May Deacons Manage the Church's Money?

All thirteen NAPARC church orders give their deacons the money collected for the needy. No denomination disputes that floor. The disagreement starts with the next dollar: the general budget, the building, the pastor’s salary, the deed to the property. Some orders confine deacons to the benevolence fund. Others hand them the whole temporal life of the congregation, then post an elder at the door.

This post follows the money through each order, the first in a series examining, axis by axis, how the NAPARC churches define the deacon’s office. The texts come from the same governing documents surveyed in What the NAPARC Church Orders Say the Deacon Is.

Five orders stop at the benevolence fund

The four Dutch-tradition orders give deacons the offerings for the needy and nothing else. The Canadian Reformed Church Order (Art. 23) charges deacons “to gather and manage the offerings and distribute them in Christ’s name according to need.” The URCNA Church Order (Art. 15) uses nearly identical words. The Free Reformed (Art. 25) and Heritage Reformed (Art. 25) orders, both descendants of the Church Order of Dort, assign “the office peculiar to the deacons”: to collect alms and contributions of charity, distribute them to the poor, and “exercise care that the alms are not misused.”

These orders assign the rest of the church’s money to someone else. The URCNA vests “exclusive control over all of its temporalities” in the Consistory (Art. 33). The Free Reformed supplements refer to a church treasurer or business administrator working under the Consistory, keeping books separate from the deacons’. In the Canadian Reformed order, the minister’s support belongs to “the consistory with the deacons” as a joint body (Art. 10), not to the deacons.

The fifth, the Reformed Church of Quebec, is not Dutch but a French-language church of both Presbyterian and continental parentage. It adds one duty to the benevolence pattern. Its deacons distribute “les dons en argent ou en nature” (gifts in money or in kind) and also carry “la formation des membres en ce qui concerne les biens matériels”: the instruction of members regarding material possessions (Ordre et discipline, 2.4.1). Management of the parish, “la gestion,” belongs to the elders’ council (2.2.1), and the congregation determines the annual budget at its general assembly (5.5).

The Korean orders add the general finances, in joint hands

The two Korean-heritage orders extend the deacon’s reach to the church’s general finances. KAPC deacons are “to collect and to distribute relief funds and to manage the church finances” under the supervision and authority of the session (Form of Government, ch. 6, art. 3). KPCA deacons are “responsible for the church’s service, administration, finance, and benevolence” under the session’s guidance (Book of Church Order, Art. 74).

The deacons handle this money not through a board of their own but as members of a joint council. KAPC finances run through the chejikhoe, a council of session members and deacons chaired by the senior pastor (ch. 19, art. 2); the session, not the deacons, manages the real property (ch. 8, art. 6). The KPCA equivalent is the Officers Meeting of pastors, elders, deacons, and kwonsas, which executes the budget and manages ordinary assets (Arts. 153, 175), while the session manages the church’s fundamental property (Art. 170) and the congregational meeting reserves the purchase and disposal of principal assets to itself (Art. 152).

The RCUS gives deacons the temporal affairs, minus the deed

The Reformed Church in the United States charges its deacon “to aid in securing the funds necessary for the support of the Church in its various activities” and “to attend to the temporal affairs of the congregation” (Constitution, Art. 45): a general-funds remit stated as a duty. One clause holds the exception. The temporal affairs exclude “such as are specified in Article 12,” and Article 12 vests the church’s property in its trustees. The RCUS deacon raises and spends; the trustees hold title.

Three orders write the deacons a full charter

The broadest deacon-finance charters in NAPARC belong to the ARP, the PCA, and the RPCNA, and each pairs the grant with a check.

The ARP Form of Government gives its Diaconate the fullest list:

• stewardship education (5.6)
• the planning and receipt of all offerings (5.7)
• “the care of the general property of the congregation, both real and personal” (5.8)
• oversight of the congregational treasurer, with a mandated annual financial review (5.11)
• preparation of the congregational budget (3.24)

The check: the budget and “other important financial decisions require the approval of the Session” (5.17), and “the Session shall have the authority to void or amend any action of the Diaconate” (5.18).

The PCA Book of Church Order makes the deacons’ duty “to develop the grace of liberality in the members of the church, to devise effective methods of collecting the gifts of the people,” and gives them “the care of the property of the congregation, both real and personal” (9-2). The Session holds the counterweight: in “matters of special importance affecting the property of the church, they cannot take final action without the approval of the Session and consent of the congregation” (9-2), and where trustees or a corporation hold title, their powers “must not infringe upon the powers or duties of the Session or the Board of Deacons” (25-6, 25-7).

The RPCNA Constitution assigns its board of deacons the whole ministry of stewardship (Directory for Church Government 3.III):

• “Overseeing the work of the treasurer”
• “Securing an annual audit of all the congregation’s accounts”
• “Preparing an annual budget in conjunction with the session”
• “Overseeing the maintenance of property”

The benevolence money stays in a distinct mercy fund (5.3). “Financial policies and the development of stewardship should be the responsibility of the session,” and the session adopts the budget (5.3). Where civil law requires trustees, the trustee board “may be identical with or chosen from the Board of Deacons” (2.4).

Two orders permit what they do not require

The OPC and the Presbyterian Reformed Church define a narrow duty and a wide permission. The OPC board of deacons “shall collect and disburse funds for the relief of the needy”; the next sentence adds only that “other forms of service for the church may also be committed to the deacons” (Form of Government, XI.4). The session supervises, may require the board to reconsider any action, “or may, if necessary, overrule it” (XI.5), and the Directory for Worship assigns oversight of all offerings to the session (II.B.4).

The Presbyterian Reformed Church keeps the deacon’s own office to collections for the poor, then adds the widest permission in NAPARC: “A session may entrust the deacons with the reception and distribution of the whole church property” (Form of Church Government, Art. 14). The grant descends from the Scottish tradition, and so does the body that may receive it: the order’s Deacons’ Council of pastor, ruling elders, and deacons together (Art. 27), on the model of the Free Church of Scotland’s Deacons’ Court.

The thirteen at a glance

The table omits benevolence funds: all thirteen assign them to the deacons as a duty. “General funds” means operating income and budget beyond benevolence; “property” means care or management of real property, not title.

Six orders assign deacons a general-funds role as a duty (counting the Korean bodies, whose deacons act through joint councils), two more permit it, and five confine the office to benevolence.

Two patterns hold

First, every broad charter pairs the grant with a session gate: approval, veto, policy, or adoption of the budget. The Korean orders go further, dissolving the deacons-only body altogether and running the money through councils the pastor chairs. Second, the orders that keep deacons at the benevolence fund still name a manager for the rest: the Consistory, a treasurer, the congregation. Across all thirteen, the deacon is not the final authority over the money.

Church order editions cited: ARP FOG (Sept. 2023), CanRC (Synod 2025), ERQ (current at erq.ca), FRCNA (2025), HRC (2018 printing), KAPC (current at kapc.org, Korean), KPCA (2024 English ed.), OPC (2015 and current), PCA (2026), PresRC (1996, archived), RCUS (2017), RPCNA (2021 printing), URCNA (10th ed., 2024).