great topic.
And we Baptists struggle with the Biblical execution of the office of Deacon.
I'm a 3rd generation ordained Deacon in the Southern Baptist denomination.
What I witnessed growing-up and in my own experience when I became "of age" ... is that the typical SBC Deacon is really an Elder. two very different offices with very similar qualifications. In that Deacon body of 7-12 ... is probably 2 - 4 actual servant ministers. The rest are "Board members."
I do not ascribe to term limits, but to better adherence to the office as it is clearly described; a servant/minister ... a "mini pastor" if you will ....
then the business administrators in the Elders. It's easy to simply say "just nomenclature" ... except that the separation of duties is what is lacking in the typical SBC.
The typical SBC has over a dozen committees with the big 3 or 4 (finance, personnel, building/grounds)having at least one Deacon on the committee, if not the Chair. Then there are business meetings for the membership's ratification/rejection of committee/deacon reccs. In my 40 years of being sufficiently mature to know what's going on ... I've witnessed precisely ONE deacon recc rejected ... and that was just prior to the split of that SBC church congregation.
Is that Biblical? (not the split, those which ARE Biblical DO result in "the Gospel spreading even faster)
practically ... and particularly in a small congregation ... there will be mixing. However, there's a reason the two offices are outlined in the Church governance. I won't presume to understand all of it, but the Head of the Church is the primary reason ... not our secular form of government applied to the church.
