It’s a bit uphill, admitting it at parties. Pulses probably don’t thrill when you whisper shyly, ‘I’m an administrator.’ Once I had to park at a small airport and my designated spot was next to the spot marked, ‘Chief Test Pilot’. I didn’t notice a parking space for ‘Chief Administrator’ and I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it anyway.
My project for 2021, and I’ve started early, is to read the Book of Acts in Greek, looking up all the interesting words as I go along. It’s a slow job (I don’t know Greek), which is good, because normally words fall on us like ticker tape in a parade, blizzards every day, and we are not good at processing them slowly.
The early Church was a kind of Ponzi scheme, it seems to me. New entrants were selling property and the proceeds were feeding a bunch of widows. I don’t wish to criticize, but it looks a bit unsustainable. Elsewhere in the New Testament we see Paul trying to regularize the Church benefits system, so perhaps he would agree.
Yet we Christians rave over the early church. Thousands were flocking in. Signs and wonders are done at the hand of the apostles. Even Peter’s shadow falling on people did the business. Many of the priests were becoming believers.
But because there were arguments over allocating funds between Hebrew-speaking (local?) widows and Greek-speaking (?diaspora) widows, the Twelve appointed seven (Greek-sounding to me) administrators. Middle-managers. In the midst of all the miracles and crowds. It was so cool for all these reasons:
- They let the people choose the administrators. The apostles picked the best for the job, rather than cronies.
- They didn’t say, ‘Bring the hard cases to us’ (like Moses did in a similar situation). They delegated completely to the administrators (or managers or in church usage, ‘deacons’). This is fascinating. Any accountant will tell you to follow the money if you want to see where the power is. And the apostles let someone else do the money.
- The apostles were gutsy enough to stick to teaching and prayer. Remember they served a Jesus who had said, ‘You should wash each other’s feet.’ But they quit serving at tables. Did they ignore what Jesus had said? I think not. They rather figured things out about roles and giftings and went with where that led.
- Admin was necessary even in the middle of miracles and rapid growth. There were so many miracles going on you would have thought that a couple of waves of Peter’s hand and you could’ve fed the lot, no admin problems and no Ponzi scheme. But that the wrong tree to be barking up, as they presumably quickly discovered. This new Kingdom, this thing to supplant the old arrangement, this taste of a new world, needed sound administration and proper management very soon after its start. The new church needed the power of the Holy Spirit and a pragmatic look at cashflow.