Acts 6:7

Acts 6:7 - 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.

At this time we see that the Word of God was spreading. There were more and more disciples being added to the Faith. But why? What was the reason for the success in the kingdom of God? Take a look at the earlier part of this chapter. We see an issue come up. There are some of the Jews who were concerned because the widows among them were being overlooked. They brought this up to the disciples, who in turn made a decision. The disciples realized they could not handle everything. They needed to devote their time to prayer and teaching, but they also couldn’t let these people get neglected. So they delegated.They had the people choose some men that would be responsible for taking care of the widows and the poor.

We as the church are the body of Christ and we need to act like one body. Here in Acts they were so successful because they had people to fill all the roles. They didn’t try to do it all themselves. It’s about finding peoples strengths and giving them a place to use them. Each member of the body of Christ has a role to fill and the whole church will suffer if you are not fulfilling that role.

This is often the problem we run into in the local church today. We are not fulfilling the calling that God has placed on us. It seems we think that the pastor should take care of everything, but that is not the case. Other times the pastor himself has trouble letting go of things, and therefore tries to handle things outside of his strengths. Both of these situations will lead to an ineffective church, and the body suffers because of it. It is the pastor’s job to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Part of the ministry is in the church, part is to the world.

God designed the church to function as a body and each member to carry out a different job. We see Paul lay this out for us in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. And in verse 26 he reminds us that if one part of the body suffers the whole body suffers and if one part rejoices the whole body rejoices. We must work together and function as one body. If we get back to this design we too will see the Word of God spread and the number of believers increase.