143: The Office of Deacon

The Church Is Not a Democracy but a Monarchy

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Welcome to the Danny Church Podcast.

Wow.

Starting off with some blasphemy.

The one and only. Are you the only Danny Thursby I know of?

Yeah, that's true.

Besides your son?

Yeah, that's, yeah. I mean, and my dad.

Okay.

I'm still holding out. Hope to see your son have a son and nickname him Cuatro, Danny Thursby IV.

It's very possible. Very possible.

Great.

I mean, if I still lived in Texas, the likelihood of him being called Trace would have been very high.

Very high.

Extremely high, yeah.

High as the snowfall chances this weekend?

Probably, yeah, probably.

Well, by the time this comes out, that'll be in the past, so.

Yeah.

Welcome to the room.

Go ahead.

Speaking of, I'm about to preach at a high school chapel.

Uh-huh, today?

And just later on this morning.

Okay.

And I already know it's gonna be fruitless. They're just gonna be sitting there wondering how long until we get out of school.

Updating the app every second. Listen, brother, I looked at my app this morning, because my son, my oldest son's always telling me, it said 23 to 24 inches. I'm like, nah, that's, you know, that's off, but it gets everybody excited.

Inflations even hit the weather app. It's crazy.

Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I am your host, Alan Nelson. I'm one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas, and with me is this, I don't know, you've been on several times, but I know last year you were on once for sure.

Danny Thursby, one of the elders at Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, sister church, a church that has helped us and grateful for. So it's grateful to have you on again. We're gonna get to the topic in just a second.

First, what are you doing at chapel? Will it actually be like a sermon or more like a lesson or?

No, I'll be preaching, but I'm limited to 15 minutes.

Okay.

So it's

Like they're gonna like accost you if you go over or they've just asked or?

Well, I'm gonna tell the first group because the first group is the high school before lunch. And I'm gonna tell them that the guy, it's at CCS. So you know, Billy Crow, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So he's over maybe like the Bible department or spiritual life, or I'm not exactly sure all he does there, but I'm gonna tell the high school students that Dr. Crow said that they were fasting through lunch and then I can take the hour.

They will appreciate that humor, I'm sure.

Well So yeah, it's just like a high school, Christian school chapel service, but my slot is only 15 minutes. So it's gonna be a 15 minute sermon is what it's gonna be on the topic of service.

What Acts 6 Teaches About the Office of Deacon

Oh, well, that kind of gets us into this topic today. I'm gonna, I told you before the show that I was not gonna tell you this until we're recording because I wanna get the genuine reaction. So we're in, and we can even talk about this today if you want, I can give you my reasons, but I don't know if you like the kind of historic position on act six is that it's laying a foundation for deacons or deacons.

And some, there are others, they're saying, no, no, but I do take that position of, look, we're having a new office here. We're laying a foundation for deacons at the very least. So I began that, our church doesn't have deacons right now.

So I began act six on Sunday, we're going through the book of acts. And I told the church that we're actually gonna kind of have an extended camp out here and probably spend, I've got about five weeks planned and just really think through what is a deacon because we want to take away this traditional mindset of like this ruling body in typical.

Now, the only tradition, the only church tradition I'm really hands-on familiar with is the Baptist tradition. And so I don't know if it's like this in other places, but in the Baptist tradition, you pretty much have the deacon as a ruling body, almost like ruling elders.

Anyway, so that's kind of, I'm trying to set this up for you. So I'm starting that Sunday, preach that. Well, my son who is eight, Haddon, he goes home with another family and he and his buddy have this little conversation driving.

They're talking, the parents are talking to him about, hey, what's the sermon, all that. So they sent me a text, I'm gonna read it to you. So this is what Haddon says. I used to think deacons were, and his buddy cuts him off.

He interrupts him. He says, bad, like Catholic? And Haddon says, no, I thought deacons were people who didn't like the pastor. So on one hand, it's absolutely hilarious. And on the other hand, it breaks my heart, you know?

So why don't you tell us like, what's your reaction to that? Why would he say something like that?

Wait, no, I'm more laughing at the other kid that was like, bad, like Catholic?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's funny.

Like, what do y 'all, yeah. So we're pretty open over here.

Like, what are they, Mormons or something?

We're pretty open over here about our stances on certain issues, as you can tell.

Oh, that's funny stuff, man.

Kids, man.

Funny stuff. Hey, yeah, man. I mean, just the fact that eight-year-old boys are talking about deacons and Catholics, that's a win.

Yeah, it's, you know, and we're not really gonna get, this is not part of the episode to get into what we've been through here, but we have been through here, a situation with very confrontational and difficult with deacons.

And this is, like, I did not expect, it's kind of sad, I guess, but as a father, I did not anticipate my son, this was three years ago, so he's eight. So he was five. So I didn't anticipate that kind of perception.

Right, him actually being that aware of kind of things going on in the church at that age.

So here I am talking about deacons, and my son's thinking in his mind,.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Why do we want those?

Hey, what are we doing? What are we doing here, Dad?

Yeah, so.

At the next business meeting, he's gonna stand up and be like, I've got some concerns about the direction of the congregation.

Right, yeah, right, right. Why do we want to get, but let me ask you, so maybe let's do a positive. I don't know if you want to say anything about Act VI, but we'll start out this, like, why don't you just, well, I don't know, do you have any experience in your past, you know, from, you know, what would you say growing up you saw the typical deacon as, and then maybe what do you see now, the biblical role of deacon?

Yeah, I think that that's common. What's funny is your son's reaction at these, like, it's kind of like a comedy sketch version of Baptist churches. Everybody's got some sort of story like that. And so let me give you one from the church I grew up in is that pretty crazy story in small town Texas for what it was.

Now, I should preface this to say this is, we weren't there at the church during this time, and I would have been young anyway, but this was the kind of legend that came out of it is that there's a pastor of the church I grew up in and it was a growing time in the church and things like that.

Well, apparently there was some conflict over something, I'm not sure, but the pastor's plan to solidify his position or solidify his place in the church or his authority in the church, I don't know, something like that is what I take away from the story.

He got with the deacons and said, hey, at the end of the service today, I'm gonna tender my resignation. But I want you to stand up and not accept it so that it squashes, that basically it squashes any doubt of my security as the pastor of the church throughout this conflict or something like that.

Well, I don't know what happened between then and the end of the service, but he stands up to tender his resignation and the deacons accept it.

And they...

Oh, I saw where that was going, man.

And the deacons accept it. And so he leaves, but the problem is half the church walks out with him at the end of the service. And then was birthed New Beginnings Church the following Sunday. And so, I mean, really what I think it comes down to is a lot of pastors like to blame the deacons, but it's just really, it's really, it's just a non-biblical in polity.

That's what it is.

You lost your there.

Yeah, you got a non-biblical.

It's just a non-biblical understanding and practice of church government or polity.

Yeah.

So, deacons get... Deacons or pastors at times get the blame, but really that's what it's about.

Yeah, polity is a fun word, and I doubt it needs to be explained, but just in case, it just means the way the church is governed.

Is governed, yeah.

We're not mispronouncing policy. Polity is actually, it's the way the church is arranged in its governance.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I was thinking about this as well. As we started this series, and I'll throw this out there to you, but just in a positive light, like the Lord Jesus loves his church so much, and deacons, pastors as well, both offices, two offices in the church, but pastors and deacons are really a beautiful gift to God's church.

And just like we shouldn't make fun of the role of elders, we shouldn't make fun of the role of deacons. It's sad that both, and I agree with you, brother, like I wanna be clear about something, like I do not look around Baptist churches and say, you know what the problem is?

The only problem is these deacons.

Yeah, yeah, no, no.

There's a mixed bag, and a lot of Baptist churches, pastors, deacons, honestly, probably there are some unconverted pastors, certainly there are some unconverted deacons, and then unconverted church members, and it just makes an absolute mess.

And what we wanna do is take the scriptures and say, okay, Lord, we're gonna open up this book. We want you to teach us what it has to say about how your church is, because you've got the church's best interest at heart.

So how is it that you want the church to be structured?

Right, right.

Amen, that's what it's about.

Talk to me about deacons in the positive light, like what are they supposed to even be?

Yeah, yeah. Well, first, let me ask you this. Let me ask you a question with a question. Because there's some churches out there, some churches that I love, that they don't really view deacons as a office within the church, as a official role and function within the church.

It's basically like they'll see anyone who serves, like if you've got somebody who makes coffee every Sunday morning, I was like, oh, well, they're the deacon of coffee or deacon of hospitality. It's not an official role, it's just something that they do.

So it's kind of like a informal view of deacon. I hold to deacons being a formal office within the church or a formal position within the church, but I'm assuming that's what you are thinking.

About that.

So basically, I'll just tell you where I'm at. I take the 1689 Second Lent Baptist Confession, I confess that without reservation. I mean, now look, there may be some wording here or there that you're like, hey, we could word it better, but in the general, I hold to the 1689.

Now our church, I think we've talked to this before, the membership of our church is not required to be full subscribers because I think that's actually anti to the whole confession. Because anyway, that's a different thing.

But so I'm saying that because it's chapter 26, right? That talks about the offices. And so, but of course, to reiterate, neither one of us take the confession and say, well, we believe this because of confession.

No, we believe it because of the Bible. The confession just articulates what we believe the scriptures are teaching. And so I think that's good brother about, because the word deacon, the idea of service, and there is a sense, and I made this point, the chief deacon, the quintessential deacon of the church is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He has served the church.

And in his life, in his death, his burial, his resurrection. So in that sense, all of us should be serving the church. And the brother or sister who is making coffee, I'm not gonna call him a deacon, and I hold the position too, it's a male only office, but hey, keep making the coffee, amen.

But it doesn't mean that you're in the office of deacon. And for me, one of the things, so we've talked about all these things like, what are offices in the church? Well, for me, a pretty easy rule is, is there anywhere in the Bible that gives the qualifications for this office?

Yeah, bingo.

Yes, so if you wanna say like, well, I'm in the office of finance committee chairman. Well, I'm not saying you can't have a finance committee chairman, but if you do, it's extra biblical, not unbiblical per se, but it certainly, you have the light of nature to organize some things like that, but it's not an office, you're not an officer in the church.

Anyway, I'm rambling there, was anything you wanna say there?

No, that's perfect. I just think it's an important thing to note because in part of our zeal for, and appreciation for the office of deacon, I wanna defend that it's an actual office. I wanna defend that that's part of its importance, that's part of God's design for it, that amen, it's an actual office with qualifications, like you see, pastoral qualifications.

And in a similar way to a pastor though, it's like we want our people to be, we want our people to preach in a certain extent with, but that doesn't mean that they're all preachers.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, we want our people to serve, but we want them to be deacons with a lowercase d, if you will, we don't want a church full of servants, but then there's a formal capital D deacon that's a particular office, particular qualifications, particular responsibilities and things like that.

But going back to your question is what do they do? Why are they good? Well, we see, I agree with you in Acts chapter six, that I like the word proto-deacons there. And it matches up with where the church is at that part, at that point in the New Testament is that it's being formed.

And so we see in Acts chapter six is this proto-deacon.

A real time, it's like amazing. The Lord puts us right there and we can just watch it happening in real time.

Right, right.

And it's kind of the incubator of the church, if you will, or the church is being formed. Well, then it makes sense that by the later time in the New Testament, in the apostolic ministry of the New Testament, that we see Paul writing to Titus and Timothy to set up pastors in every city in Crete.

To Titus for instance, or to Timothy, here's your qualifications for pastors and deacons as you're setting up these churches.

He mentions deacons to Philippi.

That's right. And so it makes sense that it's kind of like we've got this very rudimentary or basic form of what deacon, the office of deacon, it's kind of like you've got the origin story of the office of deacon, but you can't look at Acts chapter six and say, oh yeah, that's the full and complete deacon office.

It's like, well, I don't think you can look at Acts chapter six and say, well, that's a full and complete New Testament church either.

Well, you don't have the, for example, I mentioned this, you have, I would call it a New Testament church, but right, we're still working on some things. And for example, you don't have pastors. What you have is you have the apostles as proto elders.

Right, right.

So you have all that going on, but another argument I would say too is like, what does that little narrative there, like Luke could almost leave that out. He could, I know we're gonna get to Stephen and Philip in the Acts narrative, but why even have that narrative at all?

You could almost just leave it out and still get the point with Stephen and Philip, okay? Cause that's, we're moving on to those things in Acts chapter seven and Acts chapter eight. But I would just make an argument that that's the whole point that we pause there for just a second and say, hey, this is how this was set up because like you say, we're laying a foundation, you know, proto deacon, that's fine too, you know, but just laying this foundation here for this office.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. And what do we see them doing there? We see that, I mean, I don't blame them, 12 apostles and you got, you know, thousands of people coming to the Lord and joining the church in a day.

Yeah, you realize we need some assistance here.

Yeah.

And that to just jump ahead, to jump ahead, that's, if I'm gonna give just a very dense, clear communication or clear definition about what a deacon is, is a, I would call them pastoral assistance.

Yeah, I love that. That's probably offensive to some people that may be hearing this, maybe they're, you know, maybe, I don't know anybody that would listen to this that would be offended, but that's the more you study, that's, it's not, so some people, I was actually told this a long time ago in church in Southeast Arkansas, but the deacons saw themselves, they literally told the pastor, they saw themselves as the buttress between the pastor and the body, as like the idea, like if the pastor says something like, they've gotta be the voice of the people to the pastor, almost like functioning like as the Senate or something.

Right, right.

And that's not the function.

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's just not, that's just not in there, you know? Now, I think it's important that even in Acts chapter six, you see a congregational role.

Yeah.

Hey, you choose for yourself faithful men that are going to pick up a ball that we have dropped. That's what I, that's how I read Acts chapter six. It's not that the apostles didn't care about the Hellenite widows.

Well, here, I'll give you an example that you're on to something there, is the people, when Moses leads the people out of Egypt, they grumble and they're rebuked, you know, for their grumble. But here the people grumble and it's not, the apostles don't stand up and say, we rebuke you.

Instead, the apostles, almost like you say, they're like, oh, and did you know that, yeah, I'm sure you knew this already, but just in the study, in Acts six, the only time the whole, in all of Luke's writing in Acts, the only time he uses the phrase, the 12, is right there in Acts six.

And I think, I think the point, not to read too much into that, but I think the point is, hey, this is a unified apostolic decision as we're under the authority of the apostles in the sense of the scriptures, you know?

But this isn't just like, you know, John didn't just have this idea or Peter or Matthias or, you know, Billy Don from back in the back, you know, it's like these 12 came together and said, okay, this is what we're gonna do.

That's right, yeah. And I think it's because it was so important, the, it was so important what the, what the six in Acts chapter six needed to do, the proto-deacons needed to do is because that was a real problem.

It wasn't just that some people weren't getting the food, it was becoming a, it was becoming a problem of unity within the church.

Yeah.

Of a perceived, of a perceived, of a perceived partiality. Hey, you're, wait, this, this group of believers is favoring the Hebrew widows over and against the Hellenistic widows. It's like, this is a major issue, especially in that day in the church.

And so this wasn't a, people, so I've heard some people demean the office of deacons, be like, oh, they're just supposed to be table waiters.

Yeah.

Misunderstanding what's going on here in Acts chapter six. It was like, no, they're ministers of mercy and they're ministers of peace within the church because they're making sure that, that the whole church is being cared for, not just some.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's good, brother.

I think that you go back to this idea of pastoral assistant and that may come across, it could sound demeaning, but it shouldn't be because the whole point here is in the service of the church. You're protecting the ministry of the word.

Now, I don't like using the term gospel issue because it's just everybody, everything's a gospel issue, but you hit on something so right, that's like the, if the table waiting, if the daily distribution of the food is favoring the Hebrew speaking Jews over the Greek speaking Jews, that's a problem.

And so, and I think the apostles, obviously, I think they recognize that and they say, look, this is how we're going to handle that problem. And even, you know, many commentators talk about how the seven deacons chosen were Greek, were, they're all Greek names, you know?

So it's, it's just kind of, it's interesting, all that dynamics, interesting, but the point is that it's not that the elders, and so let me encourage elders with this too, like, it's not that like, you should look at deacon ministry as beneath you.

No.

And in fact, there are many times that elders will do quote unquote, deacon sort of things, and you should to be a good pastor. I mean, you know, if you're, if you're just like, look, I'm not going to, oh, you know, I'm not gonna, the toilets clogged, that's beneath me.

You know, that's, that's not the heart of an elder, but the whole idea, I'm gonna give you an analogy just saying, but the whole idea is that the deacons are there to make sure that elders are able to give the time necessary to the ministry of the word and prayer.

That's right.

There has to be a, so you're not, you're not above deacon ministry. As an elder, it's just that there has to be priority.

The priority of what a pastor must be doing, what a pastor can't give up, ministry, the word and prayer.

So I'll give you this analogy and see what you think about it. I heard this and I've adapted a little bit, but, you know, let's suppose that tomorrow you have to, you have to have some sort of major surgery.

And so it's like, what do you want the surgeon doing today? Do you want someone calling him and saying, hey, look, the lot bill needs to be paid. Do you want someone calling him and saying, hey, look, the restroom down the hall, it's out of order, we need you to fix it.

Do you want him saying, hey, do you want someone call him and say, hey, look, we've got three complaint letters to the hospital, we need to, no, if you're gonna have surgery, this is what you want him to do.

You want, hey, y 'all leave this guy alone and let him prepare, let him study his notes, let him look at my files, let him go to bed on time, let this man have everything, all that he needs because I want him 100 on taking care of me because it's serious stuff.

Okay, well, of course, the analogy of hope lands home. Elders are responsible to take care of our souls.

Right.

And so what do, you're gonna have these things come up in church life. Well, who is going to be, administrate these things, a resolution towards these issues? Well, it's gonna be, anyway, what do you think about that?

Deacons as Pastoral Assistance and Ministers of Mercy

Yeah, I love that analogy. I just want to take it a step further. It's like, you know, the way we function at our church, our deacons are in most of our meetings as pastors, they are our most trusted advisors in the church.

I think you would, I would hope we could talk to any of them and they would say, no, we don't feel like our role is demeaned, but it's elevated. Like, I would hope that none of them are offended by the term pastoral assistance.

It's like, if you think of all of that entails and we have them handle a lot of things that fit within that Acts chapter six example, like when it comes to benevolence ministry and stuff like that, we get reports on it, but that's there, that's delegated to them.

Yeah.

And we want to know what's going on with that, which families have needs and things like that, but we're not having to make a benevolence decision. You know, so-and-so has this financial need. How much benevolence are we going to give toward that?

We're taken out of that decision-making progress because we took ourselves out of it. We said, deacons, we think you're gifted and suited for that ministry. Y 'all do that and just keep us in, y 'all do that and just keep us in the loop.

So that's what I mean by pastoral assistance. I'm not trying to demean what they do. People may not, I think it's just what people think of when they hear that word. No, it's actually that going back to church government, you know, we're congregational as well, in the sense that congregation has the most direct input when it comes to who the church's pastors and deacons are.

We can't, as a pastor, we can't assign another pastor or deacon to the church. The church has to call and affirm that man to serve in either of those offices. So we can't impose a leader on the church that they do not want, on the congregation that they do not want, first and foremost.

The second area where the church gives the most direct input is in the annual budget. And outside of that, the pastors and deacons largely run everything in our church. There's congregational reports and updates and things, but we're not, we don't have a monthly business meeting making a lot of decisions.

That's just how we've chosen to operate and it's worked for us so far. I say all that to say it goes back to your, it goes back to the government of your church. What is it? You know, we're congregational in that sense, but, so I say all that to preface what I'm about to say.

Kind of in a similar way of the home where the husband is responsible for everything. Now, that doesn't mean the husband should do everything or that the husband should make every decision, but if the home is going in a bad direction, for instance, that's on the husband.

He's the head of the household. I have the same view when it comes to the church as the pastors. The pastors are responsible for everything. The pastors are responsible for the budget. The pastors are responsible for if the toilets are working.

The pastors are responsible for the whole local church and all that goes on there, but we would be foolish to try to do it all. And if the bathrooms aren't working one Sunday morning, we don't get to say before the preface, the Sunday morning sermon and say, oh, by the way, that's Deacon so-and-so's fault.

Take all complaints to him, you know? No, it's like, hey, we're gonna figure this out and we're gonna take on responsibility for whatever's going on in the church. I just think that's good leadership.

I think that's biblical. I don't think that that makes pastors tyrants in the church in the sense that they've, oh, now they've got too much power. No, there's still accountability and things like that.

I think it's just good biblical understanding.

And leadership.

And I think that that's what we see in Acts 6, going back to that once again. The apostles owned the issue and what was going on and they say he was gonna be the solution to it. They delegated that to these other men to oversee.

And I don't think that in prioritizing the ministry of the word and prayer, they're like, we don't care about that anymore. That's y 'all's thing. We don't wanna hear about it anymore. It's like, no, they're invested in that.

That's why they came up with the idea for the church to call these seven men to be able to meet that need. And I still think it's something that they oversaw, but it's not something that they had to be burdened by.

And so, go ahead.

Well, no. So just to make your case, biblically like in Philippians 1, 1, the pastors there called to all the saints of Christ, Jesus at Philippi with the overseers.

Overseers.

That's right, yeah.

And the word has the connotation of like a watcher, like someone who's up looking down or whatever. And so the idea is, yes, so just to be clear, Danny didn't say this, but just to make our polity clear, like the husband's the head of the wife.

The pastor is not the head of the church. Christ is the head of the church. But the pastor is the overseer. And by the way, in the New Testament, isn't it interesting how this happens? Most Baptist churches believe in a plurality of deacons because it's biblical.

And amen, I affirm that. But they don't believe in a plurality of, or a lot of them, you know, like, wait, what's that? Well, it's like, well, hold on. In the New Testament, it's both. It's plurality of deacons, plurality of elders, but these God-called men, and I would argue that both are God-called.

It's urgent.

We're not gonna be able to get all this, but there's an internal call, as it were, of God calling a man. Now, I'm not talking about like, you know, you're out on this journey and gotten to a trance. I'm not talking about that.

I'm just talking about like, there should be a desire to be a, to serve either as an overseer or as a deacon. And then there's an external, which is necessary. So you can't just say, God called me as a deacon.

Therefore, I'm a deacon of this church. Like, no, there must be an external affirmation of the body. But the point that I'm trying to make is the overseer, there is a responsibility that God has called elders to that he has not called anyone else in the church, that no one else in the church is gonna answer in the same way that elders are.

So elders, you need to know that. Like, if there's a situation in the Sunday school classroom, if there's a situation in a flooding issue in the bathroom, like, yes, at the end of the day, yes. But deacons function in that role of being able to handle those things, the physical aspects, if you will.

And I was gonna say this. My mind is just scattered here. But most of the deacons that I've been acquainted with in the churches I've been acquainted with, it's been this idea of like, you ask us permission.

Right, right.

Not counsel. So if you're an elder and you're like, I don't need to counsel the deacons, well, I think that you're not being wise.