Have We Sold the Church Short on Deacons?

The Bible is clear that work of deacons is vital to the health and smooth-running of the church, but in recent years there has been such a focus on developing word ministry in the church, it may be that we have sown the seeds of the practical failure of many churches for lack of deacons.

Deacons Are Key

Let me try and explain. In Acts 6:1-7, we hit one of a series of obstacles to the church at the start of the book of Acts. Conflict arises in the Jerusalem church because of the way food is distributed to the widows of the church. The Hebraic Jews seem to be preferred to Hellenistic Jews (Acts 6:1). This is a real problem that needs a practical solution, but it needs to be a solution that does not distract from the word ministry of the apostles (Acts 6:2, 4). So they appoint seven mature and godly men to deal with this practical issue, which ensures the spread of the word of God.

These seven have usually been thought of as deacons because of the repeated use of the diakon- word group in vv.1-2 (although it is also used for word ministry in v.3). This office is then picked up in the Pastorals in distinction from the ministry of elders, where the difference is that deacons do not seem to need to be involved in word ministry (1 Timothy 3:8-13).

While there's a bit of debate around these passages and their link to specific offices in the church, I hope that it is reasonable to say that, within the church, it is right to think of word ministers working in partnership with mature Christians who don't necessarily have word ministry gifts, but who are able to lead in practical ministry so that the gospel can spread. That is to say, for effective churches we need people who will take the lead in word and practical ministry (i.e. both elders and deacons).

An Overemphasis on Pastors and Elders?

It is interesting that for some time the paid and trained minister in most churches has been a Bible teacher. While there has been a healthy recovery of the plurality of elders, it has been notable that in recent attempts to bring growth to the church, the emphasis has been on training more people for word ministry.

Now let me be clear, I think word ministry is essential for the growth of the church. That seems to be the focus of a passage like Ephesians 4:7-16 for example. Moreover, the passage I have already mentioned, Acts 6, emphasizes that those with responsibility for teaching the word must not be distracted from doing so.

However, if the church needs both elders and deacons, then the risk of an emphasis on the pastor/elder and training for word ministry is that we (unintentionally I hope) undermine the importance of the deacon role. If we do so, we risk defeating the very thing we were trying to achieve, as we undermine word ministry by effectively bringing our pastors and elders into diaconal ministry and away from word ministry.

A Looming Problem

One reason I see the lack of deacons as a looming problem for the church is personal experience. It has been especially obvious in trying to plant a church that I have been able to get support with preaching (for which I have been grateful), and people who have been through the church have often wanted to be active in forms of word ministry (especially evangelism, which is also a good thing), but I have never been able to find many people who would help with the practical aspects of church. They don't come to a church plant for that sort of thing. As such, it would be fair to say I have constantly "neglect[ed] the word of God in order to wait on tables," because somebody has to do it!

I think most pastors have fairly extensive experience of this. It used to be a sort of truism to say that nobody saw themselves as having the gift of cleaning the toilets! I'm sure that's still true (and yes I do that most weeks too!), but the reality is that for a church to run in the 21st Century you need people to take the practical responsibilities of things like Safeguarding, Health and Safety, Treasurer and Data Protection to name a few large areas. You can't exist without taking these things seriously. And I think it's probably right to see these a diaconal roles.

As we seek to plant and revitalise churches, we often want to emphasize the gospel ministry that will be the core of these churches, but in doing so, we may gather groups of people who don't really want to do diaconal ministry and perhaps even look down on it (real ministry becomes word ministry!). Similarly, it's possible that as we pay pastors and have colleges and courses to train word ministers, that we create some kind of tension, where we imply that word ministry is what matters - what we really need is elders and not deacons (yes that's a false dichotomy, but I hope you can see my point).

If we go down this path, our plants and revitalisations (and perhaps even our established churches) are likely to fail, because churches can't operate without people investing time and effort in diaconal ministry. So I wonder if we've been selling the church short on deacons.