NOMINATE ELDERS & DEACONS
Overview
There are two offices in the church, “the overseers and deacons” (Phil. 1:1; cf. 1 Timothy 3:1-13). The terms themselves convey their distinct roles. The overseers oversee, while the deacons (literally “servants”) serve. This distinction is delineated in 1 Timothy 3:16-18, where the elders (i.e. “overseers”),[1] but not the deacons, are required to be “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2). The deacons are called to “hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience” (1 Tim. 3:9), but they are not called to “teach” it in any official capacity. The deacons, like the elders, must “[manage] their children and their own households well,” but only the elders are charged with managing and “car[ing] for God’s church” (1 Tim. 3:5). These unique qualifications for elders anticipate their primary functions of “teaching” and “ruling” (1 Tim. 5:17). Due to the authority invested in the office, an elder is particularly vulnerable to becoming “puffed up with conceit,” therefore, there is an additional requirement that he “not be a recent convert” (1 Tim. 3:6). In summary, the elders teach and govern the church; the deacons serve the church.[2]
In light of these biblical distinctions between elders and deacons, the parallels in Acts 6:1-7 are suggestive. There, the twelve Apostles appoint and commission “seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom,” to attend to the Greek widows in the church who were being neglected from the daily distribution of food. Their stated rationale is that they must not neglect prayer and the “ministry of the Word” in order “to minister tables.” This distinction between ministry of the word and ministry of the table appears to be a template for the inchoate diaconate ministry in the early church.
Ministry of the table comprises any service, or ministry, that keeps the unity of the church and meets the temporal needs of the church in order to relieve and release the Elders for prayer and the ministry of the Word. If an eldership is like a quarterback on a football team, the diaconate is like the offensive line. A football cannot advance without either. Likewise, it is when both elders and deacons are faithfully ministering that “the word of God continue[s] to increase, and the number of the disciples multipl[y] greatly” (Acts 6:7).
[1] “Elders” and “overseers” refer to the same group of people who are called to “pastor” their people (e.g. Acts 20:17, 28; Eph. 4:11; 1 Pet. 5:1-4).
[2] 1 Peter 4:10-11 seems to have these two offices in mind when he speaks of two general gifts of “speak[ing]” and “serv[ing]” that God distributes among the church.
[2] 1 Peter 4:10-11 seems to have these two offices in mind when he speaks of two general gifts of “speak[ing]” and “serv[ing]” that God distributes among the church.