Episode 53: On Deacons
Who are deacons, what do they do and why do churches have them? Dive into all this and more with Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever on Pastors Talk as they discuss the office of deacons. They explain what the Bible says about deacons, including how they serve the church and who is qualified to become a deacon. Throughout their conversation, they discourage churches from neglecting the office of deacons and exhort them to celebrate this biblical role.
- What the Bible Says about Deacons
- The Roles of a Deacon
- What is a Task-Specific Deacon?
- The Question of Female Deacons
- Why Deacons are Vital to the Church
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
On Deacons
Jonathan Leeman
I’m Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever
He really is.
Jonathan Leeman
Who are you?
Mark Dever
I’m Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman
Do you plan your little interruptions beforehand? They’re all spontaneous?
Mark Dever
No, they’re spontaneous gifts.
Jonathan Leeman
Yes, they are gifts. And welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for building healthy churches.
Mark Dever
What if they’d like more information?
Jonathan Leeman
They should go to 9Marks.org.
Mark Dever
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman
How often are you honestly? Are you there much?
Mark Dever
I know I was there in the 90s once.
Jonathan Leeman
That’s what I recall.
Mark Dever
I don’t really do the online stuff much.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah.
Mark Dever
I hear—
Jonathan Leeman
But you’re a great tweeter.
Mark Dever
Thanks, man. I do those myself.
Jonathan Leeman
You hear—
Mark Dever
Except Alex Duke just grabbed my phone. I think he’s retweeting something, but that’s highly unusual.
Jonathan Leeman
He’s telling you—
Mark Dever
I assume you’re not doing mischief.
Jonathan Leeman
Go ahead.
Mark Dever
There…I heard that these podcasts are available in various places online, which I don’t understand.
Jonathan Leeman
I don’t either.
Mark Dever
Somebody was telling me this—
Jonathan Leeman
You can get it on the website and get on iTunes. You can do reviews on iTunes if you want. I don’t know where else you get them.
Mark Dever
Anyway.
Jonathan Leeman
That’s what I’ve heard.
Mark Dever
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman
Thanks for bringing that up.
Mark Dever
I wouldn’t know how to get a podcast if you wanted to pay me to do it.
What the Bible Says about Deacons
Jonathan Leeman
Here’s what I want to talk about today. Deacons. Are you a deacon?
Mark Dever
Yes. Goodness, yes.
Jonathan Leeman
Is Jesus a deacon?
Mark Dever
Yes.
Jonathan Leeman
Wait a second. I thought you were a pastor. I thought he was a savior.
Mark Dever
Yes.
Jonathan Leeman
Help me out.
Mark Dever
I’m going to Acts chapter 6, forgive me for thinking of myself as an apostle, I don’t think I’m an apostle, but I do think when they talk about what they’re doing…
Jonathan Leeman
Verse four.
Mark Dever
Yeah. We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word, it’s that very noun.
Jonathan Leeman
Diakonia.
Mark Dever
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
Right there, yeah.
Mark Dever
So yeah, I’m a deacon of the word.
Jonathan Leeman
And Jesus says he didn’t come to be served, but to serve, the word there is to deacon, right?
Mark Dever
That’s right, yep.
What a Deacon Does
Jonathan Leeman
Well what is a deacon?
Mark Dever
A servant.
Jonathan Leeman
Okay, generally it’s a servant.
Mark Dever
Now if you mean in terms of officers of the church—
Jonathan Leeman
Explain that.
Mark Dever
—there’s also officers of the church in 1st Timothy that Paul gives qualifications for, so that’s how we know it’s an office.
Jonathan Leeman
Okay, so generally, generically, it’s a servant.
Mark Dever
And that may or may not be the same thing we see in Acts 6. I think it is, but we can’t be entirely sure.
Where Do We See Deacons in the Bible?
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, sure. Outside their list of qualifications, where do we see deacons in the Bible as the office?
Mark Dever
Uncertain. They’re addressed at the beginning of some of Paul’s epistles.
Jonathan Leeman
Philippians, I think. It’s addressed to the elders and deacons.
Mark Dever
And then you also have the example in Romans 16, verse 1, where Phoebe is called Diakonia of the church. And that could just be servant, as the ESV translates it. Or it could be a deacon or deaconess, because it’s in the female.
Jonathan Leeman
What about Acts 6?
Mark Dever
I think those are deacons. I think that’s obviously where the ministry comes from, but because the apostles call themselves deacons as well, and because these exact duties are not lined out again, some people say you’re speculating when you link that up with the pastoral epistles, but I assume a kind of continuity in the New Testament, so it’s easy for me to make that kind of assumption.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, the words used three times in that passage. The word daily distribution, widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. The word distribution there is diakonia.
Mark Dever
So in the daily service.
Jonathan Leeman
That’s right. And then it says, when they say it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables, diakoneo, serve. And then the one you mentioned in verse four, the ministry of the word is the deaconing of the word.
So it’s kind of shot through that whole passage. Why is it a useful—we’re not sure that’s the actual office—why is it a useful passage for helping us understand what a deacon does?
Mark Dever
It shows such a clear distinction between the duties of the apostles, which they thought were so significant that they should not stop from doing.
Jonathan Leeman
Preaching and praying.
Mark Dever
And it also shows such a clear significance of the physical concerns and the equity concerns, the justice concerns, the spiritual unity concerns.
Jonathan Leeman
Justice concerns, why do you say that?
Mark Dever
Because it seems the distribution of the food was inequitable, not what one side needed when the other side seemed to be getting all they needed. There was no inherent reason why that should be the case.
So it seems that the concerns that were divided there, the spiritual and physical concerns, would be analogous to the division we see between those officers, one set of whom, the elders, are to be qualified by their aptitude to teach the word. And the other set of officers, the deacons, in first Timothy are not mentioned as needing to be apt to teach the word.
Jonathan Leeman
I was about to ask you, what do we learn from the qualifications? Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double -tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain, hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.
I could keep going, but the one thing we learn is that they’re not called to teach the way the elders are called to teach. Anything else we learn from that list of qualifications that’s helpful for us in understanding what a deacon is?
Mark Dever
Yeah, I think we shouldn’t take from that that the deacon should not teach the word. Philip in Acts 8 was not in sin as a deacon for evangelizing the Ethiopian government official.
Jonathan Leeman
Right.
Mark Dever
You know, that’s a great thing for deacon to do. And I think when you look at the deacons’ qualifications, all of them could be reproduced as things that scripture teaches as the people of God we’re to be like. So I think it’s an extremely mere kind of qualification Paul is laying out there.
The more exceptional qualifications—and most of those are reproduced with the elders—the more exceptional ones are of the elders, and that’s not a recent convert, which he doesn’t say about the deacons. And it’s apt to teach the word.
What Is the Office of Deacon For?
Jonathan Leeman
Okay, so we have these qualifications, one of which is not able to teach. We have this Act 6 proto moment. We have the word, which means servant.
Back in Acts 6, waiting on tables, bringing unity, doing justice. Summarize for us then, what is the office of deacon for? What should a deacon do?
Mark Dever
The deacon should serve the physical and fiscal needs of the church. It’s kind of number one.
Jonathan Leeman
Okay.
Mark Dever
In order to, number two, protect the unity of the church, thus the stress between the two different ethnicities among the widows in Acts 6.
Jonathan Leeman
The church was divided.
Mark Dever
And divided along a potentially difficult carnal divide, like Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Jonathan Leeman
Hebrew speaking, Greek speaking.
Mark Dever
And they should do that in order to support the elders in their uninterrupted allegiance to their task to pray and teach the word, the ministry of the word. So it’s this deaconing that takes things off the table of the deacons of the word. So the deacons of word can concentrate on
their work without this other very important work being neglected by the church.
Jonathan Leeman
Excellent. Okay, so three things, physical and fiscal care.
Mark Dever
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
Bring unity.
Mark Dever
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
Support the ministry of the word for the elders.
Mark Dever
Which I said very clearly in the little book that you chopped up and remade as the leadership book with the little basic series. What is it called? The one I did was Display of God’s Glory.
Jonathan Leeman
Understanding Church Leadership.
Mark Dever
It was those two addresses I gave years ago and we put together as a booklet.
Jonathan Leeman
Was there a ton of frustration in your voice?
Mark Dever
Yes. And I got that little three thing that I just gave you from Buddy Gray at Hunter Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. His buddy, the one I first heard say that, and I thought it was a brilliant little summary, and I think he’s right.
How Have Deacons Been Used Wrong?
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah. Excellent. How have churches gotten this wrong then? I mean, everything you just said seems really clear. There it is. I see it in Acts 6. How have churches gotten this wrong?
Mark Dever
You know, if we’re just thinking, you know, forgive me everybody else who listens, but if I just think of the average Southern Baptist church, which is what I’m going to be most familiar with. I think not so much the deaconing itself positively wrong fundamentally, though that I think has happened.
What happened I think was a neglect of the office of elder, which left a leadership vacuum, which was then filled by the office that was expressed in plurality in local churches, was the deacons. And I think the deacons together then ended up in a lot of Southern Baptist churches filling that leadership void that the absence of a plurality of elders left in the life of a local congregation.
Jonathan Leeman
So they began to act like elders.
Mark Dever
In part anyway, and certainly in giving leadership to the church. They might not have done it in a spiritually minded way as we might like. They may have thought just the paid preacher would be the elder in the church.
And then all the rest of us, we didn’t go to seminary, we’re just deacons. We’re just people who work at the gas station or the guy who manages the branch of the bank or something like that. I’m an accountant.
Jonathan Leeman
Hence you have the single pastor deacon model that Baptist Churches often…
Mark Dever
Yeah, that is so common.
Are Churches Underutilizing Deacons?
Jonathan Leeman
Okay, so you can see an error in that direction. Is there an error in underutilizing deacons? We have a robust plurality of elders.
Mark Dever
Well, in that sense, I think it’s very similar to an underuse of elders. I think if you understand, let me use the elder parallel for a moment and then I’ll jump it over to the deacons. If you understand that elders are fundamentally about a meeting, you think of them in one way, who’s going to do good and contribute to this meeting.
If you think they’re fundamentally about the ministry, well, then it’s a whole different game. You know, so that’s why some pastors are reluctant to have too many elders, which the thought boggles my mind. But I got to realize when they say that they’re thinking about eldership as a meeting.
And it’s harder to have 40 people in a meeting than 10 people in a meeting, deliberate together. I get that. I understand that you have to rethink the dynamics of that.
But if you think about it as ministry, it’s just gibberish to talk about having too many elders in a church. That’s like too many gifts Christ gave us to care for the sheep. Well, that’s just, you can’t have too many.
Jonathan Leeman
Oh no.
Mark Dever
All right, now take that over to the deacons. If you think of deacons as fundamentally a committee, like in Congress, to get something done, well, a very large committee will have a hard time deliberating as a whole. But if you think of deacons as fundamentally these people who are going to be serving the church in various ways, organizing members to serve physical and fiscal needs that will support the ministry of the word being central and unhindered, and help to absorb shocks that Satan might tempt the church through over typical antipodes of age or race or gender or social status or whatever our equivalent to the challenges in Act 6 would be.
If you think of deacons as people who are working to help members practically come together across those divides, well then there’s no limit to the number of men, and I would say women, who might helpfully do that in a church. There’s no downside to having a lot of good deacons. Again, no, if it’s a gift that we—
Jonathan Leeman
What benefits are you neglecting?
Mark Dever
That’s right. You’re neglecting whatever it would be that you would have if you—
Jonathan Leeman
To serve the flock.
Mark Dever
—if you allow that person to be recognized and serve in that way.
Jonathan Leeman
Other ways churches get deacons wrong, you can think of?
Deacons Are Not a House of Legislature
Mark Dever
Well, I think the whole idea of seeing deacons as fundamentally a deliberative court or body that makes decisions corporately together, and particularly as like a second house of legislature, you have the elders as the Senate and the deacons as the House of Representatives. I think that’s just begging for problems in a church.
Jonathan Leeman
Do you want to tell your own story with that
Mark Dever
Well, yes. I served at churches before this one that had elders, Baptist churches, that had a plurality of elders, had a plurality of deacons and even if he had the most godly men imaginable in both courts, if you call them separate courts, uh, and seventy five percent of the time, it’d be really clear, ah, that’s an elders matter.
Oh, that’s a deacons matter. About twenty five percent of the time there would be like a puck landing in the middle of the, you know, the ice hockey—
Jonathan Leeman
Rink.
Mark Dever
Rink. And it’s not entirely clear. Is that going to be the elders of the deacons? Who’s supposed to go after that thing? And you can, again, very godly guys, but a sincere lack of clarity on that.
And that would cause just unnecessary strife. So what we did here was we said, right, the deacons do not meet together. Their office does not fundamentally consist in their deliberative decisions that they come to as a body.
Their role happens in them as an individual serving us in the book stall or for weddings or with coordinating children’s work or something like that. And any members they want to get to help them do that, fine. But then they answer directly to the elders.
So that the only deliberative body other than the congregation as a whole would be the elders. Now there can be subcommittees of members to do things or elders to do things that are temporary, but the only deliberative body other than the congregation would be the elders.
So we don’t have two, because I think when you have two, you’re beginning to ask for trouble. This is all merely human prudence. This is not required in scripture.
What is a Task-Specific Deacon?
Jonathan Leeman
Let’s go where you just went. You talked about either the deacon doing this, deacon doing that. You guys have task specific deacons.
Explain what that is and is that in the Bible? How did you get there? How did you come to that conclusion?
Mark Dever
Well, I just it’s not in the Bible. I think I just explained how I got I got there.
Jonathan Leeman
What is a task specific deacon?
Mark Dever
Somebody who’s in charge of helping to pull members together do particular tasks like the book stall or help care for children, get child care workers together, or prepare meals for college students.
Jonathan Leeman
How do you decide when it’s time to have a deacon as opposed to just a member of the church volunteering and doing that?
Mark Dever
When you need more than one person doing it.
Jonathan Leeman
Okay, so walk us through what that might look like.
Mark Dever
Well, let’s say that it takes a lot of people to pull off a wedding at a church. What do we do then with a wedding coming up? Do we just say the couple does it themselves?
Do we just have to come up with a staff member who pulls together members to volunteer? Because this is such a regular and repeated need, we’ve just found it’s useful to have an office of deacon of weddings and we actually have more than one because we have so many weddings.
Jonathan Leeman
Which is a unique dynamic of this church being a younger church.
Mark Dever
I don’t think it’s unique. I think it’s unusual.
Jonathan Leeman
Well, I mean, it’s specific to this church.
Mark Dever
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
Other churches might have it as well, I’m just saying.
Mark Dever
Other churches off college campuses.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, sure.
Mark Dever
Things like that.
Jonathan Leeman
The other one that comes to mind for me is, kind of illustrates all the points you’re making, I think, is when this church decided to start a deacon of parking. So what’s going on in the parking lot? Well, there’s certain frictions and I don’t want to say fights, but there’s friction in the parking lot.
We have a limited number of spaces. And it’s a point of division in some ways, even in small ways in the church. And the elders one day decided, hey, we think having a deacon to monitor the parking, people coming in and giving out pagers and so forth might be a way of bringing unity and serving this congregation physically, as it were. And so at that point, the elders didn’t make the office, as I recall.
Mark Dever
Nope.
Jonathan Leeman
I was gonna say you guys recommend the office to the congregation?
Mark Dever
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
And then the congregation votes on the office and they vote on an individual for the office.
Mark Dever
Exactly.
Jonathan Leeman
And so now there’s a deacon of parking.
Mark Dever
Yeah. So if I can just quote the Westminster Confession, chapter one, paragraph six, it’s on scripture, but I think it’s real good for thinking about things like we’re talking about, about how you structure deacons, particularly in your local church. The divine said, “the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture, unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the Spirit—that would mean dreams and visions—or traditions of men.
Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word, and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, the government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.” I think it’s just a wonderfully balanced statement.
Jonathan Leeman
On Capitol Hill, the need for parking by the light of nature and general Christian prudence, we thought, the elders thought, hey, this seems to be something we can organize, and we have the freedom to do it.
Mark Dever
We understand why members would be stressing out over this. And we could probably serve them and help things to be somewhat less temptatious to anger.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah. Is temptatious a word?
Mark Dever
Made it up. I thought it was a good one.
Female Deacons
Jonathan Leeman
What about female deacons? Deaconesses. Thoughts on that?
Mark Dever
Ah, they’re there in the early church history. I think that’s what Romans 16 is. I realize there’s no way for us to really tell. Your opinion, if you disagree, is as good as mine.
I would just say the antiquity of the reference to deaconesses suggests something’s going on. And the fact that this church that I serve here in Washington, DC, that you used to be a part of, Capitol Hill Baptist Church.
Jonathan Leeman
I remember.
Mark Dever
We were started in 1878, and we had deaconesses from the very beginning. And the reason you had deaconesses, in part, was to go visit members who were in trouble who were women, or to prepare women for baptism.
They’re just gender-specific things. So, you know, there’s still at least what traditionally was called here a deaconess’s closet that I think is one of the few things I don’t have a key to in this building.
Jonathan Leeman
Well, you also have that translation issue in 1 Timothy 3.
Mark Dever
Right, as a wife of a deacon or a woman. Right.
Jonathan Leeman
Verse 11, which my ESV says they’re wives, could also just be translated women.
Mark Dever
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman
Likewise, must be dignified, not slander, sober-minded, and so forth. So that would be another seeming possible instance. Does that raise questions of authority, Mark? If I have a deacon of childcare, let me tell one story.
Mark Dever
Well, pause before you get to your story. If you have the way that we were referring to earlier, where the deacons have to run the church, it obviously does. So if that’s how your local churches is set up, I don’t care what we’re about to say about scripture and our experience here at CHBC, then it would not be a good idea for you to have women as deacons.
Jonathan Leeman
If the deacons are acting as quasi-elders.
Mark Dever
If they’re the ones who are really giving leadership to the church as a whole.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah. Then you’re like, no female deacons.
Mark Dever
Right. And that’s another good reason not to do what Southern Baptists did in the 1970s when they started having church councils, because that was the way they did an end run around the gender question. Let’s just have the head of all our church organizations, you know, the RAs, the WMU, the choir, let’s get them all here together and that way we can coordinate our calendars.
And that body often became much more lively and powerful than even the deacons, except in ultimate final showdowns. But that began acting in a lot of ways like the elders. So I think as long as you put deacons back more in the role, I think they had…
Jonathan Leeman
In the Bible.
Mark Dever
Yeah, in the New Testament time, I think then it’s entirely appropriate to recognize Phoebe as the deaconess.
Jonathan Leeman
Okay, so I heard the story of a young seminarian being in a seminarian church and he was signed up for nursery duty one day and he went into the nursery and the female deacon in charge of the nursery said, hey listen, could you take your shoes off because the children crawl around here. And the seminarian responded rudely, you can’t have any authority over me and kind of stormed off.
What was wrong with his view or was that a right view? That a woman shouldn’t have an authority over a man? Right?
Mark Dever
Well, I just, I’d be curious what church recommended him to seminary. Cause I would, I would rescind that recommendation.
Can a Deaconess Have Authority Over a Man?
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, I appreciate that. So would I. So would I. But help us think through this question of authority. Can a deaconess have authority over a man?
Mark Dever
Uh, I think with…
Jonathan Leeman
Within her jurisdiction, I’m saying—nursery or weddings or parking lot or…
Mark Dever
Yeah, I think your use of the word authority here is a little bit like the use of the word ordination. It’s just not a helpful word to use here because you’re importing a battle that I don’t think is here. You know, I don’t know anyone—
Jonathan Leeman
Well, she’s—okay. She’s gonna have people under her and she’s gonna give directives.
Mark Dever
Yeah, but see, brother, if a directive is a schedule of who’s gonna help with inventory on the book stall…
Jonathan Leeman
Okay.
Mark Dever
…and, you know, Abby puts it together for Jonathan Kiesling, who’s our current deacon of books, our book stall, his wife, Abby, if she puts that together and I’m on there for three o ‘clock on Saturday, does that mean I’m under her authority? That’s just not a good way to look at that. That’s, to me, that sounds like a brother has an issue on authority.
And if he has an issue there, he’s going to have lots of issues. So just even asking the question in my mind, I get some quiet information. I’m making future mental notes.
You’ll not be turning up on any other kind of lists of service. I’ll be first trying to make sure you’re a Christian, trying to make sure you understand scripture well, that you’re marked by the fruit of the spirit. Yeah. So I don’t understand it to be a theological, a serious theological argument.
You know, Spurgeon said that he learned more theology from a woman who was a housekeeper than he learned from any, anybody else on the planet. So the idea that if I learn from someone as a woman, that somehow means I’m under her authority.
That’s a, that’s a satanic kind of idea that’s built in hell to try to divide Christians from each other and make them fight. It’s very much like the challenge that widows were facing in Act 6. So I would recognize that as a toy left on the floor cognitively by the evil one. And I would not try to deal with that as a serious question.
Jonathan Leeman
The person saying, but isn’t that an exercise of authority.
Mark Dever
Right.
Jonathan Leeman
Gotcha. Helpful.
Mark Dever
Well, maybe not. Maybe I’ve just ad hominem dismissed the question so I don’t have to discuss it seriously. But that would be my spiritual analysis of it.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah. I think I’d be happy to say she exercises a kind of authority. I would just say it’s not elder oversight. I’d say it’s not elder authority. It’s a different kind. It’s a pragmatic, functional…
Mark Dever
Well, that’s because you built your career on authority. So you got to see authority in Cheerios, man. I mean, it’s just everything’s a different kind of authority. So I get it. I get it. We all have our own space.
Jonathan Leeman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for that—
Mark Dever
I love you, man.
Jonathan Leeman
—polite dismissal.
Mark Dever
Not at all. I benefit from your stuff. Sometimes blurb it.
Husbands and Wives Working Together as Deacons
Jonathan Leeman
Do you have husbands and wives working together as deacons?
Mark Dever
Yes, we do in the Deacon of Member Care.
Jonathan Leeman
Explain.
Mark Dever
Well, we have one deacon position that is particularly trying to make sure that our older folks and people who are in some kind of acute physical or fiscal need are tended to as individuals. And because of the kind of work that involves, we’ve always found it wise, if possible, to have a married couple involved in that.
I don’t think we would require that, but that seemed prudent to us. And we’ve so far been able to do that.
Importance of Deacons
Jonathan Leeman
Any last comments on this topic generally, brother? I’m kind of out of my questions. Anything you want to emphasize, highlight, any benefits worth mentioning, any exhortation to our dear listeners?
Mark Dever
Well, I love the promise in 1 Timothy 3:12, or 13, those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.
Jonathan Leeman
Great word.
Mark Dever
So this is a wonderful office to not neglect, to encourage, to celebrate. Last night in Bible study at the church that I’m at, Capitol Hill Baptist Church.
Jonathan Leeman
I’ve heard of it.
Mark Dever
We had, we meet every Wednesday night to study God’s word together. And we had a study in 2 Corinthians chapter 8, the last bit of it, verses 20 to 24. And it’s, most of that chapter, Paul is going over his painstaking care about how an offering to the Jerusalem saints that are starving is being handled. All the stuff he’s talking about is diaconate kind of stuff.
But as an apostle, kind of an elder figure, he sees the spiritual importance of it. And it just highlighted—so I must have picked Lindsay Parker, our administrator, out several times during the study just to point out, so Lindsay, what you’re doing is bringing glory to God by making us obviously above reproach. So it brings honor to Christ. That’s even a phrase that’s the glory of Christ that’s used there in 2 Corinthians 8:23.
So though this may seem like mundane stuff, but mundane, when the creator of the mundos, the world, is God, can be glorious stuff and it can reflect his character. So caring well about mundane matters partakes not so much of the ground and the earth as it does of the God in whose image you’re made. You’re doing exactly part of what the Lord made us to do in the way you’re using people and goods to behave in ways that reflect the glory of God.
So the care there, the care for people who are in trouble, these are good things. They reflect the fact that God is good. So I would say Deacon’s work is a lot more important than we may sometimes think it is.
And because Elder’s work is teaching the word and whether that’s a small group Bible study or a Sunday school class or a sermon or writing books, that’s going to be more often in people’s eyes, in the public gaze. So we tend to get the thanks and blame that we do. Whereas the people who are like Alberto right now sitting here.
So if you all have ever listened to a podcast and you’ve appreciated it, if I were you, I would just take a few minutes, it would be good for your soul, to write a little email, Alberto, A -L -B -E -R -T -O, @ninemarks.org and thank him for it because he is the brother who, not only does he sit here—
Jonathan Leeman
Yes!
Mark Dever
—through this whole thing while we talk—
Jonathan Leeman
Send them now!
Mark Dever
—but he is the one who’s physically set everything up. There’s a little board here with lights and switches and…
Jonathan Leeman
Knobs.
Mark Dever
…things that go, you know…
Jonathan Leeman
Deaconing sound.
Mark Dever
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman
Deaconing this conversation.
Mark Dever
You would not hear—this conversation would just be between me and Jonathan.
Jonathan Leeman
That’s right. Were it not for Alberto.
Mark Dever
Were it not for Alberto. So every, I’m pretty sure every or almost every episode you’ve heard that’s been true of. So if you’ve appreciated these things, thank you for the communication you’ve sent to us.
I would encourage you as a discipline of your soul, write Alberto, A -L -B -E -R -T -O @ninemarks.org and thank him for his work in literally creating these things.
Jonathan Leeman
Well, it makes me think, okay, he’s deaconing the conversation, promulgating the sound. And I think at the end of that passage in Acts 6, where the word of God continued to increase and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.
Well, partly that’s the consequence of the apostles preaching and praying, right? But the platform for that is things are resolved in the church and they’re able to give themselves to that, and all of that is part of the propagation of the ministry of the word.
Mark Dever
Exactly. So, if we think of we’re doing the spiritual work and this is the non-spiritual work…well that could be true in the sense of a non-christian could sit here and do what Alberto is doing. I don’t think a non-christian would have the motivation to do what Alberto is doing and I don’t think they’d have the motivation to do it in the way that Alberto does it.
So there are a number of levels on which the way Alberto is doing his work, he is doing it in a diagonal fashion, serving us, ultimately serving the Lord, that’s his intention. And that in and of itself, I think, not only facilitates this conversation, but it brings glory to God.
Jonathan Leeman
Amen. Well said. Thanks for the conversation, brother.
Mark Dever
Thank you, brother. And thank you, Alberto.
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A weekly conversation between Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever about practical aspects of the Christian life and pastoral ministry.
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