Diakonos: Are You a Deacon?

Word of the Week

September 21, 2024

Diakonos: Are You a Deacon?

 

To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons.

Philippians 1:1b NASB2020

The churches I attended in Arizona had an organizational chart that featured a pastor, a board of deacons, and a board of trustees.  Most of the churches in my current setting in Indiana have one or more pastors, a board of elders, and a board of deacons.  In the first instance, deacons were responsible for the spiritual direction of the church; in the second structure, deacons specialize in meeting physical needs.

It leaves you wondering what deacons really do.

Personally, I suspect there is room for some flexibility in job titles for church leaders.  However, we do want to follow the guidelines that the New Testament lays down for the local church.

The English word deacon comes from the Greek word diakonos. If we want to understand the role of a deacon, a study of the Greek word is a great place to start.

Surprisingly, diakonos seldom refers to a church office, even though it appears almost 30 times in the New Testament.  Most of the time it is translated as “servant.”

There are two primary Greek words for “servant.”  The first, doulos, is often rendered as “slave.”  It is a word that emphasizes the fact that you belong to someone. Slaves were immensely common in the first century, and doulos signified your status as the legal property of another.

The second word, diakonos was often applied to slaves, but it could also describe the work done by a free person.  While doulos emphasized who you belonged to, diakonos emphasized the work you do.

A diakonos is someone who carries out tasks for the benefit of someone else.  It originally described a waiter serving a meal, like the servants at the wedding at Cana (John 2:5, 9). The idea later broadened to include any kind of service, ranging from bakers to statesmen.  It could even include government authorities (Romans 13:4) or a king’s officials (Matthew 22:13).  The word emphasizes the work a servant does, rather than his status as slave or free.

The ancient Greeks saw service as undignified.  They looked down on servants as inferior.  But Christianity completely reversed that attitude.

• Jesus instructed his disciples that the way to be greatest in the Kingdom was to be the servant of all (Matthew 20:26; 23:11; Mark 9:35; 10:43).
• He also promised that the Father would honor any servant who would follow him (John 12:26).
• Paul was proud to call himself a servant of God (2 Corinthians 6:4), a servant of the new covenant (2 Corinthians 3:6), a servant of the gospel (Ephesians 3:7), a servant of Christ (2 Corinthians 11:23), and a servant of the church (Colossians 1:25).
• The New Testament notes several people as faithful servants: Phoebe (Romans 16:1), Epaphras (Colossians 1:7), and Tychicus (Ephesians 6:21; Colossians 4:7).

Have you noticed that none of these passages mentions a church office?

At its heart, diakonos simply describes a person who faithfully performs the necessary tasks to meet the needs that have been entrusted to him or her.

Only two passages clearly describe an office of “deacon.”  Philippians 1:1 mentions “overseers and deacons” as a particular group within the body of believers.  And Paul provides a list of the qualifications that should characterize a deacon in 1 Timothy 3:8-13.

I notice that Scripture is very specific about the godly character that a deacon should display.  Like the elders, deacons should be people who demonstrate the devotion to the Lord that all Christians are called to model.

We do not have a similar list of the tasks that deacons are supposed to carry out.  I suspect that this is because they will be available for any need that arises.

Acts 6 never uses the word diakonos, but it does offer an instructive example of how the process should work.  A problem arose:  uneven distribution of food to widows.  The leaders selected a group of men to oversee the program.  They didn’t give long lists of instructions on how to do it.  But they did scrutinize the maturity and character of the people they put in charge of the food pantry.

And obviously they did a good job.  One of those food handlers was Stephen, the powerful preacher who became the first martyr for Christ.  Another “deacon” was Philip, who brought the gospel to Samaria and shared it with the Ethiopian official.

You may or may not ever show up on a ballot for appointment to a church board, but there is no higher calling for any of us than to be a diakonos appointed by God to serve His people.

Study Hint:

You can see additional material on the two words for “servant” by going to ezraproject.com.  Click on Blog and look for the article dated August 21, 2021.

Coming Up

As long as we are thinking about leaders in the local church, how about pastors?  Next week we will dial in on the Greek word for the pastor.

©Ezra Project 2024