Deacons - How They Lead

Good morning. Again, everyone it is. Been a joy to get to worship together in song and now we turn our eyes to the Lord through his word for those of you who are just joining us for the first time today. We are 6 weeks into a 7-week series called leading the church forward where we have been talking about. What is the church actually supposed to look like and how it functions we talked about congregation and they're always been a couple weeks talking about Elders pastors what they do last week. We introduced to deacons and we're going to talk a little more today about deacons and what exactly we ordained deacons to do and then next week we're going to finish it up with a look through some of the texts that the early church put out in scripture about what it all looks like when the church is running. Well what healthy Church looks like So this morning we are going to be in Acts 6 the vast majority of the time. So if you have your copy the Bible with you on your phone or on paper copy, whatever you got you might want to ask 6 to look at verses 1 through 7 and let me pray for us and then I'll read the text and we'll talk through it and start in prayer. Heavenly father. Thank you. Thank you for the way in which you ultimately lead your church. Thank you that the congregation is made up of members who first and foremost are defined by their relationship to you. Or thank you for allowing leaders to spring up in your body to be able to fulfill different roles that are needed whether they be Elders who are doing shepherding and teaching an oversight or whether they are deacons who are leading Ministries through service Lord. We just pray that you would continue to receive Glory from the great way in which you've designed your church. Or give us eyes to see your glory even as we look at this text today and to be thankful for the ways in which you are on the move and pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

Says I mentioned last week we introduced deacons and we talked about this idea. That deacons are the lead servants in the church again. Just a reminder Deacon actually means servant and so there are all of us call to be servants generally speaking within the body and there's lots of examples in scripture where that term of of a servant or a minister where is used, but then there seems to be unique X oftentimes connected with a particular Church body that we looked at where certain servants are called out to a different level of leadership in their service. And those would be known as the deacons or the lead ministers within the church and other words. They should be leading the ministry that's happening. And as we discussed last week There's an authoritative authoritative teaching component present in the task of Elders that was not present in the tasks of deacons. And that's why we said both men and women could serve in the role of Deacon. But where does this roll originate? What what's the relationship between elders and deacons to look like what exactly should a deacon body be doing? Those are the questions we want to answer this morning in to find that we're going to go to act 6 and we're looking for 6 1 through 7 and what this is is this is the first example we have in scripture where the church started to diversify its leadership before you just had the apostles who were helping to leave at the 12 disciples. Would it be gotten together and started to do stuff? They would gather the others that came in at this point and and divide out leadership amongst more people. Let me read the text for us and then we'll talk through it acts 6 verses 1 through 7 now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number a complaint by the hellenists a rose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution and the 12 summon the full number of the disciples and said it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore Brothers pick out from among you seven men of good repute full of the spirit and wisdom who we will point to this duty, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word and what they said, please the whole Gathering so they chose Stephen A Man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit and fill up in for chorus and a canner and Tim and and parman parman us and Nikolaus a proselyte. Antioch these they said before the apostles and they prayed and lay their hands on them in the word of God continue to increase in the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many priests became obedient to the faith. We see this original starting of the diagonal the service Ministry in the church body at this point in Acts. Why did it have to form? Well, the number of disciples were increasing it says that in verse 1. And as the number of people increase in the body life of a church, the number of needs necessarily is going to increase as well as the more effective. We are at reaching out to the community around us and drawing people in and they come and they meet Christ and they join him first and foremost and then out of that they Unite with the body they're going to bring all of their gifts with them to be a blessing to the church and they're going to bring all their needs with them for the church to be a blessing to them. So it's not a bad thing that the church and reach this point already in Acts 6 where the number of disciples were increasing to the point? Let the neck when he was forming something had gone wrong in something. That was very crucial to the body like the church at that time. The church already was a diverse group of people you had that the greek-speaking background Christians the hellenists and then you had that the Jewish background Christian Hebrews, then it come together in one body to worship God.

and what was great about that is that it allowed the Bible to be lived out in the life of the church in such a way that it shows that God is able to meet the needs of all his people Which is why? On certain ones were getting neglected in the distribution to the Widow's. This was not just a matter of practicality. It's a matter of God's glory. See why because if it's just a matter of practicality, it's just you got to get this amount of food to these people in this amount of food to these widows and let's just take care of the food Ministry and be done with it. But it's not about that. It's about the fact that God in Christ has joined together the Greek and the Jew into one body in Christ a new church Gathering of Christians. And so far all the sudden. There's there's this problem between the people that God has drawn together if there's tension between the types of people God brings into his body and it goes unaddressed. It's not just a physical need it's a spiritual reality that has to be addressed. I praise God we are in an environment as a church where we do not all look sound smell exactly the same right where we're diverse group of believers. And so we need to be as careful in our day in our church to make sure that the needs of our whole body are being met and not like well, you know, we do a really good job reaching out to say the older folks in the church with the younger folks in the church are really struggling cuz nobody ever reaches out to the younger families or women in our church that they get treated real. Well the men in our church that kind of neglected or the African Americans in our church that get treated me really well with the white folks they kind of don't

if we set up an environment where any one group of people is getting their needs met and another group of people is not it puts the glory of God that's on display in the church at risk. Do I need to be careful to make sure like, they did hear that if there's a problem. You go at it. Tell me the truth. so greek-speaking background people We're having a problem with the Hebrews. Look at the names of the guys that they chose in verse 5 Steven are stiff honest. Philip prochorus Nikon or timoun Parma naess Nicholas. Do they sound like Hebrew names to you don't to me and I just don't like the sound like Greek names. So they had a problem and how did they address it? They chose guys with Greek names? Why is that important diversity of leaders meets the diversity of conflicts that a church can face. If all your leaders all think and act and come from the same background, you will not be able to meet the needs of the congregation is fully as if the people who are meeting the needs reflect the backgrounds of those whose needs are being met.

So they they summon these guys from the congregation. For a particular purpose. What is it that they were being called to do first to pay some of the phone number to The Stables and said it's not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Now, you could hear that one of two ways. You could say serving tables is beneath us. We just want to be preaching the word of God. And if you hear it that way you're hearing it wrongly. That's not what they're getting at. It's not as if serving tables was below their level. It's that they don't want the word of God to be neglected in the process of meeting other needs. If they felt it serving tables with less they would just so you know, what don't worry about it. What's really important here is to the word of God gets breached if the food things a little off deal with it, but no he said that matters to us, but we can't be the ones to do it. We can only spread ourselves so thin and then we become ineffective it when we were called to do so and said what we want to do is have you Brothers the congregation the disciples that were gathered there in Jerusalem pick out some guys to help. We think it's going to take seven guys at least to be able to pull this ministry off well. It should be guys who you know are good at what they do. They have a good reputation.

And a better be solid Christians full of the spirit and of wisdom. You tell us who you think these guys should be. And then we'll give them that duty to fulfill. These are the first deacons what that says to me at this is this Deacon's free up Elders to do the work. They've been called to do. It's very easy. If say we were just a small church, maybe 10 people to say. Hey, there's one guy who's the preacher? But he's also going to be the same guy that helps with the everything else that goes on. He's going to wear like a t different hats cuz there's only 10 people so you can probably pull all that off right at the moment the church starts to grow. That person is going to get stretched thin so thin that he can't even do that eldering job by himself so you can meet other Elders to come in. And then his Elders are still going to be more work than they can do. So they're going to need deacons to come in so that the leadership gets distributed out in such a way that the needs get mad.

Does this mean that deacons only come in because the elders can't do everything themselves? No, I don't think it does. I think this was just the first chance the church had to see the need then the reason Paul speaks of it in his letters as if deacons and Elders are expected in every Church, even the new ones that he had just been part of planting when he had been through last. Is because he understood now what they were just learning in x 6 in order for a church to function. Well there needs to be a diversity of types of leaders doing different types of tasks. In order for the church to thrive one thing we might want to ask if this point is well what exactly should the deacons be doing? Is it just like food service Ministry are they allowed to do more than that? I mean is is ax6 prescriptive. This tells everything begins are allowed to do know is another example of .22. It's in Colossians 4 verses 7 through 9 deals of the man name tychicus. We read what it says to you in Colossians 4 tickets will tell you all about my activities. This is Paul writing to the church at colossae and telling them about the end at the end of the letter what's going on take a kiss will tell you all about my activities. He's a beloved brother and a faithful translate that in my version is Minister deoca knows he's a faithful Deacon and a fellow servant or Bond servant or slave from the Lord. I sent him to you for this very purpose that you may know how we are in the he may encourage your hearts and with him on this MSR faithful and beloved brother who's one of you they will tell you everything that has taken place here.

So here is tychicus a beloved brother a faithful Deacon and a fellow serving the lord. This is the guy that is really going on all cylinders here. He's loved as part of the family of God. He serves as a faithful Deacon and he is sold out for Jesus. So what is polytheism for keeping to himself there is no I'm going to send him faithful Deacon that he is to be of service to you because he's been serving here where I'm at. But now he's going to come to you and tell you everything that's going on. That's a very different task. Right and that doesn't sound much like serving tables at all going on trips to talk about what's happening in the ministry. I Points tickets out to y'all too gets mentioned again in a fusion 6 at the end of that as well, but I mention him because I don't want you to be confused and think that they have a very small role to play in the life of the church if they are doing tasks that are leading in service if they are freeing up the elders to do their work by filling in other leadership gaps that exist in the church body. They are doing exactly what they're called to do.

Will a Deacon's responsibilities change over time when different situations arise probably so. Because this the needs are they are the Deacon body can come in and use their skill sets to help fill in those gaps.

Extremely valuable both Paul in the New Testament and to the church as a whole. Because they make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

So Spectra passage in Acts 6 first for he says we will devote ourselves to prayer in the ministry the word. So the elders have handed this off to the congregation said hey pick some guys we're going to keep doing what God has called us to do and and when you find them we're going to give them their marching orders as well. And what they said please the whole Gathering and they chose the guys. I think that says a couple things for us right there.

1 When it pleased the whole congregation it says something about who they chose. The congregation did not look at this idea from the disciples and say well. Y'all can't handle that. I mean I suppose we look around try to find somebody for you. No, they heard. Hey find Spirit-filled guys. I can do this and let us know and we're going to keep doing what we're going to do and we're going to let them do what they're good at and the congregation said he had a good thing until they brought the guys following were able to Appoint them for the duty now. What is a pointing look like? Well looks like in verse 6, they set them before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them. Deacon's much like Elders are told and other passages get ordained or appointed to their Ministry. We've done that here at the church even since I've been here. Aaron is now out in Washington with his new bride and Joe sikora were two deacons who I got to be a part of their ordination to the Deacon Ministry when I was here.

Deacons, are there ordained by God and an acknowledged? Does that by the congregation so that the church can grow by spreading out leadership to more people? He said that again deacons are appointed by ordained by God in a pointed to a recognized by the church so that they can help the church grow by spreading leadership among more people.

If you want a church to grow it will be constrained by the level to which the leaders can lead it. Turning off people that are able to lead the church will be as small as the leadership can handle. This is practically speaking environment. You've ever had goldfish. You'll know this is true. Right if you have a small tank and you put a goldfish in there your goldfish will stay small if you put a small goldfish in a big tank the Goldfish grows to the size that it can handle in that tank churches are very similar. If you if you have a leadership tank that's big enough the church can grow to fill that tank. If you have a small core of leaders and a can't really do as much they will stay small.

Our church has not always had enough deacons to fill the needs of our church body. How do we solve that? How do we not ask guys to serve in in positions over and over and over again when they just need a break for a little while but we we don't have anybody else.

It highlights the need to raise up godly people who are ready to serve in the role of deacon at some point.

If we concentrate our efforts on raising the the discipleship in our church to the level to which we look around and we say hey we have needs in this body of Ministries that needs servants leading them. Who has been growing to the point where they are ready for that test? And then we're acknowledging what God's been doing with them. The opposite of that is what many churches try to do, which is either Lord. Please bring a somebody who can lead this ministry cuz we really haven't need and they look outside the church body to have that need met or they say well, we don't really have anybody that can do it. But yeah, she's willing let's put her in the spider. He is willing. We'll throw him in there and then those people get overwhelmed by the ministry capacities cuz they weren't actually ready to be able to lead in that way yet. I say yes because their potential may just not have been mad because I've been trained for it. Deacons and Elders do not magically appear. Deacons and Elders are raised up in the body life of the church. So we have a job to do. If we want to be able to grow to the point that God would have us grow to we need to work on training up men and women to be able to leave their own life first and foremost and then to be able to lead others and then be able to lead Ministries and then be able to lead structures over that.

Say well, it sounds like you're just talking about a leadership development program. Is that really what we need? No, because that's not at all what they ask for of the deacons in Acts 6 character and Spirit-filled living are not optional. They are an essential part of who makes that person qualified to be a deacon. So it's not just about learning stuff. It's not about learning leadership. It's about growing in Christ likeness.

Do they mention earlier when we looked at the 1st Timothy text the qualities that we look for character-wise in deacons and Elders are not qualities that we would say should only be present in deacons and Elders their character qualities that we would long to see in the life of every mature Christian in the church until we want to make sure that we're constantly working to raise up people in their walk with Christ to the level that they can get to and some of them will get to the point where they're ready to lead Ministries as deacons or to lead in teaching or shepherding as elders. order raising them up for

For us what are what are some of the tasks is historically that deacons have taken on the spit this idea of leading Ministries that free the elders up to do their tasks. There are several. I just want to point out a few that the deacons already do. baptism and Lord's Supper

The ordinances of the church have traditionally been handled by the deacons. Why is that a good thing? Oh because they're necessary for the life of the church, right? We're not just going to give up on doing Lord's Supper stop doing baptisms cuz we don't have time to get stuff ready for it. But the deacons lead in those things so that that Ministry is taken care of in the body life of the church.

Think one that lines that most clearly with X6 that the deacons currently do is benevolence. Lincoln's oversee all the funds that you give to benevolence and we transfer a particular portion of our budget over to benevolence every month so that they have the funds available to do this, but they know the needs of the people and much like in Acts 6 there their job is to make sure that those needs are being met to the degree that they can through the church.

Another role they currently have and deacons of Austin had is overseeing finances his kind of goes on along with benevolence and overseeing Human Resources reviews for something real practical that they do in other words. Like they evaluate my performance every year and they recommend my pay package right is something commonly. The deacons have done they said okay. Hey, there's some administrative tasks that can be done here that the elders don't have to work on themselves. We can take those on and get them done. We don't do it so much here. But commonly in the past facilities have been something that deacons have been in charge of a you know, you focus on the teaching the preaching will make sure that everything is going in the building. We have a facilities team. Does that here for us? But could a deacon be leading that perhaps

What else could they be doing look like to be a lead servant in the church. They can actually lead Ministries like Outreach or Administration Finance. They could work alongside the elders in teaching bass Ministry such as discipleship and Children and Youth Ministry and worship. There are things that that we do is a church body that need people who are gifted spiritual leaders to be able to direct what's going on.

Deacon's can be ordained to that service again the qualification the scripture seems to bring us this if they are godly people serving in Ministries in the church and leading them in such a way that it's freaking the elders up to do what their job is then they're doing the right thing.

now

that leaves a lot of room for us to talk about where we would go with deacons, but I want to take a moment to talk about deacons and Elders together. How do they relate to each other? Is it that Elders are sort of the top-tier the big dogs and the deacons are like the Elder wannabes. They they're not quite there yet, but they'll get there someday. No, it's not at all the way it works. How do we know this? Because of all the passages we've been looking at that acts 6 is one that highlighted.

Apostles that were in charge of the the preaching the ministry of the word did not look and say we need some guys to go do this cuz we don't want to do that, but they said is we want the church to thrive. So we want to make sure that there's folks and place you can meet all the different needs that we can't it's not a on top of and Below. It's a side-by-side filling in the differences in gifting to be able to do something so you can have a spiritually mature man or woman who is a gifted servant who will be a deacon for the rest of their life and they don't need to Aspire to become an elder cuz that's not where they're gifted. They're called to serve in a different way. And so they do You can have someone who comes along and it's gifted and teaching it is gifted and shepherding in his gifted and oversight who doesn't need to come through the ranks and be a deacon first, but there gifting is in a different area until we raise them up through something may be along the lines of an internship program to tell train them and what it looks like for them to be an elder. They're not in competition with each other either. There's not a level to which the deacons in the Elder should ever have to feel like it's us against them. Why because we are all under Christ. The congregation is raised up the two groups of leaders so that they don't look at each other as competition but compliments. They don't look at each other as a threat but is an opportunity to be able to serve alongside one another in ways that benefit everybody.

Now will Elders ever do things that deacons could do and we'll deacons ever do things that Elders could do the answer to that question is yes. And we know this because of the way everything works in life. There are sometimes were you serving an area where your particular gifted and that's great and then there's other times where a need comes up and you just need to meet it whether it's necessarily or gifting or not.

So if an elder is doing a Ministry where they're serving, is that a bad thing. No, not at all. Let me know Deacon can't teach no not at all. Just means that generally speaking. They know what Lane is there's to run in and they can run with that. now at this point in this particular sermon, some of you may be going. Okay. This sounds like a nice lecture and a nice discussion of Deacons. This is supposed to be a sermon supposed to be preaching Pastor. Where's the gospel fit if where's Jesus fit into this whole thing? Why is it that this is done for the glory of God?

Verse 7 exist in Acts 6 the Highlight how all of this seemingly practical stuff that we work through as a church body exist for a god glorifying end. Nothing we do as a church body should exist solely for an end in and of itself. It always should be pointing to the end that God receives Glory. Now I would ask this but I'm not sure I want to put everybody on the spot but I would ask. Do you know what the mission of our church is? We have said at this point in history, we believe God has called us to do something specific a mission. He has called us to fulfill that mission is as follows. The mission in Northwest Baptist Church is help more and more people become passionate worship Earth and gifted Servants of Jesus Christ. They haven't heard me say it again. This is good for you to know. The Mission Church is to help more and more people become passionate worshipers and gifted Servants of Jesus Christ. What is verse 7 of Acts 6 say happened when they took the time to spread leadership Out Among this new group of people. They were drawing into leadership. So that the church could do what it needed to do first seven the word of God continue to increase it didn't fall off that if they'd the the ones who were called to preach and teach the word didn't have to stop doing that. They could increase in their effectiveness and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many priests became obedient to the faith. For the new church getting leadership spread out in the hands of gifted people with blessed by God by allowing them to reach even more people more and more people becoming passionate worshippers and gifted Servants of Jesus Christ the church grew healthy because the leadership formed correctly. If they had left this issue on addressed if they had not done what they thought to do in bringing these 7 on board to deal with this issue. The word of God would have been hindered because the apostles would have had to deal with it themselves and I would have taken time away from things that they should have been doing. And it would either caused that to happen and not have been effective in in Outreach and in discipleship as they could have been or they would have neglected the problem altogether and disunity would have formed within the church body and it probably would have been a split fairly early on but instead. Because they went through this process the seemingly mundane process of bringing about other leaders in the church. What happened is the church grew in the word of God spread.

Is that something you can get on board with do you desire to see the mission of the church fulfilled do you long to see if your neighbors your friends your family your co-workers not just be people you're acquainted with but the fellow worshippers of Jesus. Do you desire those? Who is the you know around you who are new to the faith or still growing in the face at an early stage? Come to be gifted servants. Do you want to see them Thrive or just barely squeak their way into heaven? If it excites you to be a part of the evangelism and discipleship of a church, I would argue from this very text. You should be excited about the idea of figuring out. How do we structure leadership through? If God said, I want to grow this church you can do it. And it wouldn't be constrained. If God said I want to use Northwest to not only have a bigger impact here. But I want to raise up leaders to the point where there's places where there aren't gospel preaching churches to the level. They need to be right now. Let's raise up Northwest to send some of those churches out from it.

I'm about you. Excites me. It really Thrills me to think that our church body could be used for those purposes. We have a history of this ride. We've been around a long time. I think we're the 7th Southern Baptist Church in Wisconsin around quite a while.

God has a history of using Us in amazing ways in our community. Enter the larger Community around us for church planting and even through missions to the end of the Earth. I don't want to see that stop instead. I want to do everything we can is a church body to understand what God calls us to so that we are effective in pushing forward in what God has for us. So the goal of all of our discussion has been that God's glory would be put on display in his church. That's what it all comes down to. This is not just a discussion to be had for the sake of figuring stuff out is a discussion to be had so that he can receive Glory. Leave me to desk. What should we be doing this week? What should we do now at the close of the sermon to prepare ourselves for that?

We've been praying God if there's people who you want to raise up as as Elders give us wisdom on that if there's those that are lead servants we prayed for them. I hope some of you actually contacted some of the people who lead in service in the church and encouraged him this week. If you didn't pay you got another week here go ahead and do that. But this morning I want us to take a few moments and I want us to pray for God's glory to be shown through our church and whatever it is that's coming next. Made it easy to get bogged down in this covid-19 Cinco. It's never going to end it's going to end eventually it's going to end something else may come along. We don't know. the mission of the church thrives regardless and our church can be as effective at reaching our neighborhood in the nation's now as it ever could if we're committed to figuring out how it's going to happen. God can get as much glory in times of trial as he can in times of victory. So I wanted to take a few moments here and I want us to pray Lord. How are you going to get Glory from this from me personally. How you going to Corey from me? What is it that I need to do in life to the Church of the congregation member as a possible Deacon as a possible Elder, whatever it is you have for me. How do I bring glory to God and then secondly, how do we do it or what's it going to look like for us as we move ahead and whatever. The next stage is for our church. What are we going to do that? What's it going to look like? I want you to pray and in your prayers pray big. We should work on developing a big vision for what it would look like for God to move thoroughly through our church.

The team wants to come up in and provide a little music during this time. That's great. I'm going to give us a little bit extra. I really want us to take us some time to pray about this so you can have a good five minutes for some of those going to feel like 50 for others to be like, oh I felt like 30 seconds, but I really want you to take some time and pray how would this look in me and in us in a few minutes? I'll close. Let's go to Lord in prayer.