What is the role of deacons?

Question 09050.

The role of deacons is one of the most misunderstood things in church life, and the misunderstanding runs in two opposite directions. In some congregations deacons have become a board that runs the church and hires the minister. In others the title has become honorary, given to long-standing members as a mark of respect, with no actual function attached.

Neither is what the New Testament describes. The office is real, it is honourable, and it has a specific shape. Let me set out where it came from, what the role of deacons involves, who qualifies and how it relates to the eldership.

Where the Office Came From

Acts 6 gives us the origin, and the setting is instructive. The Jerusalem church was growing fast and a complaint arose that Greek-speaking widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. It was a genuine grievance with a cultural edge to it, exactly the kind of thing that splits a congregation.

The apostles refused to solve it themselves. It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables, they said, and they told the congregation to choose seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, to be appointed to the duty. Then the apostles returned to prayer and the ministry of the word.

The text does not call these men deacons. The noun is absent, though the verb diakoneo, to serve, is right there in the passage. Whether or not this is technically the institution of the office, it is certainly the pattern the office follows, and the church has always read it that way.

What the Role of Deacons Involves

The principle from Acts 6 is straightforward. The role of deacons is to carry the practical and material work of the church so that those who teach can give themselves to prayer and the word without neglecting anybody.

In practice that covers a great deal. Finance and the proper handling of the church’s money. Buildings, maintenance and safety. Practical care of the poor, the elderly and the housebound within the fellowship. Hospitality, catering, transport, the hundred logistical things that make gathered worship possible and that nobody notices until they stop.

None of that is secondary work. The complaint in Acts 6 was about food, and the apostles treated it as serious enough to require seven Spirit-filled men. A church where the practical care of widows is done badly has a theological problem, not an administrative one.

The Qualifications

1 Timothy 3:8-13 gives the list, and it sits immediately after the qualifications for overseers, which tells you the office is taken with equal seriousness. Deacons must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain, holding the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.

There is one striking difference from the elder list. Deacons are not required to be able to teach. That absence is the clearest indication we have that the two offices differ in function rather than in rank. The role of deacons is service, not oversight of doctrine.

Paul adds that they should be tested first and then serve if they prove themselves blameless. That is a warning against appointing willing volunteers without knowing them. And he notes that those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and great confidence in the faith, which is a striking promise for practical work.

Women in This Office

1 Timothy 3:11 says, their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. The Greek word can mean wives or women, and the sentence sits inside the deacon qualifications rather than after them, which is why the debate exists.

Romans 16:1 commends Phoebe as a diakonos of the church at Cenchreae. That word can mean servant generally or deacon specifically, and the grammar will not decide it for us. What is certain is that Paul entrusted her with the letter to the Romans and asked the church to help her in whatever she needed.

My own view is that the case for women serving in this capacity is stronger than many Baptists allow. The role of deacons is not teaching or governing authority, which is where I hold a complementarian position, so the objections that apply to eldership do not carry across. I would not divide over it in either direction, and I would rather a church discussed it openly than pretended the question was settled by silence.

Deacons and Elders Together

The two offices are meant to work as a pair, and Philippians 1:1 addresses the saints together with the overseers and deacons, which is the whole officer list of a New Testament church. Spiritual oversight to one, practical service to the other, with a great deal of overlap in daily life and no rivalry in principle.

In practice the boundary blurs, particularly in smaller congregations. My own deacons presently function in both an elder and a deacon capacity, which is a pragmatic reality rather than a theological ideal, and I say so plainly because a great many British Baptist churches are in exactly the same position.

What matters is that the distinction is understood even where it cannot be fully staffed. When a church forgets it, one of two things happens: the elders drown in administration and stop feeding anybody, or the deacons drift into doctrinal and pastoral decisions they were never appointed to make.

Where the Office Goes Wrong

The commonest failure in British Baptist life is the deacons’ meeting becoming the real government of the church, with the minister as an employee. That is not the role of deacons and it produces a predictable pattern: short pastorates, frustrated ministers and congregations that never receive sustained teaching.

The opposite failure is the honorary deacon, appointed for long service and expected to attend meetings and nothing else. That empties the office of meaning and, worse, blocks it against people who would actually serve.

A third failure is quieter. Deacons who handle money, buildings and rotas with real competence but no spiritual life. Acts 6 required men full of the Spirit and of wisdom for what was, on the surface, a catering problem. Competence is not the qualification. Character is, and competence is a bonus.

The Dignity of Serving

There is something worth noticing in the word itself. Jesus said the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and the verb He used is the same root. The role of deacons is named after the thing Jesus said He came to do.

That should settle any question about status. In a congregation where the deacons are seen as the ones who could not preach, the church has inverted its Lord’s own valuation. Paul says those who serve well gain a good standing, and he does not attach that promise to any other office.

It should also settle the question for anyone considering it. Serving tables was beneath nobody in Acts 6, and the two of the seven we hear about again, Stephen and Philip, went on to become the church’s first martyr and its first cross-cultural evangelist. Practical service is not a siding. It is a training ground.

What Acts 6 Was Really Solving

It is worth pressing on the problem in Acts 6, because it was not simply a logistical one. The complaint came from the Hellenists against the Hebrews, which means it fell along a cultural fault line inside the congregation. One group of widows was being overlooked and the group being overlooked was the minority group.

Look at the names of the seven men chosen and something jumps out. Every one of them is Greek, and one, Nicolaus, is a proselyte from Antioch. The congregation handed the problem to the aggrieved party. That is an extraordinary piece of wisdom, and it tells you that the role of deacons includes something more than efficiency. It includes visible fairness, and a willingness to give responsibility to the people most likely to notice when care is going wrong.

The result is recorded plainly: the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. A practical problem, handled well, produced growth. Churches that treat administration as a distraction from ministry should sit with Acts 6:7 for a while.

Serving Without Being Consumed

A word to those already in this office. The role of deacons attracts capable people, and capable people in a church get asked to do everything. I have watched good men take on the accounts, then the building, then the rotas, then the transport, until they had not sat through a sermon undistracted in three years.

That is nobody’s plan and everybody’s fault. The seven were appointed so that others could give themselves to prayer and the word, and it would be a poor arrangement if it left the seven with no prayer and no word of their own. Deacons need to be fed as much as anyone, and a church that quietly runs its most willing members into the ground has misunderstood service as a resource to be extracted.

So the practical counsel runs both ways. To deacons: say no to something this year, and recruit rather than absorb. To congregations: notice who is carrying too much and take something off them before they break. My article on the role of elders makes the same point from the other side, since the two offices fail together or hold together.

Choosing Deacons Well

Since the role of deacons is defined by service rather than by teaching, the selection process should look for evidence of service already happening. Paul says deacons should be tested first, and the natural test is simply time. Give someone a job and see whether it is done, done well and done without a commentary on how much effort it required.

Watch for two things in particular. The first is faithfulness in small matters that nobody checks, since the role of deacons involves a great deal of work that only becomes visible when it fails. The second is how a person handles being disagreed with, because deacons deal with money and buildings, and those are the areas where congregations argue.

And look beyond the obvious candidates. Churches habitually appoint the retired accountant and the builder, which is sensible as far as it goes, and then wonder why the diaconate has no one under fifty. The role of deacons asks for character and Spirit-filled wisdom rather than a professional qualification, and a congregation that forgets that will run out of deacons within a generation. My article on what the New Testament says about deacons looks at the textual evidence in more detail.

So, now what?

If your church has deacons, find out what they actually do and thank one of them for it. Most of their work is invisible by design, and invisible work is the easiest to take for granted until it stops.

And if you have been asked to serve, or are wondering whether you could, read 1 Timothy 3:8-13 and Acts 6 together, then ask two people who know you well whether they see those things in you. The role of deacons asks for character before capability, which means it is open to far more people than most congregations assume. Is there a practical need in your church that you have noticed and nobody has picked up?

For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

1 Timothy 3:13 (ESV)