After
Christ ascended, the Church did not begin its own public ministry until
Pentecost.
Then,
the first major crisis and scandal within the Church was one of ethnic
discrimination; and it led the apostles to institute changes in the
hierarchical and sacramental structures of the Church.
In
the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 6, the Hebrew Christians
discriminated against the Hellenist (Greek) Christians in the daily
distribution of food.
Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in
number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were
neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the body of the
disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word
of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men
of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this
duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” And
what they said pleased the whole multitude, 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 upon them.
The
apostles upheld the priority of prayer and the ministry of the word in their
hierarchical role as apostles in the Church, and then they instituted the
hierarchical and sacramental order of deacons.
That was not the last instance in the New Testament of apostles needing
to address tensions between Hebrew Christians and Christians from other kinds
of linguistic, ethnic, cultural, or racial backgrounds.
The
Council of Jerusalem faced this, and the letters of St. Paul address this.
