A small piece of news came across my desk this week from the other side of the world. In Indonesia, a renewal movement that began fifty years ago with a handful of believers meeting to pray has marked its fiftieth anniversary. Half a century of prayer meetings, of people asking God to fill them, of hands laid on the sick, of ordinary men and women discovering that the Holy Spirit is not a doctrine to be filed away but a Person who shows up.
Here is what struck me. For an anniversary like that, you would expect the word of the hour to be more. More prayer, more gatherings, more power. Instead the call that went out was this: evangelize through service. Go wash something. Go carry something. Go sit with somebody nobody else is sitting with.
That is not a step down from the Spirit's work. That is the Spirit's work. And the first church figured it out in about chapter six.
The problem was food
Acts 6 opens with the church growing fast and a complaint rising just as fast: the Greek-speaking widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. Not a doctrinal crisis. A lunch crisis. People were going hungry while other people got fed, and somebody said so out loud.
Listen to how the apostles answered it: "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" (Acts 6:2-4).
Read that job description again. The qualification for handing out bread was being full of the Spirit. Not organizational skill. Not availability. Not "whoever hasn't served yet this month." They went looking for the most obviously Spirit-filled people they had and put them on the food line.
That ought to rearrange something in us. We tend to assume the Spirit's fullness qualifies a person for the platform, the microphone, the dramatic moment. The apostles assumed it qualified a person for the widows' table. Both are true, and the second one is the one we keep forgetting.
Watch what happens next
One of those seven was Stephen, described as "a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit." And the very next thing Luke tells us is that Stephen, full of God's grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people (Acts 6:8). The first person outside the apostles recorded doing signs and wonders came straight off the food distribution roster.
Another was Philip, who a chapter later is preaching in Samaria with crowds listening and the sick being healed, and then sitting in a chariot explaining Isaiah to one Ethiopian official on a desert road. He went from carrying meals to carrying the gospel, and nothing about that was a promotion. It was the same obedience in a different room.
I believe God still heals. I believe the gifts He gave the church He has not withdrawn, and I expect Him to move among us — not only in the pages of the Bible but on a Wednesday in Michigan. But I have watched enough people, in church leadership and in business, to notice this: the ones God entrusts with real spiritual weight are almost always the ones already carrying something nobody is applauding.
Nothing happens without somebody carrying chairs
Our Bible Study meets today at 11:30. Before anyone opens a Bible, somebody has unlocked a door, set out chairs, started coffee, turned on a light. No one will mention it. It will not be prayed over or announced. And yet without it there is no gathering, no Word opened, no Spirit-prompted conversation in the parking lot afterward that somebody needed more than they knew.
If you are the one who does that work — here, or in a hospital room, or in your own kitchen at six in the morning for people who have not thanked you in years — hear this clearly. You are not beneath the move of God. You may be standing in the middle of it.
And if you have been praying for something that has not come yet, if the healing did not arrive or the door has not opened, you are not disqualified and you are not forgotten. Keep your hands open and keep them busy. Fullness tends to find people who are already serving.
Because the Lord we follow took a towel before He took the cross. "I am among you as one who serves" (Luke 22:27). Fifty years of renewal on the other side of the world just landed on the same conclusion. So will we, if we're honest. The Spirit fills people and then sends them to the table.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.