Rector’s Reflections
Monday 29th April 2024
Philip the Deacon Gives a Masterclass in Evangelism
I think many of us as Christians would love to share the gospel with others, but are not quite sure how to begin. How many of us have the courage to talk with a friend or stranger about their relationship with God? How many of us feel confident in evangelism?
I think we could all do with some training to help us in our evangelistic endeavours. We can learn so much from the New Testament, and in the days ahead I am going to imagine that we have Philip the Deacon in front of us, giving us a master class in sharing the gospel.
Who was Philip the Deacon? The Acts of the Apostles tells us that he was one of seven disciples who were given the specific role of helping the Apostles to look after the early Christian community. There was also a Philip among the Apostles, who is referred to as St. Philip – this helps to distinguish Philip the Deacon from Philip the Apostle.
As the role of these seven specially chosen disciples involved serving the Christian community, those who undertook it became referred to as Deacons, from the Greek word for service: Deacons were the servants of the Church. The appointment of Deacons made sense: as the early Church grew in numbers, the Apostles needed assistants to help them in their various tasks. The names of these seven Deacons are set out in chapter 6 of the Acts of the Apostles: Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicolaus. The tradition of appointing Deacons in the Church has continued down the centuries.
It is possible that there was a tension between what the role of Deacon was meant to be, when it was first established, and how things turned out in practice. According to the official account in Chapter 6 of the Acts of the Apostles, their role was meant to be practical and administrative: they were to help in the distribution of food among members of the Christian community, so that the Apostles could focus on “prayer and…serving the word”. But the account of the activity of two of the Deacons in the following chapters suggests that their focus was actually more on evangelism: Chapter 7 is devoted to Deacon Stephen’s speech to the High Priest, and Chapter 8 focuses on Deacon Philip’s preaching tours. Perhaps Deacon Stephen and Deacon Philip proved to be better at evangelism than at practical matters, and so they were allowed to do what they were best at.
Chapter 8 records Deacon Philip in action. To start with he went north from Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in an area called Samaria. After this preaching tour, which proved highly successful, he was called by God to go to the south of the country. We shall look at what happened next in tomorrow’s reflections. And once we have done this, we shall look at what Philip the Deacon might want to say about us on the subject of evangelism.