The Vital Ministry of Deacons

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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The Sermon Theme: The Vital Ministry of Deacons in the Local Church

Sermon. I've had you turn to Acts chapter 6 and verse 1, and the theme of today's sermon will be this. It's on the front of the bulletin, the vital ministry of deacons, or the vital ministry of deacons in the local church.

And as we look at this, I want to frame our theme in this way. Most of you would agree that in recent months, our church has experienced, I would say, a significant amount of change. Perhaps maybe some of you would agree more than others, but I would say that there has been, in fact, a few seasons in the life of our church where there has been so many significant shifts in such a short period of time.

I want to recall just some of these shifts as we've seen them. In just the last 12 months, we have watched the Lord continue to build His church here before our very eyes. It has been, in many respects, a very encouraging season of steady growth that is evidenced by the fact that there are new faces here, that we have a class of new members and already a class of new members after that that is growing.

We are seeing an increase in little children scurrying at our knees during our fellowship times, after the services. There's the regular presence of visitors in our church most weeks. At the same time, we have stood by and watched praise be to God as He has provided for our every need in unexpected and unmistakable ways.

I was recently reflecting on this that it seems to me like I'm getting a little taste of the life of George Mueller. If you know anything about George Mueller, the man who made it his aim to live by prayer and to demonstrate that God still answers prayers, how often has it been that we have seen God, the Lord, our God, answer our prayers in real time in the last number of months in this church that we can truly say as we sing, and some of you maybe are growing tired of me repeating it, but I will repeat it again, all we have needed His hand has provided.

Great is His faithfulness unto us. That has been something that we have observed. I was thinking about it and speaking with a sister about it just earlier today that it was just seven weeks ago that our church had another big change and that we were able to dedicate one of our elders to full-time vocational ministry, one of those answers to prayer, and it really is.

I know it's obvious. I'm the one that's enjoying that great blessing. It really is a dream come true for me, and it's my heart's prayer to God. I cry out to God. He knows that it would be a manifest blessing to all of you.

In the past year, we have rejoiced in the installment of a new elder. We have endured, on the other side of things, real heartbreak as we've exercised biblical church discipline and experienced the challenges of that.

We've had marriages, many marriages. We've had pregnancies. We've had babies. We've had moves. We've had a whole host of other changes, and in the midst of all of this, I have watched as the Lord has strengthened, I think, the unity and the quality of fellowship in our church over the last number of months so that we're not really a room full of acquaintances anymore, but we are truly a church family growing, most certainly, but a church family of people who love one another.

And perhaps to summarize it all, we could say it this way. In the past year, we have grown as a church. We've grown in number, and we've grown, I trust, in love and faith and experience and in Christ-like maturity.

If you'll tolerate me going just a little bit further, I believe that we are becoming a more battle-tested church as we learn how to walk by faith and obey the Lord, even when it is difficult to do so.

There's been an observable increase in our earnestness for the Lord that is palpable in our prayer meetings. We had a visitor in one of our prayer meetings in recent weeks who sent me an email afterwards and said, I cannot believe how fervently you guys pray.

It really is something that is unique. It is not present in every church. Many of us are beginning to learn the joys and challenges of openly sharing the gospel with our neighbors. How many first-time people did we have on White Avenue, as it were, standing outside the mouth of the beast, proclaiming the name of Christ just a week ago?

We're learning how to care for the saints that are in our midst as they experience various trials. We're learning what it means, as our brother Mack Tomlinson said when he was preaching here a few months ago, what it means to be true churchmen in a broader culture that despises the church and in a Christian subculture that doesn't really think much more of the church than the world.

Now, as I recount all of these things, I'm not boasting about this church. I'm not boasting about myself. I'm not boasting about you. But we can praise God for what He is doing in this church. It has been a work of God from beginning to end.

It really has. And at least from the elder's perspective, it has been a very encouraging season in the life of our church. And yet I recognize that we are at this crossroads, this moment in time, we are in a place of very real danger that comes with this kind of experience.

And the danger that comes with this experience is this. Sometimes when it feels like everything is going well, or at least that when we are headed in the right direction, we give ourselves permission to become complacent.

We begin to neglect the very means that God used to promote the health and the growth of the church and that He uses to sustain that growth and that health. Sometimes we might feel like, hey, we've arrived.

We've got a vocational elder in the church. We've got a steady place to meet. We've got some measure of financial sustainability. And we can take our foot off the and just coast for a little while. But as I stand before you, and the reason why I've had you open to Acts 6, verse 1, is because I'm here to remind us, this whole church, that we are not yet complete, that the building hasn't finished.

If the Lord should tarry, God's building of this church is not even close to being finished yet. And you may be surprised to hear this, but we do not actually have all of the components that we need to be a truly healthy and truly biblical church.

And that sounds serious. And it is. It's not because we don't yet have our own building, though we have a financial space to meet. It's not because we still have some fragility in our financial affairs.

But it's because we still lack one of the offices that Christ has ordained for His church. Yes, we have a plurality of elders now, and we praise God for that. But this church needs more than elders. It might strike you as surprising, but we still only have 50 of the offices that God has designed for the strength and vigor of His bride, the church.

We still lack one of the most important ingredients in a truly healthy local church. And I've given it away already, haven't I? We lack, namely, a plurality of qualified, committed, and servant-hearted deacons to serve this church so that we are a true church.

Make no mistake about that. But we are not yet a complete church. And what we find in Acts chapter 6 today, as we look at it, we're going to consider the essential role of deacons in the local church.

And if we come to a right understanding of this text as we make our way through it, we will conclude, we must conclude, that every church needs deacons. Every healthy church needs deacons. I said to Sam earlier this week, and I changed the title.

The title at the front of our bulletin, in an earlier iteration of this, was simply this. We need deacons. That might seem too desperate, I'm not sure. That might seem too forward. But our church needs deacons because every healthy church needs deacons.

In my prayer to God, I'm going to include Sam in this. Our prayer to God is that God would use this sermon, in this text, to hasten this church to begin praying with purpose that God would not withhold this important office from us.

Moreover, our prayer is that God would use this sermon, in this text, to light a spark in some of you in this church, that you might have, that He might enliven in you a holy ambition to serve as deacons here for the well-being of this body and for the glory of Almighty God.

The Inevitable Pressures in the Early Church

Now, I'm framing the sermon with that long introduction. Now let's look in Acts chapter 6, in verse 1. Now, as we find ourselves here, this is what we read. Now, in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

Up until this point, what we have found is the church in its infancy. This is baby church number one. You could say, I might say jokingly, First Baptist Church Jerusalem. Christ had only recently ascended up to heaven, and following the day of Pentecost, we know that Peter preached a very powerful sermon, a sermon used of God, and as a result of that, the church experienced a radical explosion of new growth.

This church that had once consisted of just 120 people in an upper room, after Christ's death and resurrection, now numbered in the thousands. And in the chapters leading up to Acts chapter 6, we read about the powerful witness of this new church.

In the midst of great persecution, the apostles boldly proclaimed all that they had seen and heard in Christ. They said, we cannot keep from speaking what we have seen and heard. The church was enjoying great unity.

They were selling their possessions and giving to all those who had need, so that they practically eradicated poverty in their midst. And God was doing wondrous things with them, both to bear witness to the power of the gospel and to soundly warn those who would test God during this formative period in the life of the church.

And as we arrive at Acts chapter 6 and verse 1, we now see why every healthy church needs deacons. And as we look at four parts in this text, the first part that I want us to look at based on Acts chapter 6 and verse 1 is this.

The inevitable pressures. The inevitable pressures that will arise in any local church. Here in verse 1, we find a scene that was bound to happen at some point in time in the life of this church. The carnal inclination of these redeemed sinners was sure to appear at some point, to bubble to the surface.

And here it's done just that. And this seems to be the problem that was taking place. Early in the life of the New Testament church, this earnest community of believers made it one of their major priorities.

One of priorities, maybe not one or two, but certainly up there, to look after the poor in their midst. Evidently, this included caring for the widows among them who were especially vulnerable due to the social conditions of their day.

And if you were a Christian in Jerusalem in the first century, it would have been very likely that you would come across many widows in the course of your travels day to day. During this period in time, many older Jewish men and women would often return to Jerusalem in their old age to die in this city of David, as it was called.

Many did this because, as we have seen in the world, there are always strange teachings that are going around. And some of the rabbis in that first century in Jerusalem were teaching this, that you could not be resurrected except in the land of Israel.

And so if you were part of the diaspora, if you left Israel, let's say, and were to die in a far off land, you would not be able to be resurrected in that far off land. You had to come back to the promised land.

And so what this meant is that if you were to die, let's say, in Antioch, you would be buried there after having died. And at the resurrection of the dead, you would have to travel underground and eventually ascend out of the ground once you reached the land of Israel.

And they were taught that it was not a marching underground, but you had to roll from your grave all the way to the land of Israel. And so what people were doing is right before they would die, they would say, let's move back to Israel.

And they would find their homes back in Jerusalem. And as is often the case, the men would die first and leave their wives to be widowed. And there they would end up in a destitute situation in the land of Israel, and specifically in the city of Jerusalem.

And so in this culture that often overlooked these poor widows, the church took up the noble task of caring for the believing widows in their midst. And yet there seems to have been a cultural division that was beginning to take shape in this church.

And we see, verse 1, identify two of these major groups that existed in the church. There were the Hellenists. These were the Greek-speaking Jewish converts, likely from that diaspora. So from outside of the land of Israel and the areas surrounding national Israel.

And this group was made up of a distinct people who were Jews and yet who had adopted Greek language and culture. And so for many of the average Hebrews in Jerusalem, they looked at these Hellenists as somewhat of cultural compromisers.

People who exchanged all the good things, the language and the culture of Israel, for the language and the culture of the surrounding world. At the same time, there were the Hebrews. These were those Jews who were likely born in Israel, who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic, though some of them most definitely spoke Greek as well.

And they were truly Jewish in terms of their language and their cultural identity. And as the church was caring for these widows, it appears that the Hebrew widows were getting some form of preferential treatment, or at least that was the accusation that was being made by the Greek-speaking Hellenistic widows.

And here we have at least three major problems. Now remember, this is New Testament church. Church number one, presided over by the apostles. The very beginnings, the germ of the church that we belong to.

And these were the problems that were becoming present, growing in that church. Firstly, if these accusations were true, it was a very serious problem that the church was not adequately caring for its widows.

The Lord's brother James would later write that this is true religion in the sight of God, caring for orphans and widows in their distress. And so here, this church, if not caring for the they're not living up to the very definition that God has for true religion.

It was a serious act of disobedience on their part. But secondly, though Christ had effectively bulldozed the dividing wall of hostility that was between Jew and Gentile, all of these different cultures, here we find the church digging up these old divisions that have no place among the people of God.

Though Paul would later teach that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, but all are one in Christ Jesus, this church was in very real danger of splitting along cultural and ethnic lines. And then thirdly, as complaints arose against one another, the church was perilously close to repeating the same sins that kept Israel out of the promised land for 40 years.

For those of us who are parents, I'm not sure if you've ever spoken to your children about this, but when you make them a nice meal and they grumble and complain about the food that you've made, or if you're a mother, more likely the food that you have made, moms.

The conversation I've had with my children is this, remember the nation of Israel, how they grumbled and complained against God because they did not like the food that he was providing. And what did God do?

Well, he did several things. One of which, perhaps the one that my children love to hear the most, is that he sent biting serpents to bite them and they died because they complained about the food that God had made for them.

Well, here we find the church in its germ form, dangerously close to following the example of the Israelites grumbling and complaining against one another. So in this one verse, this is the situation that we have.

The church, which by every metric has been growing and thriving, has already encountered a cataclysmic moment in their existence. The only local church in existence at this time, the Universal Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, was at risk of dividing already in the earliest days of its existence.

And think just for a moment, what would happen if this division was allowed to take hold in that very first church? It would splinter into a million different pieces. And so if there ever was one major crisis, one of the greatest crises in the local church, it was certainly this.

And this turn of events really has something to teach us here. This scene proves, I believe, that there's an inevitability when it comes to the local church, an inevitability of tensions and strains that will arise in the ordinary course of the church's life.

Even the New Testament church, presided over by the apostles themselves, was not without its difficulties. This is because when Christ builds His church, He does not call the righteous, does He? If He called the righteous, we would not be here.

He calls the sinners to repentance. He does not call the healthy, does He? If He called the healthy, we would not be here. But He calls those who are sick and need a physician. And because of the remaining sin in each one of us, we naturally experience difficulty in the church.

And here we see that there is no such thing as a perfect church, not even in the Bible. And many of us have already experienced this in the life of this local church, that we are, if we're really honest, we are sometimes annoyed by one another.

We are sometimes grieved by one another. We encounter personalities that are different than ours, people who rub us the wrong way, people who want to do things differently. You will hear about churches that divide.

And there's a massive split in the church because of the color of carpet that they're going to have in the sanctuary. I can't worship God with that gaudy red carpet. How can I do that? I can't worship with these people anymore.

We need to go elsewhere. Or there aren't enough windows, or there are stained glass windows, or there aren't stained glass windows. You might be here because you recognize some of what the Lord is blessing our church with, some of the strengths of this church, but many of you are already familiar with the flaws of this church.

And sadly, here we see that this is part of what it means to belong to the church, that there will be the inevitability of difficulty. I'm reminded of a proverb. Some of you might recall Proverbs 14 and verse 4.

If you're into agriculture, certainly you'll be able to resonate, or this proverb will resonate with you, but I think it has tremendous application in the church. Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.

Now to translate that into this setting, if we can apply it here, where there are no people, I can assure you there will be no difficulty. But where there are people, there will be difficulty and fruitfulness in the local church.

And so we can either have difficulty and fruitfulness, or no difficulty and no fruitfulness. As long as the church consists of redeemed sinners saved out of the world, the church will always be a holy assembly characterized by some degree of brokenness.

And there's one brother, his name is Howard Hendricks. He has a humorous way to illustrate this that I think is exactly on point. He says that many of us in the church are like porcupines trying to huddle together in the bitter cold of the night to keep each other warm.

But as we draw closer and closer together, we invariably poke and hurt each other. We are, brothers and sisters, whether we like it or not, all to some degree these porcupines grieving and hurting each other.

Even as we draw near to love one another, we invariably hurt one another. And yet, though there is this inevitability, we must realize that each of these challenges, each of these difficulties, pose a very real threat to the existence of the church.

This is perhaps one of the most damning qualities of sin, that temptation to sin comes so often. And so we might be tempted to think that sin is a little thing because we deal with it every day. And yet, the frequency of sin does not minimize the significance of sin, so that the wages of sin is always death.

So here we find, then, a church that is perilously close to ecclesiastical suicide because of the sinful conduct that is found within it. And the question becomes, how will God protect the sacred unity of this church?

The Apostolic Priorities of Prayer and the Word

But that wasn't the only problem that was at hand, because there is a verse that comes after verse one. And we'll look together at verses two and four. We'll split those up if that's okay. And we'll look next at my second point, number two, the apostolic priorities.

The apostolic priorities of the church. Verse two. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. And then if we can jump to verse four.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. We can begin to grasp the gravity of the situation when we see the response that is called for in this passage. Now, if you ever read in the news about a fire, maybe a building fire or a house fire or a factory fire, very rarely will they tell you in the article how tall the flames were.

They'll never measure it in meters. They'll never tell you the temperature, the internal temperature of the inferno as it raged in that building. But what will they tell you? They will tell you how many fire stations responded to that call.

And so the gravity of the fire is measured by how many fire stations went to the call. Maybe you didn't even know that. But when you read in the news that there was a five alarm blaze, what they're telling you is that all of the apparatus and all of the firefighters from five stations went to fight that fire.

That it took that many trucks, that many people to put out the flames. Now, here we have then a 12 alarm blaze in the life of the early church. There were times in the church, for instance, in Acts chapter 7, when the Samaritans were experiencing conversions and they sent two apostles.

They sent Peter and John to go investigate the situation. But here it's not two apostles that are dealing with it. How many apostles are dealing with this situation at the beginning of verse 12? And the 12, all 12 apostles summoned the full number of the disciples.

Now, as they bring forward this concern then, it's not just a cultural division that they have in their minds, but it appears that they were equally concerned that the word ministry of the church would be derailed by this conflict.

And we see it from the language in verse 2. They say, the disciples say, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Or in verse 4, they say that they must devote themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

The word devote here, the word that is behind it means this. It is to continue at something with intense effort. It is to work with all of your might. It is to give yourself continually to one singular task.

And here we see the inner logic then of the disciples. It's not that serving tables isn't important. It's not that caring for widows is not a priority. It most certainly is. But if the apostles assumed this worthy task of caring for widows at the cost of focusing on their apostolic priorities of prayer and the word, it would bring the church to cultural ruin.

As it turns out, the church didn't just have a division crisis on its hands, but the church had a budding mission drift crisis on its hands as well. On this point, John Stott, as he's looking at it, he observes this.

He says that this may be one of the most clever attacks of Satan that we observe in the life of the New Testament church. Satan tried to take them out by persecution, didn't he? But that plan failed. So then Satan tried to take them out by corruption with the likes of Ananias and Sapphira.

And that plan, too, failed. So Satan tried to take them out with one of his most crafty plans, yet he tried to take them out by distraction. Oh, consider for a second. Imagine this with me. All of the consequences that would have been if the apostles laid aside the principal ministry that they had, the ministry of the word and prayer, to wait upon tables.

Most certainly a good thing. But what would happen if they did that? There would have been a deadly vacuum of leadership in that first church. Just in a short time, with a guarantee, I assure you, this rift would have been the least of their worries as these men went around busying themselves, serving the tables.

Without sound instruction, the people would have fallen prey to every manner of error and false teaching. If the apostles are not feeding them, certainly someone will. The leaders of that church would have had no substantive communion with God.

How would you like a leader who has no prayer life and therefore they have no power? They are men of no real substance. And because these were apostles, there would be no time to write. And if there would be no time to write, you could find Malachi in your Bible.

You could say that then is my Bible because we have no New Testament. And if we have no New Testament, then what do we have? We have no gospel, no knowledge of Christ. We are 2 ,000 years later in this room in utter darkness.

Could there have been? We thought the division issue was big. Could there have been a more significant threat to the universal church than this? A total absence of the knowledge of Christ and of the gospel.

And I want to tell you that this remains today one of the most deadly threats that is waiting at that door and at the door of every other local church. Not persecution, not corruption, but distraction.

Just think with me for a moment again about all the churches that you are acquainted with that have exchanged the centrality of the ministry of the word and prayer for other good things or for other distractions in general.

Think about those churches that have exchanged the ministry of God's word before God's people for social action, for a pursuit chasing reconciliation with indigenous peoples, or caring for the poor, or trying to level out difficulties and disagreements in terms of gender and sexual orientation.

Those who have sought after seeker-sensitive strategies and say, well, we have learned by our studies you cannot preach longer than 25 minutes. If you preach longer than 25 minutes, 50 of your visitors will never return.

And so we have a clock at the back. That clock is your master. Never mind what the Lord gives you to say. Never mind what the text says. You do not preach longer than 25 minutes. Or we cannot pray longer than five minutes in the service because then people's minds wander.

And so we ought not to do that. Find me a church that has done that and I will show you a church that is either dead now or dying. It does not matter if it is growing in number. It does not matter if they're adding an addition to the building to fit, to make room for all of the people who are coming.

It does not matter if they are planting satellite campuses around the city. It does not matter if their budgets are bigger and if there are more butts in the seat. If that church has abandoned the ministry of the word and prayer, that church is on its deathbed.

And frankly, this comes as a serious warning to our church as well. I was struck by it this week in my study. It came with the conviction of a skid of bricks as I was thinking about it this week, that we are doing some things wrong in this church.

And I'm not doing this to guilt anyone here. I assure you of that. As a matter of fact, I own it. I haven't talked to Sam, but I'm sure he owns it too. That if anything, this falls at the feet of the elders for not doing something sooner.

But the elders of this church are, frankly speaking, way too busy still with things that the apostles would call a distraction. I don't know how many hours it is. I thought about it. Is it 10 hours a week?

Is it 15 hours a week? Maybe that's a safe number, 15 hours a week that we are not spending praying and studying and visiting and counseling and teaching, but we are emailing accountants and making bank deposits and grocery shopping and photocopying and coordinating benevolent concerns.

As good and as worthwhile as these things are, we're preoccupied with things that are taking us away from the ministry of the word and prayer. And make no mistake about it, lest this sound like a complaint, that Sam and I, we have no problem doing these things.

That's probably the problem, that we love to serve this church as slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is our greatest privilege in this life to serve this church. And so we don't want to burden you with some of these things.

And so we say, we'll do the grocery shopping. Let's just go. We'll get the cart. We'll do it ourselves. But let me say to the extent that these things distract us from the work of pastoral ministry, brother, we're playing with fire and we're going to get burned one day.

It is just the case. Any church, including our own, that keeps its elders busy with anything other than the ministry of the word and prayer is a church that is in grave danger. So I say again, church needs deacons.

We are in danger of disobeying God's explicit commands on this subject. In the pastoral epistles alone, we find command after command that this is what the leaders of the church are to give themselves to.

Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4 and verse 13, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, devote that same word, devote yourself to public reading of scripture, to exhortation and to teaching.

So it's not just the apostles. It's those who come after the apostles. Or in 2 Timothy 4 and verse 1, one that most preachers are familiar with. Paul says to Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead.

Feel the gravity of that for a moment. Imagine God saying to you, I charge you in the presence of God, the very God of very gods and of Christ Jesus and not just of God and of Christ Jesus, but of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge you based on what you do.

What does he say? Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Some might say, but just Timothy, right? Well, he says to Titus, but as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.

To look at Paul's example in the church, in Colossians 1, 28 and 29, he says him speaking of Christ, him we proclaim warning everyone and with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

Oh, Paul, how are you going to present everyone mature in Christ? He says, for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me, warning and teaching. That is how we prepare every person mature in Christ.

The church's primary function in the world is not the alleviation of poverty as pressing a need as that is or to lean on the text that we were reading earlier. It is not the entertainment of the goats so that we can have a bigger building and a bigger budget.

It's not constructing bigger buildings and filling them with people. It is the advancement of the kingdom of God in the world, and that comes by heralding the gospel of Jesus Christ and making disciples.

And God's strategy for this public. Or this, excuse me, for his expansion of the kingdom and the propagation of the knowledge of God is the public proclamation of his inerrant word, empowered by God, sought through and by steadfast prayer.

Matthew Poole, a Puritan author, he has a commentary on this text. He says there are two great employees of a minister of Jesus Christ to pray unto God for the people and to speak unto the people from God, to pray and to speak.

And this church in Jerusalem was close to shipwrecking because these two great employees were being threatened. And the question then that we must ask ourselves again is the same or similar to the one that we asked in the first point.

How will God protect the principal ministry of the local church? How is he going to protect the unity of this church? And how is he going to protect the ministry of this church? Not just in Jerusalem, but here.

How is he going to do that? And this brings us then to our third point, the wise solution. In verse 3, this is the apostles speaking. They said, therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom whom we will appoint to this duty.

Verse 5. And what they said pleased the whole gathering. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.

These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them. So with the threat now of division and distraction bearing down on the church, the apostles, they could set aside their ministry.

Or they could set aside the care of the widows. Both of these actions would be contrary to the nature and the function of the church. Therefore, they did something better. They did something wiser. Here the apostles enlisted the help of qualified men in the church who would have the important role of caring for the physical needs of the church body.