• Leadership in Acts 2?

    January 18, 2008

    I’ve been studying Acts 2:42-47 for the past week. I’m realizing that I could preach this passage 20 weeks straight and wouldn’t run out of material. So, I am trying to narrow my sermon down to the thing that I think is most pertinent for our specific community. While this likely won’t make it into my sermon , I had some interesting reflections on the leadership situation in this passage. (I guess you can consider this a sermon outtake).

    So, think about this for a second, if there are 12 apostles and there were 3000 people total, we now have 12 groups of 250. Hmmm… likely this isn’t how it worked since we see that they met in homes. Let’s say then that they split into groups of 30. This gives us 300 groups meeting on a regular basis throughout the city.

    This causes some interesting questions does it not? If they committed themselves to the apostles teaching (which it says they did!), and there were more were way more 12 groups, who did the teaching? Did the apostles establish a preaching circuit, rotating from house to house? Even if they did that, who was in charge of the groups, did teaching and led the breaking of bread (communion) when one of the apostles wasn’t there? What I see here is a heck of a lot of “unqualified leaders” playing some really important roles in the early church. For some of us, this is a scary thought. How did they govern heresy? It’s not like they had Paul’s Epistles to pass around yet. Were the leaders of these groups meeting with the disciples so that they had some guidance?

    This just causes some interesting questions…

  • Comments on this Post:

    Comment by: rick Shott


    1

    You have some interesting questions that all come from silence.

    This passage does not say that they met in homes, they might have just continued meeting in public places. The disciples are seen as going to the temple. Sermons were given in public, this is how Peter was arrested. The very early church did not have to meet in houses for everything. Perhaps even at first they did not because persecution was coming from this public ministry. Am I right? We can’t be sure the Bible is not specific about these details. I would not make too much out of thinking about the logistics about this because God through the Bible does not consider it important. It is interesting, but it requires assumptions on our parts that are not always true. Like how do you know that the leaders are “unqualified” if they already have a good grounding in the OT then minimal training would bring them up to speed theologically.

    Moreover, you overlook that the group that was meeting in prayer after the ascension numbered 120. While it appears that only the 12 spoke in tongues there is another 108 leaders. Your new ratio is 25:1 suddenly workable.

    01/18/08 8:32 PM

    Comment by: Todd


    2

    Rick, your “argument from silence” point is a good one. But, I do think there is a bit of validity to the thoughts. For the original readers of the book of Acts there would have been a lot of things they understood that we don’t, simply because they understood the culture.

    The disciples going to the temple was for morning and afternoon prayers as was the custom of the culture. While there was likely teaching that happened informally there, prayer was the thing they went for. It also seems that the preaching that peter did was not so much teaching to the christians as it was the proclamation that Jesus is Lord to those who had yet to believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

    The “unqualified” part i was actually referring to our understanding of qualified (which is a fairly general statement since everyone has different requirements). My point was that they were likely not trained in the same way that the apostles were (and they certainly didn’t go to seminary) :)

    Your point about the 120 is quite helpful though. I hadn’t thought of that. That does give a us a picture of some more substantial leadership for this early church.

    Of course, I am not looking for an excuse to spread heresy :) Anyways thanks for your thoughts.

    01/18/08 8:50 PM

    Comment by: Tom


    3

    How did it go today, Todd? Do you post audio to the well’s website?

    01/20/08 9:39 AM

    Comment by: Todd


    4

    I might be compelled to actually get the last few sermons up… we’ll see how i do.

    01/20/08 2:03 PM

    Comment by: Tim


    5

    Hey man,

    Just wanted to let you know that I thought Sunday’s sermon was by far, one of the best sermon you have preached since I have been at The Well. Thanks brother.

    01/21/08 6:11 AM

    Comment by: 'Mas


    6

    As is often the case today with new church plants, the few Apostles would start small groups that would grow with time and probably select leaders from each group to build a structure around. When these leaders faltered or needed some re-inforcement, the Epistles were written - surely the New Testament only features a portion of the writings that allowed the Apostles to lead from remote. Now we have seminars, books & blogs to supplement our “training”.

    01/21/08 9:56 AM

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