confirm his character is the same outside the church as inside it.
And if all of that goes well, we bring him to you. Our partners get to meet him, ask questions, and then take two full weeks to pray about whether this person should be one of our leaders. During those weeks, if you know something concerning, you can come to any of us.
If nothing comes forward, our church family affirms it. Because our desire is exactly what’s in verse 5: that it would please the whole gathering.
4. They valued new people.
Look at verse 7 again. The word of God increased. The disciples multiplied greatly. And a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
These were people who had opposed them — who didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah, who wrote Him off as a carpenter from Nazareth, who denied the resurrection because no body was produced. And they cannot deny what they are watching. Even in a situation involving racism, they see how the church handles it — how everyone matters, how everyone is loved — and it overwhelms them, and they come in.
You may not realize how hard that is, because churches slide toward one of two extremes.
I’ve known churches so oriented toward new people that they effectively ignore the needs of the people already there. Everything is about the new, because growth is the point. They value new people at the expense of the existing family.
And I’ve known churches that love their own family deeply, but when someone new walks in nobody greets them, nobody asks their story, and they’re quietly ignored — because it’s only about me and my holy huddle.
Healthy churches do both. They love each other deeply and with commitment, and they do everything they can to welcome new people in.
That’s genuinely hard, because you have limited bandwidth. The pastor Larry Osborne compares people to Lego bricks — some are bigger, some are smaller, but every one has a finite number of connection points. There’s only so much space to connect.
But if we’re going to be the church God calls us to be, we have to find a way. Because notice something about the book of Acts: every single time Luke reports numerical growth, it comes immediately after an example of care within the church.
Chapter 2 — they’re selling possessions to care for one another, and the church grows. Chapter 3 — Peter heals a man and shows that kind of care, and the church grows. Chapter 4 — again, possessions sold, and the church grows. And now, chapter 6 — they make sure every widow is cared for, and the church grows.
I believe that’s because when a church genuinely loves one another deeply — not a polite hello on Sunday, but I know your name, I know your story, I want to be in your life — the watching world says: I want in on that. If they love each other like that, maybe they’d love me.
If we aren’t growing at all, it’s probably because we’re ignoring new people. And if new people constantly come through and we never actually grow, it’s probably because we’re ignoring the people already here.
That’s why growth groups matter so much. It’s why we take a moment on Sundays to say hi to someone near you — and we hope it doesn’t stop at “hi.” We hope something sparks that carries into the lobby and turns into a real conversation. Can we get coffee this week? Can I text you about that? Can I pray for you right now?
These Two Things Were Always Connected
None of this should surprise us. In Mark 12, Jesus is asked for the greatest commandment in all the Old Testament, and He quotes Deuteronomy 6: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. In other words — value God.
But He doesn’t stop. He was asked for one, and He gives two, because in His mind they’re welded together: love your neighbor as yourself, quoting Leviticus 19.
He’s saying that if you love God, you will love people. And if you aren’t loving people, it very likely means you aren’t in the right place with God.
Because the more you know God, the more you understand His heart. God created human beings and put His image in them. And even after they sinned, He gave everything to bring them back into relationship with Him. If that’s God’s heart toward people, then treasuring Him first will inevitably grow the same heart in us.
And that’s hard. It’s easy when people look like us, dress like us, vote like us, listen to our music, and watch our shows. It gets harder when they’re the opposite — different decisions, different appearance, different language.
But all people matter to God. Jesus didn’t die only for the Jews. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son. So if they matter to Him, they have to matter to us.
Valuing Is Not the Same as Affirming
Now bring it back to your own crisis. What does any of this mean Monday morning at work, or this fall at school, or with your friends, or on your team?
You’re going to have all kinds of things thrown at you, and it’s going to be difficult. Our culture right now insists that to value someone you must affirm everything about them.
Valuing is not affirming.
By all means, if you meet a murderer, I hope you value him — the image of God is in him. But you do not therefore have to say, I understand, she said some really hurtful things, you were angry, you were just being true to yourself in the moment, so it’s fine.
It isn’t fine.
Some of you feel awkward hearing that. I feel awkward saying it, because it runs so hard against where our culture sits. And our culture says a lot of very smart-sounding things, which makes it tempting to simply fall in line. We’re being discipled by social media feeds and conversations around the water cooler, and it would be so much easier to go along.
So how do you navigate the awkward things? The difficult things? The tornado that’s already hit you?
By keeping your values and priorities straight.
When you truly value God — when He is what you treasure — then no matter what gets thrown at you, you can hold firm and say with the apostles, we must obey God rather than men. You can say it with respect. With love. With enormous grace, because God has given you enormous grace.
And it will still be hard, because some people will hear only hatred. Some will hear only closed-mindedness.
And you’re not, because you remember: God was not closed-minded toward me. I did those things. I thought those things. I said those things. And Jesus still died for my sin. And if He could love a sinner like me, then He values all people.
So I may not affirm everything you choose. But you matter to God, and therefore you matter to me.
And when you know that you matter to God, you’ll come through your own tornado holding firm — because He will carry you through it. And you may just find yourself on the other side stronger, and genuinely grateful for what you faced.
