June 17, 2026 Show with Dr. Scott Cook on “The Ordination of Females into the Diaconate”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 17th day of June, 2026. Before I introduce to you my guest and our topic of the day, I want to remind you all to please mark your calendars for next Thursday and Friday, which is the 25th and 26th of June.

Upcoming Debate on Eternal Security

We have, returning to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, two men who have debated each other on two previous occasions. They are Pastor Jared K. Henry, who is a Nazarene pastor. He is debating my friend Jeremiah Nortier, who is a Reformed Baptist pastor.

And this time around, the two men will be debating, can true believers lose their salvation? So that's a very important topic that divides the body of Christ and has done so for centuries. And I am looking forward to seeing these two men grapple over these issues with grace and respect, but nonetheless taking these issues very seriously.

So that's next Thursday and Friday, the 25th and 26th of June, right here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. But today we have a first-time guest. He came highly recommended to me by Lowell Ivey, who many of you may have heard on my program on a number of occasions.

His name is Dr. Scott Cook. He is Senior Pastor of Oconee Presbyterian Church in Seneca, South Carolina. And this congregation is a member of the Presbyterian Church in America, also known as the PCA.

And today, Dr. Scott Cook is going to be addressing the ordination of females into the diaconate. What is at stake at the next General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America in the outcome of this pivotal vote?

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Scott Cook. Thank you so much, Chris. It's a delight to be here with you today. Well, first of all, what our listeners know something about the Oconee Presbyterian Church of Seneca, South Carolina, and am I pronouncing that properly?

Yeah, that's right. It's not a common word that you run into. There's a county here from which we draw the name because we're located in Oconee County, and it's a Native American word for land beside the river, because we have a number of bodies of water here.

So it's Oconee. Oconee. Oconee. Okay. And yeah, so I have the great privilege of being the senior pastor here. I've been at Oconee Presbyterian since September of 2019. And our church is a thriving, vibrant, reformed Presbyterian church.

We've got a really neat story. I hope you won't be able to hear any of it going on in the background, but we're in the process of constructing a new sanctuary and a new Christian ed building. When I got here, we had about 35 to 50 members, faithful in attendance.

My child, Charlie, which was our only child at the time, was the only child in the whole congregation. And now the Lord, over the last number of years, has really blessed us so that we're growing, thriving, seeing adult baptisms, many covenant children being born.

And we're just one of the many faithful PCA churches that you can find in the great state of South Carolina. I have to throw that in as I'm a South Carolina native. Well, I always love to hear about adult baptisms in a Presbyterian church.

Yes, yes, that's something that sadly is not as frequent as it could be, and that's actually every year we issue a prayer challenge to our congregation in one particular way or another. And we have regularly asked our congregation to pray for at least four adult baptisms every year, because while in the Presbyterian tradition, we would consider what we do with infants to be legitimate baptism.

I know our Baptist brothers would disagree with us on that. But the fact of the matter is, you know, a faithful Bible-believing church should really see new converts, men and women from the community, regularly coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

And that's what we pray for, that's what we work for. Of course, the Lord gives the increase there, but that's something that we really cherish to see when someone who's been a stranger to the promises of God comes and professes faith for the first time.

Well, you know, one of the things that immediately struck me when you said that is that you are in South Carolina, a state in the Bible Belt, and I know that Presbyterians are typically only baptizing people as adults who are new converts, who are from religions that don't involve baptism or have a false baptism that is not Trinitarian, or they perhaps were just raised with no faith at all, and their parents never baptized them.

So it's interesting that even in the Bible Belt, you're baptizing so many adults. Yes, and that's one of the things that I can even see. So I grew up in South Carolina. I'm originally from Greenville, and I'm one of the few people who's actually from Greenville these days, because it seems like the whole world has moved there in about the last 10 years.

It's really exploded. And one of the things that I've seen as I grew up in high school and then went through college and then young adult life in my 20s is progressively each generation being born in this area had fewer and fewer contacts with Bible-believing churches.

There's a Baptist minister in our area who told me one time, you know, in South Carolina, everyone's a Baptist. Even our atheists are Baptists because it's the Baptist God they don't believe in, not the Catholic God.

Everybody in one shape, form, or another is associated particularly with the Southern Baptist Church. But nowadays, that's not really the case. And we've also had close to 40 percent or so of the people who live in South Carolina are not from South Carolina.

And so it's really a great kind of dynamic to both be in the Bible Belt so that when I go to a local coffee shop, I almost always see someone doing a Bible study or a pastor meeting with somebody. But then on the other hand, you have so many people who don't know their left hand from their right and have never stepped foot in a Bible-believing church.

So it's a really kind of interesting time to do ministry here in South Carolina. Yeah. Well, if anybody lives in the Oconee area of South Carolina where you have family, friends, and loved ones who do, and you want to recommend them to a good church, we hope that in either case you visit or encourage others to visit this congregation.

And the website is Oconeeprez .org, O-C-O-N as in Nancy, E-E, prez .org. And we'll be repeating that website later on in the program. Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Before we go to the main theme of our interview today, which is the vote on women entering into the diaconate, that is going to be one of the primary and most controversial votes at the next General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, starting on June 22nd.

Before we go into that conversation, since you're a first-time guest, we would like you to give a summary of your salvation testimony, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised, and the kinds of providential circumstances that our Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you.

So we'd love to hear your story. Oh, absolutely. And talking about the Lord Jesus and how He saved me from my sins, that's always something I'm very glad to talk about. So I was born into a household where I would describe neither of my parents as walking with the Lord at this time.

I'm very grateful that both of them are members of Bible-believing churches. My dad actually attends and is a member of the church where I'm a pastor of now. And my mom is a member at my home church, Unity Presbyterian, over just about an hour or so away from here.

But at the time, neither of them were walking with the Lord. And my mother made an interesting prayer when I was born, and that is she prayed, Lord, I don't know how to raise this child. I don't know how to be a mother.

So I ask that you would raise him and bring him to yourself. And the Lord definitely heard that prayer, because on the one hand, my parents had a very kind of spotty relationship with going to church.

You know, we'd go for a while and then come back, probably until I moved in with my dad in my middle school years, because my parents divorced when I was about two. The church tradition that we attended the most often was a local megachurch, particularly a local Pentecostal megachurch, which now being a PCA minister is about as different from that as you can imagine.

But my parents were not walking with the Lord when I was young, but they wanted me to take a very different path in life than they did. And so they always insisted and worked very hard to make sure that I was going to private Christian school.

And so even though I wasn't nurtured in a particularly devout context in my younger elementary years, I always had Christian teachers actually over at Shannon Forest Christian School, which was attached to a PCA church.

They started teaching me the shorter catechism, and I had no idea what the Reformed faith was, anything like that. Now, looking back on it, I can see the Lord's fingerprints in that. And I would say that I was baptized at a local Southern Baptist church at the age of five.

My parents showed me the Jesus movie. I walked the aisle that Sunday, made a profession of faith, was baptized. But I would put my time of conversion more likely somewhere between sixth and eighth grade when I started wrestling with problems of evil in the world.

And I was attending a local Christian school, and it was attached to a good Southern Baptist church. And some of the men there invited me to come to Sunday school. Some of the kids reached out for me to get involved in the youth group, started reading my Bible daily.

And that's the time when I can really see an articulation of being saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and starting to see some fruit. So I would put my conversion sometime between sixth and eighth grade.

Maybe it was before then, but I certainly couldn't have a real sense of having a true saving faith in Christ until that time. So even though not necessarily born into a Christian household, I still nonetheless, in God's providence, got nurtured into the faith through good influences, through the ordinary means of grace, and through the work working in my life by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And praise God. And how did you come to believe that the Lord had placed a call upon your life to enter into pastoral ministry? Yeah, so that really is a two-part sort of story. So it began when I was in high school.

We had Bible classes, and when I went into ninth grade, we had a gentleman come, Dr. James Knowles, who has a Ph .D. from Mid-America Baptist Seminary, where I also have my first Ph .D. from. And he looked at the Bible curriculum we had, and he said to the administration, you know, this is very anemic, and I would like to replace it with my own curriculum.

So he went through ninth grade Old New Testament Bible survey, then biblical theology in 10th grade, church history in 11th grade, and then systematic theology in 12th grade. And he was Reformed. And as soon as he started lecturing the first day of ninth grade on the use of the word yom and the different views on creation, and I was really attracted to studying the Bible in this way.

I had not ever seen this done before. And he started feeding me Reformed books, and he gave me John Stott's Life with Christ, J .I. Packer's Knowing God, and then Millard Erickson's Systematic Theology.

And as I read this, I really started growing my desire to study, to teach scripture. And so by the time I went into 10th grade, I would have told you that I wanted to go on, get a Ph .D. in theology and teach at a high school or college level somewhere.

It wasn't until Holland, and by that time, my senior year, I had made the transition, whether it's positive or negative, is up to the eye of the beholder. But from being a Reformed Baptist to being a Presbyterian, and my pastor took me down to Erskine College, which is the denominational school of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.

I went there, studied theology and philosophy. And while I was there, I met a woman by the name of Christina, who would later become my wife, and he introduced me to J. Adam. And I got to have a good friendship with J.

He took part in our wedding down the road and kind of did our pre-engagement counseling. And we did a two-year biblical counseling training course with him. And it was really through his influence that up until that point, I said, you know, I want to teach theology, but I don't want to be a pastor.

But it was really through his influence that God gave me a sense of call, not just to teach, but to preach, to labor in the local church, the importance of the local church and the ordinary means of grace.

And so in high school, I got kind of the first half of wanting to teach. And then really college was where I got the sense of call to the ministry proper and then came under care of my Presbyterian church I was a member of, came under care of Presbyterian and formally began getting ready to go to seminary and to preach and to teach.

Well, praise God. When you were talking about the fact that your mom, even before she was a believer, that she was praying for you, it reminded me of my sweet, precious mom, a devout Roman Catholic lady who, although I believe at that time was, and for all of her life until I know that she came to a saving knowledge of Christ, six weeks before she departed this earth and entered into glory with Christ due to pancreatic cancer, she made a clear profession.

And during those weeks continued to prove that profession to be real, that she was truly united with Christ. But she was a very religious Roman Catholic lady, superstitious with the idols and so on, prayers to Mary and the saints, all of which she abandoned before she passed.

But one of her children, meaning me, well, actually three of her five children were drunkards, but I was the one that was still living at home at this time as a teenager. And I was quite a drunkard, not the responsible, moderate drinker that most Reformed Christians find the liberty to participate in social drinking when it's done responsibly and moderately.

I was far from that. I was a flagrant drunk. And my mom, I can still remember coming home, watching her weeping her eyes out and dumping, probably a case of beer bottle by bottle down the sink. And she just cried out to the Lord, please rescue my son.

And eventually I became a born again believer. And even though that was in a Reformed Baptist church and my mom was still Catholic at the time, she was rejoicing. And she told me, this is an answer to my prayer that the Lord brought you to himself.

And it was such a glorious gift from God to me to know that during the last six weeks of her life, she made it clear that she was trusting only in the finished work of Christ on Calvary for her salvation.

And she no longer prayed to Mary and the saints and idols. And so I have nothing but the highest confidence that she is with the Lord right now. But tell us about, first of all, what the Presbyterian Church in America, the PCA General Assembly is all about.

And then tell us about some of the many issues that are going to be brought to the floor starting on the 22nd. And I know that there's so many issues that are going to be discussed in addition to the one that we are highlighting today, the ordination of female deacons.

So many, so that you are not sure when it's going to end, but tell us about this. Sure. So just a brief background about the PCA, for those who are not familiar with that, the Presbyterian Church in America is currently the largest Bible-believing Reformed Presbyterian denomination in the United States.

We belong to a wonderful family, a collection of denominations called NAPAR, the North American Association of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches. So if you're familiar with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the ARP, the RPCNA, we're kind of the family of Bible-believing churches that hold to the scriptures as an errant and infallible and also hold to the Westminster Standards as the best explanation of what we believe the Bible teaches, along with the three forms of unity for our brethren who come from the continental Dutch tradition.

And as Presbyterians, as those of you who are familiar with the New Testament Greek, we take our name from Presbyteros, the concept of elders leading the church. And of course, we share that in common with our good Reformed Baptist brethren who are elder-led, whether they're in the Southern Baptist Convention or independent or part of a body of a confessing Reformed Baptist.

The distinction for our polity would be that whereas those who are Congregationalists or elder-led Congregationalists believe the concept of the church applies, strictly speaking, to the local body, and anything above that that congregations might do is really associational.

Like, think of the Southern Baptist Convention that just concluded. They would tell you, we're not a denomination, we're a collection of independent, local, autonomous churches that gather together for ministry purposes.

We believe that the concept of the church extends above the local church to include a particular body of believers that includes both the local level, what we would call the local congregation, the regional church, which is the Presbytery.

And Presbyteries can differ by size and numbers according to the size of the denomination, but basically it's the regional church. So in our area, the upcountry of South Carolina is covered by Calvary Presbytery, and we try to model this off of what we see in Acts chapter 15.

And then an extension of that is that in the Presbyterian tradition, when you get to a size that you have a number of Presbyteries, then you have the highest body of the church, which is, in our case, the General Assembly.

And it's a collection of all those who are teaching elders or pastors who are able to come and sit in this highest court of our church, along with every church has the right to send at least two ruling elders to represent the local congregation.

And for every fraction, over 400 or so, you get to send an additional ruling elder. So it's a collection this year of over 2 ,500 teaching elders, pastors, and ruling elders who gather together to conduct the business of the church at the highest level.

So we represent not only here in America, but missionaries and churches all throughout the world gather together every year for our General Assembly. And the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is our kind of charter document, explains what we believe theologically, speaks about synods and councils as being those sort of bodies that could deal with matters of doctrine, setting the Constitution, deal with matters of conflict by settling doctrinal disputes, deal with appeals.

So if there are trials or discipline cases coming out of the lower courts, the last court of appeal, as it were, is the General Assembly. And then doing those things for the good order of the church, such as helping to facilitate international missions, missions on the college campus, Reform University Fellowship, things like that.

Our good brother Lowell Ivey is part of our denominations initiative with regard to prison ministry. And so those are the sort of things that we're going to be doing. And in our tradition, there is a particular way that local presbyteries or sessions can ask the General Assembly to take action on something, whether to change the Constitution or to make a statement or to change our bylaws, and that's by sending up an overture.

And that's the way that most of the work of the Assembly gets completed. This year, we have close to 100 overtures, which I think is an all-time record. And that covers everything from requests for study committees on things such as artificial intelligence or critical race theory to amending the book of church order with regard to our rules of discipline for judicial processes, all the way down to changing how the Assembly operates itself with its own rules of Assembly operation.

And very significantly this year, we have a couple of requests from presbyteries asking us to allow for either the ordination of women to the diaconate or to allow women to bear the title of deacon or deaconess in an unordained capacity.

And so that's going to be a central feature of what we're going to gather together in Louisville, Kentucky, starting on the 22nd of this month to consider along with a host of other issues. Okay. Well, as far as the distinction that you just mentioned, perhaps you should flush that out a little bit, the two views of ordaining women into the diaconate, or should I say identifying and setting apart women as deacons, one being an ordination into this ministry and one being accepted as a deacon in a non-ordained way.

Tell us the differences between those two. Yeah. So perhaps a little kind of recent context would be helpful too. I think this is going to be about the third time that our General Assembly will be considering requests to have women deacons in some form or another.

The denomination has consistently said no to this over the years. And a few years ago, we instituted a new rule in our book of church order, which is our constitution that contains the Westminster standards of the confession of faith and the along with our form of government rules of discipline.

And we'll also be considering a very significant change in including a directory of public worship in that. Well, in the book of church order, we instituted a new rule in response to some of the things we were seeing at the local church level, which was that you cannot give the title of ordained office of pastor or elder or deacon to unordained person.

The reason for this was in previous years, the assembly had very clearly said, no, we're not going to allow women to be ordained to the office of deacon. And some churches, I want to be charitable here, but from my perspective, seeking to have a work around wanted to not ordain women to the diaconate, but commission them in services that look pretty similar to an ordination service, though they technically couldn't vote on the diaconate.

There were some that would use a particular provision of our book of church order where we say that the session can appoint assistants to the deacons to help them carry out their roles and duties. Some would take the title of deacon or deaconess and apply that to the women who were serving in those appointed but unordained roles.

Then we had very curiously some churches that had practice of not ordaining deacons at all, and they would have men and women commissioned and would give them the title of deacon or deaconess, but they would not have any ordained deacons.

And as this started coming to the General Assembly, being a good complementarian, committed denomination, we put in this rule to prohibit that sort of thing from happening. And so now, in my opinion, in response to that, we've gotten a couple of overtures saying, well, hey, okay, if we're going to have this rule, why don't we then just allow latitude so that women can be ordained?

Or some of those practices of churches where they wouldn't have a diaconate, they would just commission, or where they would give the title of deacon to a woman, but she's not ordained, let's allow that practice formally.

And so that's the two options that we have. One is full-on women deacon. Let's allow women, if the local session agrees to it, to have women nominated, and then not just appointed or commissioned, but ordained to the office, so they would be able to vote.

They would, in the diaconate, they would bear the office and have full, equal access to the title and rights of being a deacon. The other option is to say, well, let's let churches call women deacons or deaconesses, but not put them in the same category necessarily with the ordained officers who are deacons.

So you've got kind of the full women deacons option, and then you've got some more moderate ground, local option sort of things that are being advocated, and that would be the distinction. And in my opinion, and I'm not speaking ill of any of the brethren who have advocated for these sort of things, but I see that as a distinction without a difference.

Because if you ordain and lay hands on someone, or you do everything but ordain and lay hands on them, but they have all the other functions of the office, at the end of the day, there's no significant difference between those two, and I think both of those need to be rejected for biblical faithfulness.

Counsel on Women Serving in Church Ministry

Okay, we have to go to our first commercial break. If anybody would like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, your country of residence. If you live outside of the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are in a church and you are uncomfortable with that church's practice of how they differentiate in gender roles in the church and in the home. You feel uncomfortable, you believe that perhaps what's going on is unbiblical, and you have something to say about that.

We obviously wouldn't want you to identify yourself because we don't want to identify a church de facto because of your own revealing of your identity when we don't even know perhaps the people at that church and don't know if you're accurately describing the situation.

So, we don't want anybody being the victims of slander here. So, you may remain anonymous if you're bringing up personal and private questions. On some occasions, you must remain anonymous. But if you're asking a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

Please don't go away because we're coming.

Right back after these messages. I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune God.

We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ. In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every Sunday.

We would for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org. That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

Hello, this is Brian Nahan, president of Hearts for the Lost Ministry. Our sole mission is to serve the local church and work directly with and alongside pastors and elders with their efforts to equip, excite, and educate their flock in biblical evangelism.

We also provide practical experience opportunities in sharing the gospel directly within your immediate community. We accomplish this mission with training and Christ-centered outreach events designed to equip the church and proclaim the good news of the gospel.

Our services are always 100 free. If you're looking to equip and mobilize your church for faithful gospel witness, please partner with us. Hearts for the Lost Ministry, serving the church, proclaiming the gospel.

Contact us today at heartsforthelost .com. That's heartsforthelost .com.

Now, have a heart and go share your faith. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

I've had the privilege of opening God's word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my New York debates.

I do not hesitate to highly recommend Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island to anyone who wants to be accurately taught, discipled, and edified by the holy scriptures, and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in Christ.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net. That's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711. That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the NASB.

I'm Pastor Nate Pikowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reform.

Baptist Church in Corham, New York, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Sulay Prince of Oakwood Wesleyan Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,.

And the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Chuck Volo of New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Steve Herford of Eastport.

Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Roy Owens, Jr. of the Church in Friendship in Hockley, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. Here's a great way for your church to.

Help keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew Bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB, and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com to place your order.

I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic.

And Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight-volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.

It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis, as well as historical and systematic theology. Dr. Morecraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

For details on the eight-volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com. For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com, heritagepresbyterianchurch .com.

Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr. Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you.

Phoebe, Priscilla, and Women as Fellow Workers

Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our first-time guest today is Dr. Scott Clark, and he is the senior pastor of Oconee Presbyterian Church, a PCA church in Seneca, South Carolina, and we are talking about the upcoming pivotal vote about the ordination of females into the aconite and the PCA.

And if you do have questions, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least. City and state and country of residence. Please only remain anonymous if your question is regarding a personal and private matter.

And we have a fellow South Carolinian calling, not calling, but emailing in. We have Tammy in Walhalla, South Carolina. I wonder if that name has any origins in Scandinavians who are being misunderstood about their Valhalla.

I don't know. Scott Clark. It does. That's actually where it comes from, Valhalla, but it turned into Walhalla over here. Yeah, good guess on my part, because Scandinavians pronounce their Vs with Ws.

So anyway, Tammy says, would you and the majority of folks who agree with you in the PCA object to women doing things that deacons do except for being involved in any teaching or authority positions over men in the church without calling themselves deacons?

And that's a good question because, for instance, my congregation where I'm a member, I should say, Trinity Reform Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There are many ladies that are always there setting up the tables with food and refreshments during special events and visiting people who are sick and doing all kinds of things, but they're not deacons.

We don't believe in female deacons or elders. And so what would your answer to Tammy's question be? Scott Clark. That's a great question. It's always good to have somebody from Walhalla calling in. That's just 10 minutes down the road from us here.

So I would say you have to take the work of the deac and divide it in two parts. If you understand the nature of the way we talk about it in the PCA, it is the office of sympathy and service that Christ appointed the elders to lead the congregation by the preaching and the teaching of the word, by pastoral care, by praying for the congregation, leading in that way.

And the deaconate is an office of service that is primarily focused not so much on taking care of the building and the physical ground, so that certainly has fallen to the deaconate as churches have physical property, but on sympathy and service, ministering to those who are hurting and suffering and particularly those who are in physical affliction and have needs such as poverty or sickness or things like that.

I think there are a lot of occasions where not only in general, but in our local church, where we've asked women to come alongside other women in the congregation or other families and to help them in a way that would be in tandem with what the deaconate might be doing in that general level of sympathy and service that the deacons manifest.

And it's interesting, if you look at Romans chapter 16, it refers to Phoebe as a servant of the church at Syntychrae, and it uses the term diakonos there. That's because the term that became the official term for the diaconate comes from the general term in New Testament Greek for servant or service, someone who waits at table.