Thursday is for Discipleship
The church is young. Paul is making his first missionary journey and many disciples have been made amidst some significant opposition and excitement (Acts 14:8-18). A crippled man get’s healed; the population thinks Barnabas is the Greek God Zeus and Paul is Hermes; Paul rescues them from their idolatry by preaching the gospel. Like I said, it was an exciting time.
Things are about to get even more exciting. Some opposition arrives from Iconium and Antioch and they persuade the crowd to stone Paul and then drag him out of town and leave him for dead. The brand new baby disciples come out, probably thinking to bury Paul, only to find him get up and re-enter the city (Acts 14:19)! The next day they leave the city and go to another city, Derbe, to repeat the process. They make many disciples there and then return to Lystra where Paul had been stoned. There is no time referent but it appears that all of this takes place in a matter of weeks, 2-3 months tops.
Finally, we read this:
And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. (Acts 14;23, ESV)
Question:
How do you appoint elders that quickly among such young believers and walk out of town the next day?
ChosenRebel's Blog 
“How do you appoint elders that fast among such young believers and walk out of town the next day?”
By trusting in the wisdom of the Holy spirit rather than my own.
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Amen! Do you think this might tell us something about not only our problem but also suggest that what happened, or what was expected of new believers in the first century was much more than we expect today?
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Marty, love the article and it has been a question of personal reflection and inquisition for many years. I agree with John, but want to ask and take it into the application of what that ‘trust’ involves. (i.e. the pieces of the puzzle) It certainly has to involve the “expectation of new believers” as you mentioned. (Would love for you to flesh your thoughts out on this.)
I know you and John know this, but the setting of this passage is critical, and I do not always feel I can get a proper handle on it. As, Paul and Silas went first into the synagogues, part of their new believers would have been Jews who were grounded in the promises of the Old Testament and simply needed to see Jesus as the promised Messiah…this would not take a long and difficult leap in their understanding, so they could have sufficient understanding rather quickly. We see this with Apollos and even Timothy. (BTW, I wonder in our post-Christian America, if this will be similar to what we will see with a move of God in Church Planting. Men getting saved who have a basic understanding of doctrine from their youth and being quickly able to expound it because of their newness in Christ and the Holy Spirit ..?)
OTOH, obviously, some of the others were Greeks. And, to me, this group would cause the greatest force with the question you asked? How did they qualify for leadership? Did Paul fulfill his own mandate of ‘proving’ for office he mentions in 1Timothy, or was this a later development because of experienced problems? (e.g. Demas) How long….how much understanding/doctrine? ….etc.?
Did Paul simply, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, take the men who were obviously the most advanced among ‘that’ people group and appoint them, trusting the Holy Spirit to keep them a step ahead of the other disciples?
I’m sorry, I offered more questions than any attempt at answers, but I have a couple of others. 🙂 They seemed to have met with new believers every day! This would mean, assuming the 3 weeks stay, that Paul and Barnabas ‘could’ have met with those who fit leadership qualities for at least 21 days. This would be equivalent to almost a half of year with the American version of ‘once a week’ discipleship or leadership training. (Just a crazy thought, but is it an issue?) If it is, could this help us (me) understand how Paul could faithfully uphold the qualifications for leadership he taught (1Tim.3) and yet do it in such a short period of time?
I sure hope the discussion broadens….I’m seeing ‘some’ of this in church planting in India, but want to see here in our country! Oh, Lord…..do it here!!!
Thanks Marty and John for a great discussion and thread. Look forward to everyone’s thoughts!
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Terry,
Not sure how this escaped some comment a year ago when you made. Sorry brother. You ask some good questions and suggest some good paths to pursue.
I agree, this group poses the bigger challenge but the first is no small potato. Three weeks is short even if the men you are working with have a revelational grounding on which to build. And then there is the issue of personal character. What do we really “know” about a person who we know for only three weeks. (Recently had the unfortunate situation of a man vouched for by many, moving into a leadership position with youth, who went out and had an affair with a married woman. People “knew” him for years. He was thought to be pastoral material. Now a humiliated wife is trying to put the pieces of her life back together, that days ago she thought was near perfect.) The scant evidence on Demas suggests that he had doctrinal problems but they were welded together with his character issues (2 Tim. 4:10).
You suggest that perhaps the teaching of 1 Tim. and Titus on the qualifications of elders was a later development. Possible. But it seems odd to me, that Paul makes no reference in that direction in the corpus of his writing. I think about this kind of thing in my own ministry. I am constantly unlearning things I thought made sense only to have experience bit back. I then adjust my understanding. But when I teach others, I am always relating the “dumb tax” I paid for my present perspective on situation “A” or situation “B”. Maybe it is a later development but it is hard to be sure.
I agree, I think this is definitely a piece of the puzzle. I wonder how often we quench the Spirit by being overly cautious? Clearly errors can be made, but do we make more by erring on which side, too much or too little trust in the Spirit? I am inclined to think that in the current state of the Church in the West, we make more errors in the “too little trust” category.
I think this hits one of the nails right on the head. The relative “slowness” of the culture of the ancient world as opposed to the frenetic pace of our modern culture created more natural opportunity for thought, reflection, conversation, fellowship, all of which must have augmented the quick development of early disciples. How do we provide / find more “with me” time to be among young disciples to help them grow down deep so they can grow up high? I have explored this “withness” quality at other points in the Blog and maybe I need to return to it again.
Here’s another thought. What part did all the miracles that happened around Paul play in solidifying commitment and creating a climate for making disciples in the early church? All I have time for now. Great questions brother. Let’s spend our lives trying to figure them out.
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