This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar driving directions and more audio recordings. Well, good morning. I apologize, it is so hot, but this is one of the hottest Sundays we've had here. Just look on the right side, imagine how nice it would be to be sitting at the beach relaxing. If you had no chance of getting a sunburn, you know, if you were just out there enjoying the calmness of it, it would probably be hotter than this. So just kind of, you know, think about it here. You're in a situation here enjoying just relaxing Sunday afternoon with what's going on here. Anyway, thanks for bearing with us with that. I do want to say one quick plug for the college group meeting as well too. I remember looking back when I started my college days. One of the best decisions I made, and I want to say this to all of our college students here, was to not hesitate getting plugged in with other Christians as soon as I got involved and got the campus. And I know some of you, many of you already have. Some of you are still wandering and pondering what that might look like. Come to lunch, just look at the possibilities because we want to be a church that can serve you in this next phase of life since we have quite a few college students now in our place. So feel free to be waving, fanning yourself, fanning your neighbors. We actually have extra bulletins. You didn't get a bulletin. Go back to the table and grab one. Do whatever you can to stay cool here during this time. Turn to your Bibles in Acts, Chapter 6. We're going to be looking at verses 1 through 7. I had a first experience for me as a parent this past week with my 12-year-old son, Reese. You see, Reese has just entered the world of e-mail. He doesn't have a cell phone yet, so texting was not an option, but e-mail now is. And he kept bugging me all week, said, Dad, did you get the e-mail I sent you? I'm like, well, which account am I needed you send it to? And he kind of told me, I'm like, well, I haven't seen it yet. Maybe you got pulled into one of my spam filters or something I wasn't sure. So after days of him bugging me, I finally found it here this morning and looked at it. And of course it had gotten for some reason flagged and it was in a filtered slot. Looked at it, pulled it up, he said, Dad, this was Reese. I was bored. It had nothing else to do. So I decided to send you this e-mail, Reese. That was it. All week long, we had this anticipation of this great e-mail message that I was going to receive for my 12-year-old son, which I thought had deep profound truths, truths that might change my life and his, and just found out he was bored out of his mind had nothing better to do than assuming an e-mail about nothing. Anyway, maybe you have had experiences like that, I'm not sure. But let me assure you that as we read God's Word right now, this is not a message about nothing. And even though it might have been written 2,000 years ago and recorded, it was breathed by the very spirit of God through the hands of men and women that have recorded it. And as we look at that here this morning, as we read God's Word this morning, just realize that it is infallible. It is inherent. It's inspired by God, and it will never return void. So let's read his Word, Acts chapter 6 verses 1 through 7. In those days, when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews, among them, complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the 12 gathered all the disciples together and said, it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose 7 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. This proposal please the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Spirit. Also Philip, Prochorus, Nichenor, Tyman, Permanus, and Nicholas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. 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. This is God's Holy and inspired Word. Well, as we look at here this text this morning, I thought it would be appropriate even though we're in between series right now to talk for a moment about leadership. As you know, if you were here last week at our congregational meeting, you know that we just entered a season of nomination for officers, for the office of elder or deacon. As you know, if you've been here for the last month or so in our church, we've been talking about impact Sunday and we've been challenging all of you who call Christ's Kingdom Church home to serve in some capacity in this upcoming ministry year. We put that out before you see even Hitler leadership from the left and the right from the front from behind the last few weeks here. But as we looked at this, I thought I wanted to go to a specific passage that talked about one of the high marks, one of the great points, great places in history where we see leadership being raised up in the New Testament specifically. And that's here in Acts chapter 6. But before we jump into that, I want you to take a look at this collage of pictures. This is just from this past week as I thought about what happened historically really in our country. What were the headlines for the week? You had lots of different faces of leaders that were pasted on the newspaper, on your internet, on your TV screen, all kinds of places that emerged throughout the week, all kinds of different venues, all kinds of different topics. But what all of us would say is that leadership though and the faces that we see even from our past week is a significant role. Whether it be leisurely things or very important worldwide circumstances and events and decisions that are made with that. But let me ask you to think beyond here just historically this past week and the news. I want you to think about in your own life, look back in your own life, whether it's been 13 years, whether it's been 37 years or 61. And looking back and think about the faces of leaders as you scan throughout your own personal life that pop up. It might have been apparent in the early days. It might have been a youth worker or might still be a youth worker. It might be somebody, a professor that took special interest in you. It might be a relative that invested in you. I bet if you let your own brain generate its own leadership collage, you will find faces that have stood up that made a difference in your life and had an impact in your life. Well, we're going to look at this text here this morning and as you think about that and think a little bit about the power of leadership, we're going to look at five observations from this text specifically about leadership. Now, yeah, there's a little insert in the bulletin that you can follow along, that you can jot down some of these if you'd like to. But with each observation, I want to give you five leadership principles that I think are behind the observations that come directly from God's word that I want to challenge us to be implementing more and more each time each day. So as we look at that, let's start with number one here this morning. Number one is this. There was a growing community according to this text in Acts chapter 6. Look at verse one. Read it again. In those days, when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained about the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. Now, at first glance, if you just read that, you think, all right, that's just some stat, some history, some facts that are being recorded here. But you've got to think about some of the things that are significant here. You realize they're now Grecian Jews and Hebraic Jews and they're gathering together and they're all considered disciples, disciples of who? Disciples of Jesus Christ. Do you see the emergence of a community here? Do you see people that are being circled together and revolving around serving the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you see that they're becoming passionate about some of the needs that are going on in the church? Widows were often overlooked during this day and time, much like they can't be even our day and time, but the problem was very prevalent. The lifespan of people was much shorter than it is today and the chances of being accidentally killed or getting a disease that would kill you, it meant that there was a lot of widows around. A lot of young widows, usually when we think of widows, we think of older women who are left behind. But there were a lot of young widows that were left behind that had no way to care for themselves, no way to provide for themselves, left in many cases to a life of begging. And this is on the front burner of what's going on here. The church is moving with compassion. There is a community that's emerging here that is showing some real signs of life, life as followers of Jesus Christ. But notice this well too here, you see right away, it was messy. I love verses like this that just kind of point out some of the obvious sometime and just let you know it was messy. It wasn't clean and neat. It wasn't free of conflict or tension in the midst of the passion. And whenever you have passionate people as you know, you will have conflicts, you'll have disagreements, you'll have perspectives that are different, different emphasis. But they're drawn to get in a looking for solutions in the midst of this and with all that was going on here. Here's a key, important leadership mark to remember here about this passage. An important mark of a growing community is the awareness of its need for leadership, is the awareness of its need for leadership. How do we know they were aware of that? Because they came to the 12. Because they came looking for answers and looking for solutions. Because of their draw together, their common denominator of serving the Lord Jesus Christ. They're working together as a community to serve and have compassion of those that got to place in their community that they knew like Jesus that said, if you do it until the least of these, you've done them unto me, they removed in that direction and as a result they became aware of the need for leadership in their own community. So they came to the leaders, the only real leaders they had at that time, the 12 disciples. They come to them with a problem with that. And I want to just you to ask a couple questions of yourself here this morning, is our church community, Christ kingdom church? And if you're a guest here this morning, then you're in the locker room listening along and you're a welcome guest. But I don't want you to feel put on the spot answering some of these questions. But I want to ask our community, are we aware of a growing need for leadership in our own church? Do we see passion building and growing in our community here? Do we see with that understanding that there are important needs or things that have to be met? There are obligations that we have in order to be faithful to live for Christ that requires people stepping in. Do you feel that need for leadership because that's an important thing to know? And here's another question, how will we respond? Not just feeling the sense or need for leadership, but how will we respond as a church specifically? And even more specifically, how will you respond? What is God's call on your life? What is your part that he's raised you up to play in this journey? So key leadership point number one, an important mark of a growing community, is the awareness of the need for leadership. And that was true here in Acts chapter 6. Number two, leaders were faithfully following their call. The current leaders that were already there were faithfully following their call. We know that looking at verse 2 and verse 4. Look at verse 2 first. So the 12 gathered all the disciples together and said it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables. What's that evidence of? The 12 knew that there was something different that they were called to do. They were aware of that. They had embraced that. Look down on verse 4. Verse 4 says, and we will give our attention to prayer in the ministry of the Word. It expands on a little bit more. What exactly they knew? The 12 knew that disciples, the apostles knew that they had a very high call, a very special important call. And as the 11 of them had been walking daily with Jesus and taking close notes. And by this point, we're already pinning some of the gospels and different things that were going to be involved with that are relaying it to others that would pin the gospels. Recording these important facts there, they knew that they had an important call, an important role with that. And that's very important in this whole process, because they knew who they were. They weren't trying to be everything. They weren't trying to do everything. And even though that would be easier in many ways, they knew there was something very important that they had to do. You see, the disciples, the apostles, already knew what they had to say yes to. Now, when you know what God's called you to say yes to, then it becomes much clearer what you know God's called you to say no to. Anything that conflicts or doesn't help you with the yeses that God has told you to clear it in your life, and the more crystal clear that is, the more you begin to realize, well, I've got a yes list of things God's calling me to do. I've got a no list as well. Now, whether you're married, you've got some yeses that God's called you to do. If you're a parent, you've got some yeses. If you're students living at home with your parents, you've got some yeses. God's things he's called you to do. If you're students, you're in school, there's some yeses. If you're employed, you've got some yeses. You see the different aspects and things where God has called you with that. But notice here in this text, especially with leadership here. The leaders that were there were very clear what their yeses was. They were just be teaching God's word. The text calls it ministering the word of God. What does that mean? They were teaching it to others. They were sharing it. They were discipling others. They were helping others apply what God's word had to say in their lives. And we know from verse four, they were also very committed to prayer. And those things were so essential. They were so essential that they could not be distracted from it. Even for the very important thing of caring for widows in their distress, which the scriptures go on to say is pure and undefiled religion. Extremely important. Because God's a husband of the husbandless. He's a father to the foveless. Don't misread in this text that it was because that stuff wasn't so important. Notice because the clear calling that God had placed in their lives was so important. They needed not to be distracted from that. And because that other call was so important, they needed to raise up other leaders, which they go on and do. But notice what's very key here is they knew already what they were supposed to be doing. They knew already what their yes was, what God had called them. Here's the key principle, leadership principle in this. When the current leaders know who they are, it is easier to see what new leaders are needed. Do you see how easy it would have been for the apostles here just to jump in and go, all right, you know, they brought my thighs in, they had 12 again. We're like, we got 12 of us. Now can't we kind of distribute this out here? U6, okay, work on the hebraic widows and U6 work on the Grecian widows and we can kind of delegate this out here. We can take care of things. We don't have to burden other people. We don't have to delegate. We don't have to cast other responsibilities. And you know, who knows if we do delegate it out, we'll get taken care of the right way. We'll be handled well. No. They were so convinced of what God had called them to do that they knew clearly the need for new leaders. And that was a key thing here. Let me ask you some questions this morning. Do you know what kind of leader God is calling you to be? You know, we need leaders here as far as our church goes for Sundays. We're going to talk about Sunday logistic training. You've already heard it announced here tonight. In fact, you're going to before you leave here today, you're going to get a VIP backstage pass. I'm going to go ahead and put mine on just to make you a little bit jealous about the one you could be wearing. You will be wearing VIP pass to come back here tonight. And to be involved and figuring out how does it, what is it? It takes a whole church to pull off a Sunday morning experience like this creating an environment. And I wish if any of you do AC repair work, I'd like to talk to you as well too. But it takes a whole church to do that and knowing what our jobs and responsibilities are. We need leaders for youth ministry. We need leaders to initiate efforts to reach out to East Orlando. It's like somebody we've already been doing. We need leaders to be foreign missionaries. Short term, long term. We need leaders to be missionaries at their schools, at their places of employment, in their neighborhoods. We need leaders to be deacons as we've already talked about. We need leaders to be elders, those who God's called. When the current leaders know who they are, it is easier to see what new leaders are needed. And that's important as well for us to remember. Well, a third observation from this text, they trusted the church to choose seven men. They trusted the church to choose seven men. Look at verses three and five, verse three. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the spirit and wisdom. We will turn the responsibility over to them. And then we know from verse five, they go on and do it. Because the proposal, please the whole group, they chose Stephen and the others that are listed there. The leaders trusted the work of God's spirit within and through the body of Christ. It wasn't a guy can only speak through us mentality that the apostles had. They knew clearly well that the Holy Spirit was poured out to the church. And the Holy Spirit would speak through the church. And they came up and they said, hey, you choose seven men from among yourselves in that. And this is what part of what we call in theological terms, the outward call. The inward call of leadership or wherever God's calling you to serve is the sense that I feel, you know, I have this sense in my spirit or my heart of mind that God's calling me to do something. Or maybe he's equipped me to do something with special skills or just a passion in this area. Well, we would call that the inward call. And that's extremely important. But the outward call is also extremely important. The outward call is the fact that there is a body of believers around you that says we think that you're gifted in that area. We think that you have leadership potential in that area. We need your gifts and talents to help in this area. And both the inward and the outward call are important here. And you see it displayed here that there was a place right here where the outward call was going to be necessary. Where they were encouraging them to be a part of that. Notice there in verse three, they say brothers, choose seven men from among you. Among them. They were to choose from people that they were already doing life with. They were to choose from people that they already knew. Not just some random people. Not just people that actually looked good or looked like strong leaders. Not just people who seemed to have had a good track record or they heard that somebody said that so and so might be good at such and such. Now, these are people that they were with, doing life with, that they were among with. And what were some of those things that were that they were observing, that that was so important, that they were to look for was one was being filled with the Holy Spirit. Was being full of the Holy Spirit. Do you know that just about everywhere in the scriptures where it talks about somebody was filled with the Holy Spirit. And then it goes on to say what they did or what happened. It involves two key things when somebody is filled with the Holy Spirit. Number one is speaking in tongues. Right? Wrong. That's another topic by the way. We can talk about that. A lot of times that's where a lot of places people go. You see the Holy Spirit happens in these miraculous supernatural things happen. Like people are getting healed and stuff like that. No, that's not what's happening. Almost every single case in the New Testament when somebody is filled with the Holy Spirit. Do you know what's happening? Number one, they're filled with faith to believe in God to do something or to say something. To step out in faith to trust God to do something or to say something. And what does it say almost in every text? It says they spoke the word of God boldly. The feeling of the Holy Spirit came upon people and they did what? They spoke the word of God boldly. They came and they proclaimed truth. They hung their hat on this and said look this is what I believe when I'm sold out to. That was evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit. That is what they looked among them and what the apostles said hey go look and find among you. Men who are filled with the Holy Spirit. They were to look for leaders who were stepping out and trusting God in his word. Who were believing that when God said he was such a way or he was going to do such a thing that he meant it. So they lived their life that way. They trusted it. They were willing to step out in faith. Even if it meant they might look foolish. They might fall on their face. They might be ashamed. They took the risk because they were filled with the Holy Spirit. That's what it looked like in the text. But it says not only men among who are filled with the Spirit but men who are filled with wisdom. You know if I can think of one characteristic that is so lacking in the Western Church, let's just say specifically the United States Church is wisdom. My favorite definition I've heard of wisdom is applying God's word accurately in complex situations. Applying God's word accurately in complex situations. Let me give you one of the prime examples. Who will I marry? I'll look at some of our singles here. These are complex questions. If you open up God's word and just look for the first female or male name that appears and say here's who God wants me to marry, not a good plan, not a good recommendation for that. But if you also go, you know what God's word has nothing to say about who I'm going to marry because it doesn't tell me directly. Therefore I shouldn't look at it. Not a good choice. God's word has all kinds of things to say about what has God the character traits and not being unequally yoked. All kinds of things in there. But you know what? It's going to be discerned through wisdom about who you should marry. What job should you take? I can't tell me at times I've been asked people to get advice about what job they should take. And they'll be like, I just wish God's word but tell me it does. But it tells you to go looking and asking God from His word to give you wisdom and what job He should take. Or when it's time to quit that job and leave it. Or what you should major in school. Or what activities should you be involved in? Or how do you parent? How do you survive marriage? And grow more in love, not less over the years. These require wisdom. It's easy to pull out a little verse there that applies directly to something and say, I'm supposed to do X. It's a whole lot harder to figure out in a complex situation when they answer you really need as a Y to go to the different X statements and scripture and discern what God is telling you to do. That takes wisdom. You know what His word tells you directly how to do it? It says in James 1, it says in verse 5, if any of you lack wisdom, you should ask God who gives generosity to all without finding fault and it will be given to Him. God says you want wisdom? You've got to come and ask. When you read on that text, it says, you've got to ask in faith, too. You've got to trust me and believe me. And obviously, you've got to be in God's Word, but you're going to have to come and ask. These were the kind of men that they were looking for in leaders here. Those were filled with the Spirit. Those were practicing who were demonstrating wisdom of God in that. What's the key leadership principle here in this? God uses His Church to call and to raise up leaders. He uses His Church as a part of this outward call. A couple of questions for you. Have you encouraged anyone to step up to leadership in a particular area? Have you thought to yourself, you know, I've seen her or I've seen him and you know, what they do really has a lot of value to our church and I'm blessed by it. Have you come up and just told him and encouraged him? Sometimes they say, hey, what you do is important. And it means a lot to me and I know many others. Keep it up. Look for more opportunities to do that because there's a real blessing to us. Those are ways that church comes alongside and confirms the outward call of leadership to others. It's extremely important. I honestly believe that I would not be standing here today as a pastor if there weren't people in my early days, especially in high school and so on, that said things like, you know, I could see God using you to one day be a pastor or be a minister. Those kinds of encouragement and speaking into me and investing in my life were huge. And there was one day specifically in 2003 talking to a colleague of mine who came right out, even though I was on staff University of Presbyterian Church, he said, Scott, let me ask you this, why do you think God's not calling you to be the one to plan a daughter church from University of Presbyterian Church in the Waterford Avalon Park area? And I went, I had nothing to say. This first time my head challenged me directly like that. And he said, I think you need to pray about it for a week. Well, I said, well, they've already asked me a year ago and I said, I didn't think God wanted me to do that. So did you take time specifically just to pray about it for a week? No. So I did pray about it for a week. And now I'm here. People speaking in, encouraging you, part of this outward cause is so important. Are you seeing how important your role is in the raising up of leaders in a church, your encouragement, what that could do? You know, somewhere somewhere along the way, gave Billy Graham a chance to preach his first sermon. Somebody said, you know, I think he got potential to step up. God uses his church to call and raise up his leaders. And number four, another observation here, they delegated and empowered. They delegated and empowered. We already talked about delegation a little bit. But go ahead and look, again, at verse four and look at verse six. In those, I mean, I'm sorry, verse four. He says, and we will give our attention, actually at the end of verse three. We will turn this responsibility over to them and we'll give our attention to prayer in the ministry of the word. And then in verse six, it says, they went on. They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. There was delegation. There was empowerment that was going on here in this text. It is a huge mistake when leaders don't delegate. It is a huge mistake. Is it more efficient to delegate? A lot of times it's not. Is there more certainty and confidence when you delegate? A lot of times not. It'd be more efficient. You'd be more certain if you just did it yourself. And that certainly would have been true in this context in place too. After all, the 11th specifically could have been saying, hey, we hung out with Jesus. Jesus and us, you know, we're like this. We know the guy. We spent time with them. They could have rationalized this like crazy and said, look, there's nobody better to be handling this issue, this crisis, than the crisis management experts that we are. And they could have stepped up right in there. But you know what? Some of the things they had learned and some of the things that were pouring out of the Holy Spirit that he had empowered them to be equipped to do was to say, you know what? We have to be true to our calling. And we have to look and trust God to be raising up others around us who will have a different calling that will come merge with our callings and will make and build a strong church. And so they delegated. And so they empowered those around them. You know, when you do give responsibility away, or I should say, when you don't give it away, you do hurt people. You know, when you don't give responsibility away, one of the main persons you heard, you probably should think about it, because they make you think more about it, is that you hurt yourself. I don't know how many times I've heard of Christian leaders or leaders in general, but Christian leaders in our context talking who talk about saying, I'm just burned out. I'm tired. I'm fatigued. Well, a great question to follow and ask yourself is, are you delegating to others around you the way that God's calling you to delegate? We don't just hurt yourself. You can hurt those that you're trying to serve. Because if you think that you, with the little bit of energy and time and gifts that you have, can do every job the best way and deliver it to those that you're trying to serve in a way that's best for them, you're deceiving yourselves. Because you're just not that, well, you're not God. You're not infinite. You're finite. And God could use others to come around here that would serve and actually make a better opportunity to serve those that you're trying to reach. But a huge person that you're hurting in the process is the potential leader that gets overlooked, that gets neglected, that doesn't get the opportunity to learn and to grow. You know, one of the main reasons that I stayed on staff, the University of Preseturion, for 11 years, and people would ask me sometimes, that's 11 years, that's a long time. You know, the average church staff person has to stay that long and blah, blah, blah, whatever. I say, you know what? I have the opportunity, I have the, I'm given the freedom to fail. That was the first thing that came to my mind. I'm given the freedom to fail. And some of you who were there on those days said, yes, and he took full advantage of that opportunity and failed many times in some of the endeavors or entrepreneurial ideas or like that. And I wanted to stay in an environment like that, because I could grow. Being able to have the freedom to fail means that somebody over me, the elders there, Mark Bates, the pastor at the time, was the giving responsibility, was delegating, and was concerned not just being able to minister to the people there, but to raise me up as a leader. We were called to do the same thing as well. They also prayed and laid hands on them, it says in verse 6. They didn't just delegate, but they empowered. Let me talk a little bit about that for a second. The primary way of the laying on hands, what that represents there when elders do that, is it is the empowering that is being displayed by saying, this is coming through the authority of God. When elders lay hands, and especially when elders will do it, and we'll hopefully do it in a few months, lay hands on a new group of men to be deacons and elders, they will be ordaining them. They will be saying that we believe in faith that God has raised these men up to be elders and deacons in our church. And it's not our authority that we stand on as elders to lay on hands, but it's in the name of Jesus Christ, that we have observed, that we acknowledge, and we see these gifts here, they have an inward call, and we are setting them apart. For the ministry of service to the Lord in His church as a deacon or as an elder. It's a ceremonial empowerment that represents the authority of the church, which God has raised up here on earth. The second level there of empowerment that happens there is that emerging leaders, it helps with empowering emerging leaders with a sense that they're believed in. Not just that God has set them apart, but there is a people around them that they're serving with that believe in them. Because in our case you have to be nominated, you have to stand for examination and Christian character and understanding God's word and so on. And you have to be elected by the people in the church. And so it comes alongside and it gives them a sense of that empowerment that comes from that. It also empowers them with a ceremonial event in their life, a mile marker, especially if it's an elder or a deacon who's ordained, there's a mile marker in their life. In fact, we took a picture of our first ones that were ordained last year and the picture of the hands being laid on them as a mile marker. Just reminding them that, hey, God has set you apart. Don't forget this day. Now, no, that's a big scale, I'm talking about elders and deacons, but it happens on smaller scales too. When you bring people in and you empower them to serve and we step up and empower or are empowered to do that. What's the key principle, delegating and empowering leadership is essential. It needs to be practiced in our church. It needs to be practiced in the areas that you're ministering to. A couple of questions here to ask you. For those that are leaders currently in our church, where can you give responsibility and empowerment to others? If you call yourself a leader in our church right now, where can you specifically be delegating responsibility and empowering others around you? For those that aren't leaders perhaps yet or not on the scale that you particularly recognize yet, when you are delegated responsibility to lead from somebody else, how will you respond? How will you respond? Some of you are going to get a phone call from me over the next few weeks and I'm going to say, hey, somebody in our church or maybe several of our church have nominated you for the Office of Elder. Have nominated you for the Office of Deacon. You're going to have a choice to make how you're going to respond to that. Well now you're going to take that seriously, but you're going to weigh that. Some of you have already gotten phone calls from Impact Sunday and somebody has said, hey, you asked for some interest about serving an area in our church. We sure need help. We'd love for you to come alongside and help us serve with youth or with children or Sunday mornings here with that. You have an opportunity to respond. How will you respond if you're the one that's being on the other end of that? Delegating and empowering leadership is essential. Fifth and final observation, biblical leadership produced godly fruit. Biblical leadership produced godly fruit. You know, you've heard probably the saying, right, that the definition of insanity, repeating the same thing over and over again but expecting different results each time. Well, if you look for the end results of what we're looking for, I think every person who sincerely follows Jesus Christ, who's part of his church would say, we would love to see these kind of results, to see this kind of fruit. I mean, who wouldn't love to see what it says here in the very last verse of verse 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. Or if you know the rest of the story from chapter 6 and chapter 7 of Acts, leaders step up and they're willing to be persecuted and Stephen becomes the first martyr of the Christian church since the resurrection of Christ, standing up for his faith under the test of trial and persecution. Who wouldn't want to see that kind of fruit in the church? But here's my question, are we? Does the church in general see that kind of fruit on a regular basis? Let's give a little more personal. Does Christ keep them church? See that kind of fruit on a regular basis here in our midst. Not the way I want. I hope you're not satisfied where it's currently at. I want some stories to tell my grandkids one day. I've got a few, but I want a lot more. About seeing the power of God show up in our community. With a small group of 150 people that believed God, that thought God would really do what he said he would do. They really believe that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. They really believe that we're on the winning team. That have got us for us who can be against us and really thought what are we waiting for? Is what the world trying to sell us? Is it really worth it? You know, widely and largely the Western church is sadly in this vast chasm of neutralness. Or what revelation goes on it says much more clearly, lukewarmness. And if you know the chapter in Revelation, you know that God's not a big fan of lukewarmness. He wants to spew it out of his mouth. He'd rather be hot or cold. God is looking for his church to rise up in power, to be the body of Christ, to continue on what Jesus was doing in greater form. Jesus says it's better for me to go the father because greater things will you do. Not that it will look greater than what Jesus did, but it will be more vastly broad and spread because it will be through his entire church. Whereas Jesus was one man walking in space and time, it will be in his entire body. His followers. That's what he's looking for. The biblical freedom leadership here, the word of God spread, the text tells us here. Why did it spread? Because it was being faithfully taught and practiced. You know, we have the communication median tools today here that could make the word of God spread so much better, so much easier than it did then. It was face to face word of mouth. Now it's pretty much it and the occasional letter. If you knew how to write, if you knew how to read and if you could get near somebody that could read it to you. Imagine the communication tools and opportunities that we have today to communicate God's word, but we still have the main tool. It's still life on life sharing it with other people. That's why it's spread. It's because people were believing it and people were talking about it and people were sharing it with others and they were applying in their lives. And when people came up and said, hey, why are things going good in your life? They said because I'm following the word of God and you can too. And when he says the truth will set you free, it's because it's setting me free. Let me share you and show you how. It says more disciples were being produced. People were coming to faith. Why? Because they saw a real faith that they wanted to give their lives to. And by the way, they were beginning to go through a season that would be some of the toughest years of church persecution, maybe ever in church history. It was just embarking during this time in generation and that church thrived in the midst of persecution because it got rid of the lukewarmans. It got rid of the neutralness, but it began to transform the planet during these days. Priest converted. Why does it mention priest being converted? Because priest would have been one of the very last few people that you would have thought were being converted at the time. What's it saying? It's saying that there were powerful displays of the gospel, transforming people's lives in places that you wouldn't expect it. See, the chief priest and the Pharisees and so on were the ones that had put Jesus to death on the cross. And what are they saying? They're saying many of them are being transformed and changed now by the power of the Holy Spirit working through his church through the ministry who's word and prayer.
He's saying things are happening and the power of God is evident. It goes on in the rest of chapter 6 which we didn't read because of time in chapter 7. It shows us that the leadership that was raised up, Stephen specifically stood the test under fire, under persecution, and when he was facing death and was faithful until his last breath. And even his last breath said, Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do. We would love to see that kind of fruit happen in the church. And that's why the key leadership principle there is we won't experience the fruit of biblical leadership until we follow the development path of biblical leadership. You won't experience the fruit of it until you follow the path that God has told us to walk on with that.
A couple of questions for you. Are you leading or God has called you to lead? Are you open to the new places where God may be calling you to lead? Are you encouraging others to lead? Are you delegating to others? Are you empowering others? Are you praying for others? We won't experience the fruit of biblical leadership until we follow the development path of biblical leadership. Just wrapping up inclusion. We need Godly leaders, not just in our church, we need them on this planet to come from his church. We have three huge opportunities going on right now in the life of our church here at Christ's Kingdom Church. I just wanted to get real practical because I don't want you to leave here with some theoretical thoughts on, wow that's something to think about. I want you to leave here thinking you got tracks to run on. One of the things going on right now is that we have a 40 days of prayer fasting going on. And I believe is the chart here? Jason or Kim? I'll buy the welcome table. We still have places to sign up. We want to challenge everybody. We started a few weeks ago. We're going away through October 7th. We're asking people to take a day and pray and fast for our church. But for everybody to take a prayer guide and be praying for our church. Not only does this make a good fan, which you should highly consider today. But this will just give you a guide of things that we all are praying for together every day. And hopefully you'll pick a day or two to specifically set aside to fast as well as that too. But this is going on right now. Did you see the prayer popping up all through this passage? The apostles were so intent on the important event. They raised up new leaders called deacons so they could make sure they prayed. That's how important prayer was in that. When they laid hands on them, what else did they do? They prayed. Please take this seriously. There is no more instant way you can be a leader in our church than to begin praying regularly for our church. And praying for those that are in the church and for those that are trying to reach. A second key opportunity to apply here is we need leaders serving in Sunday logistics. There are people right now that you have kids that are investing and have spent time investing to pour their lives into your children right now this morning. There are people that got here at 8 o'clock this morning that set up the chair you're sitting in. Set up those lights. Set up these communion tables. Make sure there was materials to welcome you and greet you. Make sure you had hot coffee. There are people here that work to make sure that the bulletin that you're holding is accurate, is helpful, is a tool, is a resource. The list could go on. There are opportunities here for you to serve right now. Now I want to invite you to come back here tonight. That's why you're going to get this. Usher is going to hand these out. I've only had a backstage pass once in my life to a big concert. I was a little kid when I got one. And I was so freaked out when I went over there to where the security guard was to try to go backstage. I'm going to say, look, I was like 10. When over there, I walked up to him and he said, so you can't go beyond this point. And I was like going, because I had that hanging around my neck. And I started to turn back around and he said, oh, you got a backstage pass. Come on in. And I was so freaked out. I just said, no, that's why I changed my mind. And I walked back out there because I freaked out. All right, yeah. That's a sad story. I know. But I thought it was the coolest thing in the world that I had to pass. You know, I never used it. You're going to get a pass right now that I want you to use. Okay, this means it means come back tonight. If Christchurch is your home, we need you here tonight. We're looking for people. We do it once a year. We do an annual training to train people in some of the areas of the church. And it just happens to be tonight for that. If you're new to the church, you want to get plugged in. Hey, no greater time to come than tonight. You know, I say, well, I can't do much, but I'm friendly. I will say, we're going to go to the greater training tonight. It's simple. It's easy. You'll be fun. We're going to feed you free pizza tonight. College students, I know that's going to be twice in one day, but I think you'll survive. We're going to take, we have free child care provided. All that's taken care of here tonight. Bring the whole family. It's from five to seven. Here, so this is your backstage pass to help and be a part of what's going on behind the scenes with that. So if you call Christchurch home, please come back. We need you here with that. If you want to make Christchurch your home, come tonight too. Great timing for that as well. And if you're still, if you're just a guest checking things out, then, you know, take that home to give it to one of your kids. They'll think it's cool or something. No pressure to come back, but you're invited. Hey, a third and final thing here is that we need those goddess call to service deacons and elders. It's a huge calling. It's an important role, a important task. We have one, one deacon right now in four elders, five counting me that are serving in the church. And some of my people have asked me, how many more do we need? As many as God is raising up right now. We trust God with that. Just like they trusted God to raise up seven deacons. And he did. We'll take as many as God has that are ready for that. And for some that aren't ready, we'll put them through training and give them time. But your nomination will be a very thing that might trigger some in this room to say, well, maybe I need to consider being an elder being a deacon. So don't be afraid to do that. Again, we have on the web page as well as it's been emailed out to you if we have your email address, you've got a nomination guide how to do that. And I think in your bulletin is a nomination sheet. You have to be a member in order to nominate somebody. But you can be practicing that right now, right today. Are you ready to see biblical fruit like an act six? I know I am. Let's trust God for that in this next upcoming ministry year. Wanted to be amazing. Every year from now, we were sharing the kind of stories that our grandkids are going to hear about one day. And that your great grandkids will hear about from your children. God wants to work and move. And this Holy Spirit is here and is ready. So let's pray. God, thank you for the opportunity here this morning to trust you to reach out, God, and to look at your plan and your pathway of leadership and to trust you to work and move in our midst and our hearts. God, would you do a work now and transform this church, God, by transforming the individual sitting here, transforming me, my brothers and sisters that are here to make us more like Christ. God, would you raise up leaders that would come and be faithful to serve and follow you? Would you make us the kind of leaders that you've called us to be, to be faithful to serve and call you? So, Father, as we're here now, we remind us of the leader that we followed this morning, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And we remind us of the pattern and the model that he set. And we remind us that we are never alone, that we are told that you'll never leave us or forsake us. And so we trust your spirit's power to go before us and to lead us, even now as we come to your table. So if I'll be pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.