Deacons

I serve on a Deacon board, there were Seven of them and one died making it 6 and in January 4 new ones came on as Deacons after being nominated by the church and questioned by the Pastor and Deacons we were then Ordained. There are 10 of us now in a church with 700 members on the roll and about 350 active members. I was just Ordained in January and I have only been to 2 board meetings. We discuss issues that come up in the church that need to be addressed and things coming up like communion and baptism among other things. In our church Deacons are assigned Families and "YOU" being me, I am there Deacon and we also have a Deacon of the month that is on call for that month.:jesus:

 

Im sorry about all the post, my computer froze up last night and I was clicking on the red X and Post and anything but nothing was happening, I see now that it was. I hope a moderator could delete them all but one. Again I am sorry about that it happens sometimes.

 

That's OK...reminds me of some Deacon's meetings! :laugh:

 

A Deacon Board is anachronistic.

 

A friend of mine wrote about deacons in his blog

We currently have 4 deacons. I am grateful to have them. Once it is determined that they qualify in general we select those more for their serving spirit. They are actively involved in all areas of the church not because they are in charge but because they get to work.

In our meetings however, I use them to help me make decisions about important issues. They trust me to make the final decision after we have talked about it. But they make their feelings known in the meeting. The few times I did not listen to their wise counsel, I made stupid decisions. But they have never used the "we told you so..." remark. They are a godly, good group of men whom I love and respect.

 

We do not run the church at First Baptist church as a matter of fact all we have is our one vote just like every other member. Our main purpose is to serve the members. We have alot of widows and widowers at our church and its our place to be available to those as scripture lays out in Act 6:1-3 And in those days, the disciples having multiplied, a murmuring of the Hellenists against the Hebrews occurred, because their widows were overlooked in the daily serving. (2) And the Twelve called near the multitude of the disciples and said, It is not pleasing to us, leaving the Word of God, to serve tables. (3) Therefore, brothers, look out among you seven men being witnessed to, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this duty.

Deacons are servants to the church, however with being servants also comes the responisiblity to listen for murmuring and to try to stop it before the church gets all bent out of shape. When we have functions at the church the Deacons are the ones that do security for the church and parking lot. When our members are in the hospital we go and visit, when there is a death we try to comfort. Its almost a full time job away from my full time job. I get a list of families that belong to me, its my duty to keep up with there spiritual needs. Im not serving anyone, Im serving Jesus Christ by doing HIS work for HIS CHURCH, I dont care if the person is rich or poor, they are treated the same. The job of the Deacon is to help to relieve some of the full time duties of the Pastor as he is over the entire flock, we as Deacons are over smaller flocks and report back to the Pastor.

I had better go on and clarify that Im not OVER anyone but the word I guess that I should be using is OVERSEERS

 

LOL! Surrrrrre you were. We know you just wanted to get your point across. :tongue3:

 

...oops. Sorry, I didn't know I was logged in on my husband's account!

 

Strauch's "Minister of Mercy" is probably the best book on the deacon to be written. It is a stark contrast to Naylor's "Baptist Deacon" which coined the term "deacon board" which, TCGREEK correctly points out is anachronistic. I have referred to a team of deacons before. I think that's about as close to the office as you can get.

One of the biggest problems in Baptist churches is they're really Presbyterian in practice, since the deacons are governors or are a deliberative body. I actually heard someone refer to them as governors in a church I pastored.

 

As the Pastor, now is the time to do intense training with these new ones, training them on the Biblical role and function of the deacon. Otherwise, the opportunity is lost forever.

 

I used Strauch's book on eldership to train a large group of deacons at an interim (over a 14-month period). The pastor they called said they were best trained group of deacons he'd ever seen. The eldership book prepared them for the diaconate because it helped them to see what the pastors of a church have to do, thereby showing what they needed to do to support the pastor (s).

 

I'd be scared to teach Strauch's "Biblical Eldership" to deacons for fear they'd think THAT was their job

I have preached series on the role of pastor/elder before, though.

 

Why not let the Deacons serve like the scripture says? Pastor/Elder team can lead a church. All Deacons should be servants but not all servants are Deacons.

 

This church is working through (mentally) a "shared leadership" (plurality of elders) arrangement, and some of the deacons will probably eventually be elders, and the others deacons. It worked well with this congregation.

 

Er...I think you're right, a board is a stiff piece of wood!

 

Question

Are "ministry leaders" de facto deacons?
Is there a difference?

Rob