The Offices of the Church

Providence Baptist Church

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Welcome to Three Minutes in Theology, I'm Pastor Alan Nelson, Pastor of Perryville Second Baptist Church in Central Arkansas.

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Today we're going to talk about the offices of the church, there are two, pastors and deacons.

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In Philippians chapter one, verse one, it says, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons.

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In a sense there are three types of Christians. There are what you would have the normal church members, there are deacons who are also normal church members but called to a special office, and there are pastors who are also normal church members but called to the particular office of pastoring.

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Pastors are men of godly character, they are called by God to shepherd the flock, they are to labor in word ministry, they're to be examples to the flock in holiness and godliness.

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It's reserved for men, they're to be husbands, 1st Timothy 3 says, husbands of one wife, you can read the character list in 1st

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Timothy 3, also Titus 1, some of what they do, 1st

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Peter 5, shepherd the flock of God among you, pastors literally pastor, they pastor the flock of God that is among them, they're to live among the people, it's not an ivory tower or over professionalization of the ministry.

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Pastors are men of godly character with the ability to teach, who preach and teach and lead and oversee the church, overseers, elders, pastors, bishops, it all describes the one office of pastor.

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And then you have deacons, deacons in the church are servants, all church members serve

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Christ but deacons serve in a visible, tangible, above and beyond type way, they serve in such a way as in order to help the pastors labor in the word and prayer, and so they do some of the maybe more mundane tasks or physical tasks around the church so that pastors can focus on caring for souls.

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Deacons nowhere in the scriptures are deacons any kind of governing body or oversight body or authoritative body, they are in one sense assistants to the pastors, assistants to the elders, they serve in such a way as to help the elders be able to focus on the word of God and prayer.

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Deacons are to be men of character, they're to be holy men, their lives are to commend the gospel, they are men, they're also 1

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Timothy 3 husbands of one wife, the exhortation there about wives

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I think in 1 Timothy 3 applies to both deacons and pastors, there's no office of pastor wife or office of deacon wife, but if a wife is unconverted or if she's immature in the faith, there's disqualification for a man to be a pastor or an elder.

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So all of this goes together. One last thing I want to say is in Philippians 1, pastors are overseers and deacons, it's plural and so the

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New Testament model is a plurality of pastors, a plurality of deacons in each local church.

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That doesn't mean that every pastor is going to preach the same number of Sundays, there are especially gifted men that may carry more ability to preach and teach, that's what 1

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Timothy 5 .17 has to do with, but it's important that we get these offices right because we want to have the vision for the church that Christ has for the church and He is worthy of a healthy church.