Tuesday, March 15, 2005

many hats for many heads

Luke 6:1-6

The first church-split is avoided, and the church becomes much stronger, because of the wisdom of the Apostles.

There's lot of things they didn't do (i.e. point fingers, dismiss the compalints as silly, try harder to pass out food more fairly). What they did do is look to the rest of the church for the solution. In doing this they passed on authority and power to seven more leaders. They gave up the food-distributor hat to focus on the prayer and word (teaching?) hat. Wearing many hats requires a big head, somehting they could not afford to have. Dispensing jobs (and with them authority and control) to the rest of the body of Christ requires humility. And it breeds health.

Are you trying to do too much? Perhaps it's time to empower some helpers. Surrender the hats.

1 comment:

Sam said...

This passage (which is Acts not Luke) has always made me wonder about the structure of our Deacons. It seems that these deacons were selected to help a need. I suppose it was ongoing to some extent. But at some point, perhaps their duties would be complete. I guess I wonder if it might be more appropriate to appoint "temporary" deacons to complete a project or to help with a need that has arisen. Perhaps more delegation, or "surrender of hats" would take place if that were the case.