Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on August 3, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
Yes, we’re looking at deacons today. The need for deacons and the ministry of deacons. We’re deviating from our series on covenant. The reason being is Bill Boger and Dave Moxon have served faithfully as deacons for a number year, and it’s time for them to rotate off and take a break. And so the elders felt like it was a good time to give some instruction on what deacons do and the importance that they are in the church.
And we will be looking for new ones in October to begin the new church year. And we want to invite you to help us to choose those men and women to be involved in that ministry. I’ll begin reading now in Acts, chapter six. In those days, as the disciples were increasing in number, there arose a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against the Hebraic Jews that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution. The 12 summoned the whole company of the disciples and said it would not be right for us to give up preaching the word of God to wait on tables.
Brothers and sisters, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and wisdom, whom we can appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. This proposal pleased the whole company, so they chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and the Holy Spirit, and Philip Prochorus, Machiner, Timon Parmenas and Nicholas, a convert from Antioch. They had them stand before the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. So the word of God spread.
The disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly in number, and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith. May we pray for God’s help in understanding his word. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Help us to know how it applies to our lives. We thank you that it gives us instruction on how you want your church to live out.
The Gospel ministry in this world help us to see what our part is in that, and may we adhere to it faithfully. In your son’s name we pray. Amen. In those days, it says that the disciples were increasing in number. And whenever you have a group of people that get together, there are challenges.
Two people, few challenges, five people, more challenges, hundred people, the challenges increase. We could call them problems, but we’re calling them challenges because there are things that can be solved. So the first challenge was, is that the church was growing in number. The 12 didn’t have more hours in their day just because there were more people being added to the ministry that needed their attention. Therefore, the church needed more leadership to Meet the expanding needs of the size of the expanding church.
The challenge of growth. It tells us in verse 47 that they were praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And this growth wasn’t happening year by year, every day the Lord was adding to their number. So the need for more people to be involved in ministry was growing every single day. Not only was there the challenge of growth, but when you have more people involved, naturally complaints are going to arise.
Now, how many of you in here can say that you never complain about anything? Probably most of you, right? It’s just a natural thing. It’s part of our sin nature. Somebody does something bad and we complain about it.
But the sad thing is sometimes people do things that are good and people still do what they complain. Oh, they didn’t do it the way I would have had it done. Or they could have tweaked it a little bit differently. But there were complaints in the church. And not only were there complaints, but the complaints were this division between two groups of people.
We had the Hellenistic Jews, meaning the Greek Jews. They had been raised in nations outside of Israel, so their traditions, what they ate, they. Their customs were different than those of the Hebraic Jews that were there in Jerusalem, those that lived in Israel and had been raised there. And so there was a division in the church, and that was part of their challenge. How do we bring everybody together and not have the division?
It tells us in verse 45 that they sold their possessions and property and they distributed the proceeds to all as they had need. So again, they were doing something good. They were wanting to help those that were in need. And especially in this situation, they were wanting to help the widows that were in need in their church. They had a desire to help, but what they were doing for good ended up in complaints.
And as I said earlier, often doing good is met with some criticism. So they had the challenge of growth. They had the challenge of complaints. But then there was another problem here. There was the problem of neglect.
In verse 2, we read the 12, summoned the whole company of the disciples, and said it would not be right for us to give up preaching the word of God to wait on tables. You know, Satan wanted to dilute the most important thing that the church was doing. And the most important thing they were doing is they were presenting the gospel to people. They were presenting the path to life. They were preaching the word.
And Satan is always going to cause any type of distractions in the church so that God’s word will be neglected. The ministry to widows, it was a great thing, but it was becoming a distraction from the main thing, which was to preach the gospel. The complaints, the divisions, the good ministry, all were distractions in our time. We have what some churches call the social gospel. And the social gospel says, let’s do good things for people.
Don’t share the gospel so much, because if we talk too much about sin and their need for salvation, it might offend them. Our main thing is to just be God’s hands and feet and mouth in the world. The problem with that is all those are good things. But it distracts again from the main thing is that we’re supposed to be putting. Presenting the gospel and everything.
And the apostles were realizing that. They said, if we take time to solve this problem, if we have to take time to serve the widows, it means that we’re going to have less time to study God’s word and we’re going to have less time to preach God’s word. So the challenge here was, what can we do so that we are not neglecting our primary ministry to present the gospel? We have to stop and think now. So we have these leaders in the church.
They’re apostles. We don’t have apostles today. We have elders that have taken their place in leadership. And we’re talking about a new group of people here called deacons. So we need to kind of understand what is an elder, what do they do so that we can see the distinction between the two offices in the church.
If we go to Acts chapter 20, we find that Paul had summoned all the leaders and the elders from the church at Ephesus. And this is the message that he gave to be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers. Overseers, elders, shepherds. They’re interchangeable terms in the New Testament. They help us to understand the different things that elders do to the shepherd of God’s church, which he purchased with his own blood.
Verse 29. I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Men will rise up even from your own numbers and distort the truth to lure the disciples into following them. Therefore, be on the alert. Remembering that night and day for three years, I never stopped warning each of you with tears.
Paul is emphasizing here, elders, what you need to do is you need to be on guard of yourself, that you are following God’s word, that you are devoted to doctrinal integrity, but you also need to be guarding the flock to make sure that they’re adhering exactly to what God’s Word and His instruction is, because he tells them they’re going to be two problems that happen to the church if you neglect the word of God as your primary responsibility. The first thing is there are going to be savage wolves, he calls them, that are outside the church. And they’re going to come in and like wolves would come into a herd of sheep or a flock of sheep and try to kill and destroy them. People from outside want to destroy the church, and they do it by bringing in false doctrine. They bring it by bringing in false teaching.
And elders are supposed to guard against that. But not only are people from the outside going to come in, but Paul also told them, you have to be careful because they’re going to be people inside your congregation. They’re going to look like sheep, but they’re really going to be wolves in sheep’s clothing. And people with inside the church are also going to try to water down the doctrine. They’re going to try to change what the church is teaching, and they’re going to lure people into following them.
Be on guard for yourselves, elders, that you don’t fall into this trap and be on alert for all of the congregation that they also don’t deviate from God’s Word. Elders are supposed to guard the teaching of the church. We go to Acts chapter 20 to learn a little bit more. Paul said, now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all who are sanctified. The elders are given two things that will help help them in guarding the doctrinal integrity of the church.
God is going to be with them and guiding them. But God has also given them His Word. Therefore, they need to spend time studying God’s Word so that they can teach God’s Word, so that they can make sure that our church stays true to God’s word. In Titus 1:9, holding to the faithful message is taught so that he will be able both to encourage with sound teaching and to refute those who contradict it. So in the role of elder, they’re supposed to study doctrine.
They’re supposed to study God’s Word. They’re supposed to understand God’s Word so they can do two things. One is positive. They need to encourage people to follow God’s Word and to follow the truth. But they also have a negative job.
It’s still necessary, but it’s hard. They have to have the strength and the knowledge and understanding of God’s Word that they can approach people and, and refute them, that they can confront them that what you are teaching here is false doctrine. And all of this because they are guarding the truth. Acts, chapter six one through seven. We go back and we read, Brothers and sisters, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom, whom we can appoint to this duty to take care of the widows so that we can devote ourselves to prayer and, and to the ministry of the Word.
Those that are in the role of elder in our church need to be men of prayer. They need to be men who are studying the Bible, and they need to be men who are teaching God’s word. And if we delegate them to doing acts of service in the church, all the time, it takes away from their primary ministry. So we can kind of boil it down to these two statements. Elders serve the church by leading the church, whereas deacons, in their leadership role, they lead by serving the church.
They set the example of what all of us are supposed to be doing in the body of Christ. So where does that leave us as a congregation? If the elders are leading ministry, the deacons are supposed to not do all of the ministry. They’re supposed to be facilitating the ministry so that the congregation can actually do the ministry. God isn’t set up where the pastor does all the work, or the pastor and the elders do the work, or the pastor and the elders and the deacons do all the work.
He’s asking all of us to use the spiritual gifts that he has given us so that we can all be involved in the ministry. Elders, deacons, congregation, all part of the Body of Christ. So what was the plan? What was the solution that was offered? Here we go back to Acts chapter 6 and we read in verse 3, the apostles spoke to the brothers and sisters, and they gave them this select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom, whom we can appoint to this duty.
The elders didn’t select the deacons. They just gave instruction to the congregation what they should look for in deacons. And we will be talking more about that next week. But the most basic thing here is a good reputation. They have to be filled with God’s spirit, they have to have wisdom, and they have to be appointable to this duty.
So after the apostles gave instruction to the congregation, then this selection process worked out among the people, and they selected a group of men because this proposal pleased the whole company. And they chose the men. Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas. So there was instruction from the leadership. There was selection from the congregation.
And those men were brought back. And we go through what we call the process of ordination. It’s a formal appointment. It’s a formal recognition that those that are involved in this role are equipped to do it. They’re spiritually minded, and we understand that they need to be in this role.
It says they had those men stand before the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them.
So the word of God spread. The disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly in number, and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith. They had a challenge, they had a solution. And then it tells us what were the results. It tells us that the word of God spread.
It tells us that the church continued to increase in number and there was growth in obedience among the people that were there. So as elders, we have some goals here because we’re kind of doing things a little bit differently than had been done in the past. But these are our goals that we have. The first one is that we want to improve, improve oversight and coordination of the present diaconal ministries that are already being done by many women and men in our church. Bill’s been involved, Dave’s been involved.
We got women doing ministry, we got men doing ministry. But what we’ve kind of noticed, there’s been kind of a lack of coordination. I would say that sometimes there are five needs in the church, and everybody knows about two needs. So everybody’s going and helping that. But then we’ve got some things on the back burner here, three others that people aren’t really knowing what needs to be done there.
So we want a group of deacons to help coordinate all this ministry better so that all of the needs that we have in the church are met. We also want to relieve elders of diaconal responsibilities so they can focus more on shepherding and spiritual oversight. Our elders are doing some things that really should be part of deacon ministry that involves more of the congregation. And the same thing is going on with our trustees. Our trustees are like superheroes.
You know, they take care of the finances and they are up here every day. They’re fixing toilets, they’re setting up tables. They do a phenomenal amount of work, and they’ve almost made it. Where when we’re looking for new trustees now, people say, well, I’m not a superhero. I can’t take that job on.
So we’re wanting to relieve them of some of their responsibilities and help them to focus on their main thing, which are finances and facility, not doing the work. But Managing what needs to be done. So these are all goals in trying to make our Deakin ministry more robust, a little more coordinated. So how does someone identify a potential deacon or deaconess? Because you can be a woman, you can be a man that is serving in this role at our church.
I have this written in the bulletin so you can take these things home and think about them. When you’re thinking as a body about who should be serving in this role, this is what the person should look like. A deacon’s heart is focused on self giving service for the good of Christ’s church and the glory of his name. He or she desires to assist the pastor and the elders and also to enrich the life of the church in a variety of ways. Organizing service, tackling tangible needs, shielding the ministry of the Word, guarding the harmony of the flock, caring for the distressed, upholding the priority of the Word, administering benevolence, overseeing the ministry of tables, the ministry that is mainly involved around the kitchen and more things there.
What will be expected of deacons and deaconesses? Well, let’s specifically go back to our bylaws now, just so you can see what we have written there already. The deacon or deaconess team will be expected to define and implement their ministry under the direction of the elder team, the deacon team, the men and the women that are going to do this, they have to decide the best way to do it. The elders are not there to tell them this is exactly what you need to do and this is how you do it. This is a group of people that is able to come in and organize things, to see needs and to figure out the best way to do it.
This will include encouraging, implementing and coordinating the caring, visitation and hospitality ministries, including but not limited to fellowship dinners, nursery, prayer chain and communion preparation. Members of the Deakin team will be elected for two year terms with a three consecutive term maximum, followed by at least one term off from this position. And then I added here. The next line is not in our bylaws for the present. They’re going to meet monthly with me for devotions, prayer, planning and assignment of duties.
That may not be a continuing thing, but we need to get together to figure out the best way to coordinate everybody in the church to do in the ministries that God has called them to. How will deacons and deaconesses be selected? This is where we want to change things. Right now our bylaws are set up that the elders just pick one person to be the head deacon and then that person puts a team together. But according to scripture, the Whole congregation was involved in selecting these men and women.
And we want to get back to what the Bible says about how this is going to be done. So church members may nominate potential deacons or deaconesses to the elder team. Nominated individuals should meet the qualifications that are found in First Timothy and Acts, chapter six. And we’ll talk more about those qualifications next week. They must be willing to have their names submitted.
So when you’re thinking about submitting a name for a deacon or deaconess, don’t do it in secret. Go and ask them and say, you know, I’ve prayed about this and I think that God is telling me that I should nominate you. And make sure that they also hear God’s word there, that he wants them to move forward. There will be a time that they’re going to be interviewed by the elder team to make sure that they meet the qualifications. And we’re going to also ask that they read a book called How They Serve and Strengthen the Church.
And there are copies of those in the back if you want one. They’re $15. It will explain more about what deacons do and how they’re to be selected. So whether you’re thinking about being a deacon or deaconess, it doesn’t have to be you that picks up it. But if you want to understand what we’re doing, I encourage you to read that book.
And then the elders will verify that nominated individuals meet the qualifications. And we’re going to select a manageable number. We don’t know if it’s going to be 2, 3, 5, 10, whatever. We’re trying to figure out what God is asking us to do. And those are going to be presented to the church for approval at the October meeting.
And I want to say that married couples can do this together or individuals can be nominated for the position. Men and women, couples, singles, individuals without their spouses can also be involved. So I have an extra slide that you can skip past, and we’ll go to the end. Next Sunday, we’re going to be looking at qualifications of deacons and deaconesses and what the selection process looks like. So some of our elders today are going to be over in the adult Sunday school room after the service.
Matt and Brad, are you both sticking around to answer questions? I think those are the two that are here. So if you have any questions, feel free to go over there. They have the answers. And once again, I’ll show you a picture of that book.
So you know what it looks like. It’s $15. Just put that money in an offering box. In the envelope back there. And the elders will be available to answer questions today.
May we close in prayer? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you give us instructions on how to carry out the ministry of your church. And like the early church, Father, we want to do things according to your will. Because we want to see growth in obedience. We want to see growth in number.
We want to see people come to faith and place their trust alone in Jesus Christ. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen.
Will you stand as we sing a closing song together?