Understanding Church Leadership

Jonathan Leeman, Mark Dever

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781433688928
• eBook ISBN: 9781433692345
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Who leads a church? Why is this important to God? God cares about his glory, and he means to display his glory through the church. For this very end, God has established elders and deacons, members, and congregational authority. This primer on church structure connects the different offices of the church to one another and to the glory of God.

Chapter 1

Who Are the Deacons?

Let’s begin with one of the most familiar offices in many churches today—the office of deacon. Depending on what kind of church you come from, “deacon” may conjure up images of gray-haired bankers sitting around long, highly-varnished tables in opulently appointed church parlors. Or maybe the word brings to mind earnest servants of the church coordinating needs-based ministries, evangelistic outreach, or pastoral care.

Who does the Bible say deacons are?

“Deacon” Defined

In our modern translations of the New Testament, the Greek word diakonos is usually translated as “servant” and sometimes as “minister.” Sometimes it is just transliterated as “deacon.” It can refer to service in general,2 to rulers in particular,3 or to caring for physical needs.4 It is clear in the New Testament that women can do at least some of this serving.5 Angels serve in this way.6 It sometimes refers to waiting tables.7

The New Testament world was similar to our own in the way it viewed servanthood. Service to others was not admired by the Greeks. Instead, they admired developing one’s own character and personality always with an eye to maintaining self-respect. Diaconal service to others would have been regarded pejoratively as “servile.”

The Bible and Jesus, though, present service quite differently. If we were to transliterate (and not translate) the key words in John 12:26, we would hear Jesus saying, “If anyone deacons Me, he must follow Me. Where I am, there My deacon also will be. If anyone deacons me, the Father will honor him.” In Matthew 20:26, we would hear him saying, “Whoever wants to be great, must be your deacon.” And in Matthew 23:11: “The greatest among you will be your deacon.”

In fact, Jesus presented himself as a type of deacon.8 And the Bible presents Christians as deacons of Christ or his gospel. So the apostles are depicted as deacons, and Paul regularly refers to himself and to those who worked with him as deacons.9 He refers to himself as a deacon among the Gentiles.10 Paul calls Timothy a deacon of Christ,11 and Peter says that the Old Testament prophets were deacons to us Christians.12 The Bible also calls angels deacons. Satan, too, has his deacons.13

We should always be careful to maintain a distinction between the ministry of deacons and the ministry of elders. In one sense both elders and deacons are involved in “deaconing,” but that service takes on two very different forms, both of which we see in Acts 6. There the apostles say that they should not “serve tables” because they are responsible for the “ministry of the word” (vv. 2–4 esv). The words translated as “serve” and “ministry” are different forms of the same Greek root. Can you guess what it is? Deacon! So you have traditional deaconing (table-waiting, physical service), and you have the kind of “deaconing” of the Word to which God called the apostles (and later, elders).

We will look at this passage more in the next chapter. But the men described in Acts 6 are very much like the church’s waiters, at least in an administrative sense. They are to care for the physical needs of the church. And a church needs both types of deaconing—of the Word (elders) and of tables (deacons)—so that one is not confused with the other and neither is forgotten. Churches should neglect neither the preaching of the Word nor the practical care for the members that helps to foster unity. Both of these aspects of a church’s life and ministry are important. In order to ensure that both kinds of deaconing occur in our churches, we should distinguish the ministry of the deacons from the ministry of the elders.

Qualifications of Deacons

Drawing from Acts 6, we can say that those who serve as deacons should be known to be “full of the Spirit and wisdom” (v. 3). They might be concerned with physical things, but theirs is a spiritual ministry. Such spiritual-minded wisdom enables them to oversee church resources in a manner that serves the unity of the flock. They should be chosen by the congregation and possess the congregation’s confidence. And they should willingly and diligently take on the responsibility for the particular needs of their ministry.

In 1 Timothy 3:8–13, Paul spells out further what deacons should be like. They should be worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, not pursuing dishonest gain, keeping hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience, tested and approved servants who are the husband of but one wife, and able managers of their children and household.

The command to be the “husband of one wife” does not preclude women from serving in diaconal positions. The example of Phoebe the “deacon” in Romans 16:1 (niv), the use of “deacon” words elsewhere of women in the Scriptures, and to a lesser degree, the long history of deaconesses in Baptist churches has led my own church to embrace the ministry of women as deaconesses. That said, 1 Timothy 2 prohibits women from serving as elders. So if a church confuses the role of elders and deacons (as in many Baptist churches today), we would discourage it from recognizing women as deacons. We can freely encourage our sisters to be recognized as deaconesses when the distinction between the offices of elder and deacon is clear.

Historical Background

Scholars disagree about how fluid the structures of the churches were in the first few decades after Pentecost. But pretty early churches possessed a plurality of elders and a plurality of deacons. Think of how Paul greets the church in Philippi: “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers [or elders] and deacons” (Phil. 1:1).

Immediately after New Testament times, these separate offices of elders and deacons continued. The role of elders began to be distinguished between bishops and priests, but deacons continued to be listed in early documents after the bishops and priests. Usually they were tasked with assisting the bishops or overseers. In the early church, the office generally seems to have been held for life. The functions of the office, however, varied from place to place.

Diaconal duties might include:

• reading or singing Scripture in church;
• receiving the offerings and keeping records of who gave;
• distributing the offerings to the bishops, presbyters, and themselves; to the unmarried women and widows; and to the poor;
• distributing communion;
• leading prayers during gatherings, and giving a signal for those who were not to take communion to leave before the ordinance was administered.

This summarizes the duties of deacons from the second through the sixth centuries.

As the monarchical episcopate developed, so did a kind of monarchical diaconate beneath it. As the role of bishop developed, so did the role of archdeacon. The archdeacon was the chief deacon of a particular place and might be described as a deputy concerned with material matters. Unsurprisingly, the archdeacon in Rome became particularly important. Abuses eventually crept into the office of deacon, and deacons—especially archdeacons—became quite wealthy. How ironic that those who were meant to serve others instead used others to serve their own desires!

For a number of reasons, the deacons’ influence declined in the Middle Ages. Caring for the poor became more a vehicle for the contributors to gain credit with God in order to lessen their time in purgatory.

The Eastern Orthodox Church has always kept separate deacons—laymen who served in that capacity. In the West, though, by the late Middle Ages, being a deacon had become a step on the way to being ordained as a priest. Deacons in the Roman Catholic and the Episcopalian churches are still just that—trainee ministers who serve as deacons for one year before becoming full-fledged priests. However, the Second Vatican Council has reopened the possibility of a different, permanent, more biblical kind of deacon in the Roman Catholic Church.

Martin Luther recovered the church’s responsibility to care physically for the church and especially for the poor in the church, though Lutheran churches didn’t recover the idea of the New Testament deacon. In the Lutheran churches today, practice varies. In some plac...

Table of contents

• Church Basics Series Preface
• 1. Who Are the Deacons?
• 2. What Do Deacons Do?
• 3. Who Are the Elders?
• 4. What Do Elders Do?
• 5. How Do the Elders Relate to Staff, Deacons, and “the Pastor”?
• 6. How Do the Elders Relate to the Congregation?
• 7. Who Are the Members?
• Conclusion: A Display of God’s Glory