I was recently
invited to lead a session with our church’s Deacon Body on “The Deacon as
Servant Leader.” The time was limited,
but I tried to deal with the concept from three perspectives—biblical,
historical, and contemporary—before turning to the “servant leader” aspect.
From the
biblical perspective, the main idea we take away from the New Testament is that
the role of the deacon or “servant of the church” (Philippians 1:1, 1 Timothy
3:8-13; Romans 16:10) was to do just that—serve the church. The passage that we usually turn to as the
earliest expression of the role (Acts 16:1-6) does not use the term, but the
Seven were appointed to “serve tables” or “wait on tables.”
I reminded the
group that Paul and other leaders of the early church did not operate out of a church
manual with detailed job descriptions.
They were more concerned that the function of service be carried
out. Those selected as deacons were not people
who exercised authority but church members who served their brothers and
sisters in Christ. They were probably
already servants and the church simply acknowledged that in a formal way.
The diaconate
was defined in many ways during the Patristic and Medieval periods, but a more
biblical approach was revived by the Reformers and the early Baptists. Charles Deweese points out that Thomas
Collier in 1654 pictured the work of deacons as that of “serving tables: the table of the Lord, the table of the
minister, and the table of the poor.”
Of course, later Baptists like R. B. C. Howell
in the 19th century came up with the idea of deacons as a “board of
directors” that took care of the secular matters of the church so that the
pastor could deal with the spiritual.
This idea was not universally accepted, of course (little is “universally
accepted” by Baptists). In 1897, Edwin
C. Dargan, professor of homiletics and ecclesiology at Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary, warned of the tendency of deacons to act as "a sort
of ruling presbytery"
In the
mid-twentieth century, Southern Baptist leaders like Howard Foshee, Robert
Naylor, and Jim Henry criticized the “board of deacons” approach and sought to
picture deacons as co-workers with the ministers of the church in pastoral
care, benevolence, and worship leadership.
So where are we
today? I think our church provides some
examples. We do not have elders (a trend
in some churches) but continue to have a Deacon Body that works with the
ministry staff.
1. We have a diverse group of deacons. When our church agreed that women were qualified
to be serve as deacons, it also made divorced people and ministers eligible
(that’s how I got to be a deacon).
2. Deacons are less involved as
administrators. The majority of administrative
work is done by committees. The pastor will often ask the Deacons for their
response to new initiatives in the life of the church, but this is primarily
due to a concern for the spiritual and relational implications of these
actions.
3. The support and blessing
of the diaconate is sought in the process of licensing and ordaining
individuals to the ministry.
4. Deacons work alongside
(not under) pastoral leaders. They are
co-workers in the pastoral care of members.
Like most churches, we have used several structures for this: Deacon
Family Ministry (which I really enjoyed); a joint ministry plan with Sunday School;
and ministry teams (All of these focus on caring and spiritual ministries.)
5. Deacons are once again seen
as “servants” or “servant leaders” of the church. (In fact, when I was deacon
chair several years ago, we presented a book on servant leadership to all new
deacons.)
6. I believe that increasingly
our church members elect those as deacons that they would like to have minister
to them. They are selected for their
qualities of caring, spiritual acumen, responsibility, and commitment rather
than their community or secular roles.
(A major source of citations for this blog was Charles W. Deweese, The Emerging Role of Deacons, Broadman Press, 1979.)
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