143: The Office of Deacon

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, 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. Inflation's 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.

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.

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 a path, 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? 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 this. 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, where 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 then it squashes, basically it squashes any doubt of my security as the pastor of the church over 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, 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, 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, just means the way the church is governed.

You know, we're not mispronouncing policy. Polity is actually, it's the way the church is arranged in its governance, so.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I was thinking about this 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 want to 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 want to do is take the scriptures and say, okay, Lord, we're going to 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, that 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'll say, 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, 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 work 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, 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.

You know, 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, you know.

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, you know, which, what are offices in the church?

What 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 know, 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 an 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 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, right?

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 questions, 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, you know, 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, where 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. 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, 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, 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 12th is right there in Acts six.

And 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, it was so important 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 problem of unity within the church.

Yeah. Of a perceived partiality.

Hey, you're, wait, 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.

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 the whole church is being cared for, not just some.

Yeah, yeah, 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, 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 gonna handle that problem.

And even many commentators talk about how the seven deacons chosen were Greek, they're all

Greek names. So 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.

It's not that 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, if you're just like, look, I'm not going to, oh, I'm not gonna, the toilet's clogged, that's beneath me.

That's not the heart of an elder. But the whole idea, I'm gonna give you an analogy in just a second, 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 product. So 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 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 it.

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.

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? Yeah, I love that analogy.

I just wanna take it a step further. It's like, the way we function at our church, our deacons are in most of our meetings as pastors, they are most trusted advisors in the church.

I think you would, I would hope we could talk to any of them. 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.

And we wanna 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.

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 shoot it 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? 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.

No, it's like, hey, we're gonna figure this out and result, 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 chapter six, going back to that once again. The apostles owned the issue and what was going on.

And they say, here's 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 are called to all the saints of Christ. She is for 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, the husband's the head of the wife.

The pastor's 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, it's funny, 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, you know, 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 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. 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, like, so if you're an elder and you're like, I don't need the counsel of the deacons, well, I think that you're not being wise.

Right, right. But a lot of times it's been like, hey, it's almost like you're groveling, like, hey, is it okay with you guys if we do this?

And that is not the New Testament function. Right, yeah. The idea -

Again, it just goes back to a misunderstanding of the church government, how it's set up, what are deacons, what is the office of deacon?

But I think the reason why churches, one, tradition's a sticky thing.

And we like especially being, well,

I won't go into that, but yeah, tradition's a sticky thing. And look,

I love, you know, I'm a Baptist congregational guy.

Yeah. But congregationalism can be taken too far where it's just, you know, it becomes a kind of pure democracy.

Yeah, yeah. And that's not God's design either within a church. And so it's just basically, it's just putting, but this is one of the hardest ways to change or develop within a church when it's not, and I have zero experience in that because our church was a church plant.

I didn't plant it, but I came at this point kind of early on. And so there wasn't things to redo within the church, but there were things to develop and people still have those mindsets of just what they think the church is and how it should function.

And so it's not like we had to reform anything in our church, but you're still having to work through preconceptions about how the church, what the roles of the church are, how it functions, offices of the church, things like that.

And a hurdle to it is, you know, when people say a plurality of pastors, they think, well, why would we pay another guy to do everything that we're already paying somebody to do?

And that's a difficult thing as well. When you say it's like, no, you're not,

I'm not saying that we need four Quattro Nelsons. That's not what a plurality of pastors is.

So it's just having to reshape people's understanding of an idea of what a pastor, who a pastor is and what he does as well.

That's a difficult, you know, that's just a difficult thing that takes time and teaching and time, the word and the

Holy Spirit. Yeah, let's say too, you know, well,

I've mentioned this already earlier in the episode, but some of the reason that deacons are, you have the stereotypical deacons.

I thought deacons were those who didn't like the pastor, as my son said. The reason that that is a thing in some places is because of poor eldership.

And especially, so here's what happens. When pastors come in and they stay at a church for two years and then they just bounce.

Now, I'm not saying that's always a problem all the time. I'm just giving an example, but let's just take a church in the last 50 years.

And this is not uncommon at all in churches. Let's say in the last 50 years, you go through, you have this pastor came in for two years, this one for a year and a half, this one stayed for five, this one came in for four, the next one for eight, that's great.

Next one for two, you know what I'm saying? And you just have these, and it's just a revolving door.

Well, then who is the church gonna look to is those men that are steadfast.

Yeah, providing consistent, faithful leadership. You're gonna look to the, yeah, you're gonna look, this guy's gonna be gone.

And if I have to have a position of side with this guy or side with these guys who I've known all my life and also they're gonna be here when he's gone,

I mean, it's really hard. And that's why you wind up with church splits and all that. So first and foremost is if you're listening to this, you're a pastor thing, we've got to take ownership.

And then repentance where repentance is necessary, but also just understand that background and some of the, especially when you talk about revitalization in a church or reformation or whatever, you have to understand that that's some baggage.

Maybe it's not even your fault. I mean, it's not your fault if you're new, but it is some baggage that your office has caused.

And so you have to think through that and do your due diligence. And then just open the scriptures.

I think with deacons, I mean, if you're most time you're having deacons meetings, probably anyway, turn some of that into let's think through what deacons are to be, because I wanna go back to again, like the church is so beautiful.

It's a beautiful institution. And the Lord Jesus is so wise. Like our triune

God is so wise in the way that he's orchestrated the church, the way that he's designed the church to function.

And when we seek to align it, it's not magic. It's not like, well, I want you to start doing this and there'll be no problems.

I mean, no, there's constantly problems in the New Testament churches. There's gonna be problems in our churches.

But when we submit ourselves to the head of the church, then we have a beautiful design in what he has called the church to be.

Yeah, amen, amen. And I would say this, at the end of Acts six, that little section there,

Acts six, one through seven, it's interesting, you have the church multiplying, then you have this conflict.

And then Luke closes that section when the conflict's resolved, what happens in verse seven? They're multiplying again.

Yeah, yeah. And there's something to be said about a healthy church policy. It's not a guarantee. If we just have a healthy church policy, then we're gonna see 100 baptisms this year.

That's not the guarantee. Right, right. It is a smooth functioning organism, as it were, that the disciples there in your church are gonna mature.

And then as the years go by, you're going to be seeing conversions and such. You're not gonna be so,

I mean, isn't it sad, brother, that how many people have been turned off by the church or even left the church because of these horrible conflicts?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, that's exactly right. And there's always gonna be conflict in church.

There's just always, I'm not saying that every church is always in the state of conflict, but it's unavoidable.

That there's, there's conflicts unavoidable anywhere. And, but, but God in His, in His headship and shepherding of the church has given us everything we need to work through those conflicts and toward peace and unity by, by and underneath the grace and mercy of Christ.

So that's, you know, that's the thing. It is sad how many people have been disenchanted with the church because of conflicts.

But going back to something that we want to highlight is that, that the role of deacon in the church,

God has not given it to be a source of conflict within church, like, like there've been so many experiences of.

But actually to be, in Acts chapter six, the balm of, a balm of, and that's not

B -O -M -B, that's B -A -L -M, of, of unity within the church.

And blessing within the church and, and, you know, healing of those conflicts that were developing at that time.

It's like, you know, I, they probably won't listen to this, but man, we are so,

I'm so thankful for our deacons. They're the best men. And, you know, we wouldn't be not just as effective, but, you know, especially over the past few years,

I really don't think we as pastors would have survived ministry without them.

Yeah. It's like, that's who, that's, you know, that's who you want as deacons. You know, somebody that you can think of in that sense.

It's like, hey, if I'm going to battle, not against church members, but if we're going to battle against the world, the flesh and the devil,

I want these men with me. It's like, if I've just got to get, take a short list of men with me, you know, the deacons are going to be on that short list.

And, and they not, they not only just need to be good at the, we can think of like physical administrative stuff.

Like one of our deacons was a CPA and he helps us oversee the budget, manage numbers and all that sort of stuff that quite frankly, none of the pastors are precisely gifted at.

We're responsible, but we're not good at crunching numbers and be able to do that sort of thing.

He's an incredibly spiritually minded man. So he's not just a numbers guy.

No, he's filled with the spirit. They have to be, by the way. They have to be. They've got to be. That's where I was going.

They've got to be filled by the spirit. They can't just be good. Oh, this guy's a good CEO of this business in town.

He's going to be able to help us oversee the church in that way. Let's get him as a deacon.

He's a good handyman, you know. He's a good handyman. Let's make him a deacon, which those guys might make good deacons because of the gifts and benefits to the church.

But even more important than their handyman -ness, even more important than their organizational management, they better have spirit filled.

They've got to have spirit filled prayers where not just the pastors, but the church as a whole looks at them and says, no, that's a spirit filled godly man.

And he's good at helping the church with our budget. Yeah. It can't just be they're really good at marketing or whatever it is.

Let's get them on leadership so they can, you know, put those gifts to work. I'm not the first one that has said this, but in God's economy, character is more important than gifting.

And so the idea is like, now I don't want to have to choose between this, but if I do have to choose between the guy that can't hammer a nail, but he is a godly man full of the spirit.

And the guy that is like, he could take a toothpick and a roll of toilet paper and build a fellowship hall.

Yes. But, you know, he's not full of spirit.

He's not godly. He's not pursuing Christ, not in his Bible, you know? Yeah. Well, then

I'm going to have to, not going to, you know, I'm going to choose the other guy because character. Some of these other skills might come along, but character is the key.

Right. And it's not that the guy couldn't still build the fellowship hall.

Yeah. He just can't serve in the office of deacon or he shouldn't serve in the office of deacon.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and by the way, too, this is going to come up soon in a sermon, but these character qualities of deacons in 1

Timothy 3 is, it's not something that you look at your whole church and you'd be like, okay, well, none of the rest of you have to worry about these.

Only the deacons have to. It's like, no, no. It's similar to the pastoral qualifications. They overlap except for teaching.

And so it's like, you don't look at the church, but like, okay, we want godly pastors and deacons, but you church members do it, you know, just live like the world, you know?

So, but you want exemplary men and we got to wrap up, but I was just going to say, like,

I know there's controversy about, can women be deacons, all that? But I think the 1 Timothy 3 is pretty clear about husband of one wives, act six, they're men, but then a third argument

I'd say is all that you just laid out. In the working of pastors and deacons, they have to work so closely together.

There has to be some, there's going to have to be time we take trips together or you and a deacon go somewhere or in the meetings and all that.

And it's just like, so even, so I think it's biblically and functionally and practically that it's the office of, it's qualified men are called to the office of deacon.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, one more thing on just how our church has developed in its deacon ministry over the past decade or so is, for a while, so the way things worked out in our church is that we had a plurality of pastors before we ever had a deacon.

Or maybe it happened at the same, maybe it happened at the same time. No, no, I take that back.

We had one pastor and one deacon and then we added two pastors.

And we were kind of just very reserved, very conservative about adding more deacons for a while because of all these horror stories and preconceived notions and that sort of stuff that we started talking about.

We finally quit being wimps and got over that. And now it's changed in our church.

So for a while, we had just very few deacons. We started being pastors and seeing deacons as this great blessing of which

I've been talking about. And so now here's something important that I think is important for churches and really hopefully an encouragement for you is in the long run,

I think it's very healthy for a church to have, and this is piggybacking off of your idea of the qualifications of pastor and deacon.

This isn't just only those two offices should be striving toward these characteristics or qualities in the church.

But no, this is really an example for all the church to strive after, all individuals in the church to strive after.

Now the deacon ministry in the church is something that's promoted, we're gonna have as few deacons as possible, but now it's something that we think it's, how do

I phrase this? Now it's an attainable office for many men.

It's not like this super exclusive thing the office for deacon is.

It's not the super exclusive thing, like, oh, there's no way I'll be able to attain to that.

Now it is a high standard, but we think it's more healthy at this point that your most faithful, well,

I don't know how to phrase it, but it's just that your most faithful, trusted men who are serving faithfully in the church, well, it's realistically attainable for them to hold that office.

It's not something that's super exclusive like the pastoral office is.

The pastoral office is much more exclusive because you've got, it's just a different role.

You've gotta have the extra qualification of teaching ability and things like that.

Where before, let me just, I guess is a good way of saying it is that before we had, let's say five or six pastors and like two deacons.

Well, now we've got five pastors and six deacons now, and we're looking to add more deacons.

So now we not only feel more comfortable having more deacons, but now we see the benefit of having more deacons.

And so it's a more, now it's more of like a challenge for men in the church to aspire to the office of deacon rather than being reserved about it and saying, hey, we don't want too many of these guys aspiring to the office of deacon.

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. And what we're doing at our church is, I addressed it at the

NLJU Sunday morning was like, you go to the doctor and you have, everything's healthy, but it's like, hey, you need to correct this.

You need to fix this. And if you'll fix this, things will be better. And if you leave it unattended, then in 20 years, you're gonna have a major problem.

And it's kind of like, that's where we're at as a church. Things are well, we're healthy, but we do have an issue.

We don't have deacons and it does need to be addressed. Now we're not gonna fix it tomorrow. We're gonna lay the groundwork and lay the foundation.

And hopefully we're thinking it's January when we record this, maybe by the end of this year, or maybe into next year, but at some point we wanna fix it, but we wanna, it has to be fixed the right way.

We're not just gonna go back to a traditional Baptist understanding of deacons.

We want to understand the biblical role of deacons.

So. Amen. There's so much more that we could talk about, but I was just gonna give you a couple of minutes.

If you wanted to, you don't have to do this. I can, in fact, I can even cut this off if you don't wanna talk about this, but I was just gonna give you opportunity to, if you wanted to update anything about your family and just how folks can be praying for you.

And some folks may not know, but you can just give a quick update about how things are going and how we can be praying for you.

Yeah, thanks for that, brother. I know I'm eager to, I'm always eager to talk about it. Yeah, last year we enjoyed the birth of our third child, a little

Opal baby girl in April of last year.

And unfortunately, she's a true joy, but unfortunately she was born with a rare genetic condition called a

CARDI syndrome. And that's a pretty severe, yeah, pretty severe condition.

She's got bad seizures from several brain malformations, developmental delays, a bunch of stuff going on with her.

The Lord's been incredibly faithful. We've only experienced the grace of God throughout this whole thing.

We're not, yeah, I just wanna, yeah, every time

I talk about it, I just want everybody to know how good the Lord is in and through it. We're, basically we're, for her treatment, we, she's on medications, but we're also seeing a specialist in Austin, Lord willing, three to four times a year.

And we've seen some good progress with the treatments that she's received down there.

And so we're gonna keep doing that and see what the

Lord does in and through her life. The problem is that those treatments are very expensive.

Insurance does not cover them. And I'm not just meaning our insurance, but insurance in general does not cover them.

And so we're always fundraising or looking for ways to provide extra income to be able to support those treatments.

And so that's what we're working on.

And that's what, yeah, that's what it's about. But we're very optimistic. And this is something that she'll always have struggles with.

She'll be a lifelong dependent, lifelong dependent child. This is something that she'll never be cured of or get over, but the

Lord showed her much grace and she's had improvements in many areas right now. The main ones, decrease in seizures and increase in head control and things like that, as we're seeing her develop.

And so we're just praising the Lord. We're thankful for that. We're gonna see what, we're eager to see what he does.

I was telling Ariel, you know, in many ways we just kind of got through 2025 with everything going on, but we're eager and we feel like 2026 is, we're looking forward to it in like kind of an adventurous sense.

So we can't wait to see what the Lord has and does for us in 2026.

And already, you know, we're thankful for what he's done in our souls through this trial as he's grown us in love for Christ, grown us in understanding the sufficiency of Christ, grown us in love for one another, my wife and I.

Yeah, he's already done so much through Opal's, you know, little life. And so we're just honestly eager to see, eager to see what he has for us in 2026.

But yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity to say that. If anybody hears this, we would greatly appreciate your prayers.

Amen, is there a way for them to contact you or anything? I mean,

I've shared my email and I can just share my email if you prefer and they reach out to me, I can send them to you.

Or is there another avenue that they can contact you if they so would like to do that?

Yeah, if somebody wants to support us financially, they can sign up for,

I can send you a link to it. They can sign up for a, we have a

Give Send Go that I just switched over from GoFundMe because GoFundMe was doing some shady stuff.

Not with us, but with some other accounts that nothing affected us, but I just wanted to switch platforms to a better platform.

That's a good way to follow updates and things. I've just switched that over and I'll be publishing updates and things there.

That's probably the best place to go to contact us or for updates right now.

And so I'll send you that link. Maybe you can post in the notes of this or something and yeah,

I'll be able to reach people there. Okay, yeah, sounds good. You can also contact me at QuatroNelson at gmail .com

about anything. If you so desired, I'm reserving the right not to get back with you, but C -U -A -T -R -O -N -E -L -S -O -N at gmail .com.

I mean, look, if you, dude, yeah, anyway, yeah. If you have an inheritance that you need me to send $500 so I can get a million dollars,

I'm not, I will not be replying to that email. You know, so brother, thank you.

Love you, love your family. The guys and girls listening to this hadn't seen that like In -N -Out,

Margo, and then I saw Daniel have been around you as you've done this podcast, but you've pressed through.

I mean, you've locked in on your attention as you're a true pro dad now, so.

Yeah, man, they brought me breakfast and everything. That's great, brother, that's great. Well, I appreciate you, man.

I'm looking forward to having on you again. I enjoy these times together. I hope this has benefited somebody.

Real quick, I was gonna do this earlier. I have one resource I'll throw out. Do you have any, if somebody's like, well,

I wanna know about polity better or maybe deacons particularly, do you have any resources you'd throw out there?

The most beneficial one for me, I never know how to say his name, but Alexander Strock or Strauss, something like that.

The unique thing about him though is that he did two books on deacons and he changed his view on deacons between the first and the second.

It benefited me to read both, but where I'm not helpful is

I don't even remember which one is which or which title. But it's

S -T -R -A -U -C -H, I think. Right, yeah, on deacons.

And the former one might not even be in print anymore, but it really benefited me to read both to see he kind of argued with himself in a way.

Yeah. And then that just helped me solidify what I thought was in the scriptures, yeah.

John Owen chapter 16, or chapter 16, book 16th volume in his works addresses deacons.

I know Beaky in his systematic theology addresses deacons, but one place that, or one resource, kind of underrated resource that probably some people hadn't even heard about, but Al Martin's Pastoral Theology.

It's like a three volume. And look, you better put on your big boy pants and your steel -toed boots if you're an elder and you read that because he doesn't pull any punches, but it's good, it's helpful.

But he does have, in the third volume, some very helpful comments about deacons that I think it's good too.

So anyway, there's stuff out there. I hope that our preaching, it's kind of a series within a series here, will be helpful for years to come for our church as we navigate like what, you know, because in one sense, it's kind of exciting.

It's an issue that needs to be addressed. It's also exciting. We're all gonna be on the same page. We've just got to lay that groundwork and let the

Lord lead through his word. So I'm encouraged by that. Amen. Well, thank you guys for joining us on this episode of The Real Church Podcast.

And I hope you'll tune in next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing, this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poimos, the masterpiece of God.