A Deacon on a Deacon’s Reward
By John Ingold
From January 2005 to January 2008, I was blessed to serve as “deacon of bookstall” at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.
Blessed to serve is a phrase that rolls off the tongue readily enough, though often with less consideration than it deserves. I must have used the phrase dozens of times while I was a deacon, but it was not until after my term that I actively counted the many ways God had rewarded my service.
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Moving from a Deacon-Led to an Elder-Led Church
By Phil Newton
In one of my early pastorates, two deacons did something unusual: they actually shepherded the congregation. Apart from those two men, the church had a typical mid-twentieth-century Baptist polity: eight deacons served as a board of directors, and the congregation as a whole voted on virtually every decision affecting church life at monthly business meetings. The deacons generally focused on property, finances, and occasional squabbles.
ELDERS BY ANY OTHER NAME?
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Do We Need To Use the Titles “Elder” and “Deacon”?
By
Do we need to use the titles “elder” and “deacon”? While the titles “elder” and “deacon” are not essential to the church’s ministry, there are several good reasons why churches should use these biblical titles.
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The Biblical Qualifications and Responsibilities of Deacons
Who should be a deacon? What does the Bible say deacons should do?
THE TWO BIBLICAL OFFICES: ELDERS AND DEACONS
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Deacons: Shock-Absorbers and Servants
By Jamie Dunlop
The position was designed to alleviate tension in the church, but the office of deacon sure seems to provoke remarkable controversy. Elders butt heads with deacons over decision-making authority. Deacons are accused of being “turfy.” Staff treat deacons as irrelevant. And so on.
Is there a way to alleviate these unfortunate realities in your church? Yes. What’s needed is a positive, theological definition of what it means to be a deacon.
WHAT IS A DEACON?
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A Pastors' and Theologians' Forum on Selecting Elders
A Pastors’ and Theologians’ Forum:
What lessons have you learned the hard way in selecting elders?
Answers from
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An Elders' Forum
We asked all the non-staff elders of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, "Thinking back to when you first became an elder, what initial lesson(s) most stand out in equipping you to elder well?" Here are their answers.
Randy Alles (Officer, U.S. Marine Corps)
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The first steps in changing church leadership structure
To begin with, before seeking to make changes in the leadership structure of your church, make sure that you are committed to see the process through to the end. Brief pastorates only confuse issues. Changes in the leadership structure require devotion to the church and willingness to endure whatever unsettling times might follow. Few churches will follow a pastor’s lead unless they trust him as a man of God. Here is the outline that I found to be workable in my setting.
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Class VIII: Church Leadership
By Jamie Dunlop
Hebrews 13:17 is a hard word for Christians today. "Obey your leaders and submit to them," it says, "for they keep watch over your souls, as men who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you."
Obey. Submit. Those are strong words, particularly in our egalitarian, individualistic culture.
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Electing Elders
In his classic 1832 work, The Ruling Elder, Samuel Miller penned the following: "The design of appointing persons to the office of Ruling Elder is not to pay them a compliment; not to give them an opportunity of figuring as speakers in judicatories; not to create the pageants of ecclesiastical ceremony; but to secure able, faithful and truly devoted counselors and rulers of the Church—to obtain wise and efficient guides, who shall not only go along with the flock in their journey heavenward, but go before them in everything that pertains to Christian duty."[1]
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