Mortification of Spin on the Diaconate
The Mortification of Spin podcast invited me and my friend David Nakhla to discuss diaconal ministry in the OPC.
You can listen here.
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited, auto-generated transcript of the episode. Filler words have been trimmed for readability and the conversation between Carl and Todd in the opening banter may have a few mis-attributed lines.
Narrator: Welcome to Mortification of Spin, a casual conversation about things that count with Carl Trueman and Todd Pruitt. A podcast of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Let’s join this week’s conversation.
Carl Trueman: Welcome to Mortification of Spin. My name’s Carl Trueman, I’m a professor at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania. And I’m here as always with my friend and co-host, the Reverend Todd Pruitt, who is pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Harrisonburg in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Good to see you, Todd.
Todd Pruitt: Good to see you, Carl. You know, every once in a while, you get all of that information correct.
Carl Trueman: I did.
Todd Pruitt: On those days when you do that, I feel like, you know, it’s a brand new day. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, Carl got all of my information correct. Here’s a man that I communicate with almost on a daily basis, and he still sometimes forgets some of those basic things. So I’m feeling really good about myself today.
Carl Trueman: I’m glad you’re feeling affirmed because we need you to feel that you are in a safe place today, because I’m a little worried, I’m a little concerned. I think for the first time in many years, the OPC is going to heavily outnumber the PCA on this podcast. Because we have two special guests. Our guests are David Nakhla and Tim Hopper. David is the administrator of the Committee on Diaconal Ministries in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and Tim is a member of that committee and also a deacon within the OPC. We brought them on because we’ve talked a lot over the years about the eldership, the role of pastors, the duties of congregants. I’m not sure that we’ve ever talked about the role of the diaconate. Todd, do you recall?
Todd Pruitt: I don’t think so. I mean, we’ve mentioned it here and there, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a program where we’ve really focused on this office of ministry.
Carl Trueman: Yeah. And yet it’s an extremely important office. Often, of course, treated in the popular imagination like a sort of consolation prize for somebody who isn’t an elder, or a training ground for the elder. That is not the biblical position. So we brought David and Tim on today because we want to talk about the biblical grounding of the diaconal ministry, what it looks like in the OPC, what it might look like in your local church, and how really it is a critical, vital part of a healthy church in the 21st century. So David and Tim, thanks for giving us your time.
David Nakhla: Our pleasure.
Tim Hopper: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Todd Pruitt: And it’s a very impressive gun cabinet behind you as well. So we know we’re dealing with a serious OP guy at this point.
Carl Trueman: Yeah, yeah, I just want everybody to know that even though we’re not in the same room, if I’m ever in the same room with anybody from the OPC, I’m going to feel well guarded. So that’s a good thing.
Carl Trueman: Well, David, perhaps we’ll start with you. Some of our listeners from different denominations or traditions may have different understandings of what the diaconate is. Could you outline for us what you think the biblical grounding for the diaconate is, and how that is manifested in the OPC today?
David Nakhla: Sure. We like to look back to Acts 6 as the place where the diaconate was established. The setting there, if you recall, was that the brothers in the church were concerned that some of the widows were not being cared for. The apostles agreed that it would not be good for them to set aside the ministry of Word and prayer to wait on tables. And yet at the same time, they saw that this was a very important ministry—the ministry of mercy, the ministry of compassion. And so in their wisdom, by divine inspiration, they asked the church to set aside seven men, godly men, who would oversee the ministry of mercy to the widows at that time. That’s where we see the origination of the office. The qualifications are then set forth in 1 Timothy, right next to the qualifications for elder. I oftentimes, in simple form, think of it as: the elders are those concerned for the spiritual needs of the flock, and the deacons are concerned for the physical needs of that same flock.
Todd Pruitt: It was interesting. I was with a group of officers—elders and deacons—from a Presbyterian church in Leesburg, Virginia, recently and just had a great time with these brothers. One of the things in my own preparation and sharing some things with them was going back to the passage you mentioned, David, as well as some other passages of Scripture in descriptions of diaconal ministry. There’s not a ton of it in the New Testament, but enough that we know several key things. It was a great reminder for me that when the office of deacon is created, it’s created by the handpicked representatives of Jesus, the apostles. Therefore, it’s established by Jesus, because it’s being established through him by his apostles. This is an office that comes by way of apostolic authority, meaning it comes to us from Jesus. And in a very real way, the office of deacon, like the office of elder, is a major means by which Jesus loves his church. It’s a major means by which Jesus cares for his church. That’s an extraordinary thing to think about if you bear that office, or if you’re a church member who’s not an office bearer but benefits from the ministry of deacons. What you’re benefiting from is a God-given means by which Jesus cares for and loves the church. What a great calling that is.
Tim Hopper: Amen.
Todd Pruitt: And sobering too, I would imagine. I’ve never been a deacon, and I’m sure it’s quite sobering when you think about it in those terms—that the Lord’s placed these responsibilities in our hands. It’s a great thing, but a sober thing, isn’t it?
Tim Hopper: It’s a joy in many ways. It is certainly sobering, but it’s a joy that—you know, we’re all called to follow Christ in his service. Christ, the one who came not to be “deaconed,” but to deacon, to serve—we’re all called to follow in those steps. But to be particularly set apart, to set an example and to serve and to deny ourselves for the sake of Christ—it’s a great privilege for us.
Todd Pruitt: Yeah. Carl, I wanted to ask one more thing. We’re going to be talking some about deacon being a role of service. We also know that it is a formal office and there are certain leadership functions. There are some leadership decisions that deacons have to make. You guys aren’t just there sweeping up. When I think about what the deacons do at our church in terms of helping people—making decisions about the distribution of funds, providing financial counsel, making calls on some of these things—before we get into the bigger bulk of the types of service that the deacon is called to render: there are ways in which being a deacon crosses into that role of spiritual leadership, not in the same sense as the office of elder, but it’s still there. One of the reasons why, for instance, the PCA—and I would guess the OPC is the same way—why we believe this office is reserved for men. One, that’s the indication from Scripture. And when people object and say, “Well, no, it’s just a servant role”—well, it is a servant role, but there’s a spiritual-leading component to being a deacon. Isn’t that the case? And what does that look like?
Tim Hopper: One observation—maybe in many ways through experience—when people have particular diaconal needs and they come to you (or you seek them out) for financial help or sickness or various things, ways in which we can serve them, how frequently that is going to be tied to a spiritual need that potentially is a greater need than the financial need. We’ve all been in various times in our lives when the finances are tight, and that’s a time when we have to trust the Lord. When something disastrous happens, we do have very real physical needs, but those are almost always going to be a spiritual test for us as well. That’s an opportunity for deacons to be offering counsel and wisdom. I think you’re very much hitting the nail on the head there, Todd.
Carl Trueman: When we think about deacons, the reason we’ve got you two guys on here is there’s a sort of twofold dimension to your ministries. There’s the local ministry, but also David coordinates a kind of denomination-wide diaconal ministry as well. So sort of the same question to each of you—Tim first, then David. Tim, tell us about the typical work that a local church deacon does locally. Then David, perhaps you’d like to talk about the distinctive connectionalism that you’ve tried to develop and what sort of work you do in terms of coordinating the denominational deacon, not just the local church deacon. So Tim, fire away.
Tim Hopper: Sure. There has been some amount of debate historically in Reformed churches as to the scope of the deacon’s service. In the OPC, our Book of Church Order explicitly gives deacons care over the ministry of mercy within the church. So these issues of financial needs, sickness, loneliness, ways in which we can show mercy in our own congregation. In many churches, including my own, we would also see the role of the deacon as really overseeing and facilitating anything that’s going to enable the ministers and elders to focus on the call that the Lord’s given them—Acts 6 talks about preaching and praying. So in our church, we see our role as certainly this ministry of mercy, but also just keeping things running at the church. We oversee most of the finances, we keep the building running, we do most of the administrative work. Not necessarily that the deacons do all that ourselves, but where that’s delegated, it’s delegated through the deacons. We all know pastors of small churches who end up with a huge amount of that work on their own plates. Certainly sometimes that’s necessary. But I would at least see the ideal as the deacons serving the church by freeing the session to their spiritual office.
David Nakhla: Yeah, and dovetailing off of that a little bit, Tim—going back to Acts 6, what happened there was twofold. It was ensuring that the care of the poor and needy was happening, but it was also alleviating those temporal concerns from the concerns of the elders. So it really was twofold. And that is very much what hopefully continues in our churches.
One of the things that I like to caution deacons on is that oftentimes property matters can consume and overly consume such that we neglect the people. Mercy is something that you demonstrate toward people, not property. So that people-versus-property distinction is, I think, always important and something I’d love to see deacons grow in their focus of—of people and less on property. Property will always consume. And sometimes property is a little bit easier to deal with than people.
Todd Pruitt: That’s right. It doesn’t talk back. It doesn’t get itself into moral catastrophes. Exactly.
You know, one thing I’ve told the deacons and the elders at the church I serve, I’ve told them this a couple of times in all sincerity: if I was a layman and not employed by the church, making my living from the gospel as Paul says—I don’t want to say that I wouldn’t, but I’m not sure I’d be willing to volunteer the kind of time that the men I see on our session and on our diaconate volunteer. I want to believe I would; I’m not sure I would. And I say that not just in a sober assessment of myself. When I see the men I serve with, they are guys who serve the church. It’s genuinely moving to me the way I see these guys serve the church.
We think of elders oftentimes as involved in church discipline cases and in catastrophes in people’s lives. Our deacons are neck deep in catastrophes in people’s lives too, because when there are various needs—rent, bills, financial—inevitably (as Tim, you alluded to earlier) there’s a spiritual component to that, there are relational components. So frequently on a weekly basis, our deacons are having to navigate emotionally, spiritually demanding situations in people’s lives, which is exhausting at times. It’s exhausting spiritually. Sometimes it’s physically exhausting because it takes so much time, and you have to be at the church yet again for another meeting in the evening to figure out X, Y, and Z.
I want to ask both of you brothers: how do you care for your own spiritual life, tending the garden of your family, so to speak? What are things that you do to keep yourself where you need to be spiritually, because it is exhausting? The enemy hates the church, and so who’s he going to target? Well, everybody, but particularly the men who are called to sacred office. How do you stay tenderhearted? What are the components that go into your continuing to have the spiritual energy to do what you do?
David Nakhla: Do you mind if I go back to Carl’s question first?
Carl Trueman: I don’t mind.
David Nakhla: With regards to what we do at the denominational level, Carl: as a Presbyterian church, we’re a connected body. We talk about the Orthodox Presbyterian Church as one church—there are many local churches, but it’s really one church. I like to say the diaconal ministry is predominantly local. That’s predominantly where deacons are serving. But there are needs that sometimes exceed the capacity of a local church. An example of that is a disaster, which is typically a regional event. That’s where you’ve got multiple churches affected, or a church affected at a magnitude beyond the scope of that one congregation to respond to. Helpfully, the OPC established—all the way back to almost the beginning of the OPC in 1947—the Committee on Diaconal Ministries, with a mandate to oversee those areas of need that exceed the province of a local church.
So we serve to coordinate the diaconal ministry. We coordinate deacons. That happens in the area of disaster response, in encouraging deacons. We’ve been able to hold national conferences for deacons. We’ve worked to establish that network through our presbyteries. Every presbytery has a diaconal committee, and that committee is our connection to the local deacons. We encourage presbyteries to be reaching out to their deacons, to hold conferences for their deacons, to network their deacons. A lot of times our pastors and elders get to know each other through presbytery meetings, but our deacons don’t have an avenue to get to know one another. We often joke that the deacons have to fly to a national conference in Chicago to meet the deacon 20 miles down the road. That’s certainly been the experience of many. Our sense is that the more our deacons are connected, the better they can serve the whole church. And slowly we’ve begun to see that happen.
If there are needs in a local church that exceed the capacity of that local church, the deacons can bubble that need up to the presbytery diaconal committee, and that committee can spread that need across the diaconal resources of the whole presbytery, where the whole presbytery is essentially meeting the needs in one church. Disaster response is a helpful example of that, but that happens in other situations too—in the life of a family who’s going through a tremendous crisis where they can’t work, that type of thing. From what I’ve seen, it’s just been a beautiful picture of Presbyterianism in action, where it’s not just meeting together for difficult spiritual matters, but meeting together to minister through love and compassion toward one another. That’s a bit of an answer to Carl’s previous question.
Carl Trueman: Tim, going to Todd’s question—how do you keep yourself spiritually vital? Being an office bearer in the church, certainly as an elder or a pastor, when you know what’s really going on, can be very, very depressing and make you very cynical if you’re not careful. How do you keep yourself spiritually vibrant and sensitive?
Tim Hopper: I mean, everyone describes me as vibrant and sensitive, so I’ll see if I can answer that question. The gun cabinet would certainly indicate that, I think.
So I’ve served as a deacon now for ten-plus years. I particularly remember this in the early days as a deacon, sitting in church and feeling the sense of responsibility just to make sure everyone was okay, everyone was comfortable, everyone was safe, things were working the way they should. As well as looking around the church and realizing I knew more about people than I’d ever known before—and sometimes you learn things about people you wish you hadn’t learned. For me, a big answer to this question has been learning the discipline and diligence to be able to be attentive on the Lord’s Day and worship him, and not allow all those distractions to pull me away. At the time I was single; now I have three, almost four little kids, so I have plenty of other distractions. But the diaconal needs needed to not remove the need for me to come and sit at my Savior’s feet and worship him and hear from his word.
A practical way our diaconate has worked with that over the years has been, as David described, delegating some of the things that we were responsible for on Sundays to others in the church, so we didn’t have to be busy, busy, busy all the time on Sunday.
On a personal level, the fellowship that we have—my church is blessed with five deacons—and just the fellowship we have with one another, to encourage one another and know the struggles each other has. We can sometimes see the cynicism arise in your brother, and we can take turns giving each other a kick in the pants when we’re facing that.
And at home, in personal worship and family worship, besides just the general benefit of that, really studying the character of our Lord and Savior and recognizing the love that he had and the calling that we’ve been called to, to follow in his footsteps. We realize the sacrifice we’ve been asked to give is nothing compared to his. That’s really helpful for me—to remember the very spiritual aspect of this office, the Christward direction of this office. That’s something I try to keep in the front of my mind.
Todd Pruitt: That’s good. It’s helpful. Thank you.
David Nakhla: Emulating the deacon of deacons, as Tim’s alluding to, is a great privilege for deacons—to seek to demonstrate that before the flock, even in their service. I think that ministry or serving in the church—whether as a deacon, elder, or pastor/minister/teaching elder—one of the biggest qualifications is to manage your own household well. Probably the most likely way to disqualify yourself from ministry is to lose sight of that. Managing your household well manifests itself in physical ways—just orderliness, being organized with your time, organized with your property, organized with your finances. But there’s also a spiritual side to that too. Attentiveness to that, and not losing sight of it, is very important.
Todd Pruitt: Yeah. You know, one really important thing that churches can do is provide good training for deacons. I don’t think enough can be said about how vital that is. It’s vital for elders, it’s vital for deacons. What have you brothers seen has been most helpful, that you would encourage churches to do as they think about deacon training? What do you think are essential components to that? Either one of you can go first.
Tim Hopper: This is a topic that’s on our minds. David and I, with a couple of other men, serve on the diaconal training subcommittee of our Committee on Diaconal Ministries, and we’re thinking a lot—and have been thinking, even before my time on the committee—about how to encourage our churches to provide resources for them. Something we often recommend to people, if nothing else: get your deacons or your prospective deacons to read Van Dam’s book The Deacon. I think we’ve interviewed him on our podcast—which I guess we haven’t mentioned, we also have a podcast for our committee.
Todd Pruitt: That’s Jean-Claude Van Damme, by the way, who wrote it.
Tim Hopper: Yeah, Jean-Claude Van Damme. But I think that’s the single resource—if you only get one thing on the diaconate, that’s really the best resource.
As David mentioned, we do these conferences at a denominational level. One of the things that’s come out of that is many of those conferences have been recorded, the lectures and other resources are available on our website, opccdm.org, that men can go through together—sit and watch a talk together, or watch it at home and come together and discuss. We’ve covered a huge breadth of topics, and there’s a lot of good material from a variety of speakers available there.
In the last year and a half I guess, we’ve started this podcast called The Reformed Deacon. As far as we know, the first podcast oriented toward deacons in this Reformed tradition. I think in minimal ways it’s OPC specific. I think it’s going to be very applicable across denominations, even non-Presbyterian denominations. We’re having a whole variety of topics—monthly episodes that come out monthly, or sometimes even more frequently, on various diaconal matters.
That maybe doesn’t perfectly answer “what do churches do?”, but we are trying to produce resources, point people in the right direction. We have interest in the future of how to maybe even make that more organized and systematic for people. It’s on our minds, and if people want to talk about that, we’d love to get in touch and talk about what churches need. Did I miss anything, David?
David Nakhla: No, that’s a good summary. OPCCDM.org—lots of resources there—and the podcast are both helpful resources. It’s an area we’re definitely interested in working on as well.
Todd Pruitt: I would just emphasize what you mentioned earlier, Tim—that I am quite sure that whether you’re Presbyterian or Baptist, whether you’re OPC, PCA, or Southern Baptist, there’s going to be plenty of information there that’s applicable across the board in terms of how deacons function well. In any healthy church, whether you’re a Baptist church or a Presbyterian church, you’re going to have deacons doing what Scripture calls them to do. So I’m quite certain that the materials you men have referenced here will be helpful to a broad range of churches and to a broad number of men who really want to be equipped well. I’m really glad you’re doing that.
Just in wrapping up, I would just say: church, be thankful for your deacons. Pray for these brothers. We do hear a lot of “pray for your elders, pray for your pastors”—please keep doing that, but pray for your deacons. This is a Christ-given office to the church. That means, among other things, these brothers need to be held up in prayer. If you are a church with faithful deacons, you are blessed. Oftentimes you may not always recognize the work of your deacons because they’re not up leading elements of worship. They’re making sure the building is in working order, that the family in crisis has the needed resources. They’re doing so many things that aren’t trumpeted because a lot of what they do has to be held in confidence for the sake of families. So I guarantee they’re doing more than you’re aware of. Pray for them, encourage them, give thanks to God for them. You’d be amazed at how far an encouraging word on a Sunday morning goes. These brothers would be very much appreciative of that, I’m sure.
David and Tim, we’re thankful for your ministry as deacons. As a man who weekly benefits from the labors of the deacons of the church I belong to, I know there are lots of pastors out there who feel the same way. So thank you for being with us. David Nakhla and Tim Hopper of the OPC—you know, the OPC is doing some good things out there, Carl. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the OPC is doing a few good things. I mean, it’s not the PCA, but you’re still doing some good things. We’re grateful for the partnership in the gospel.
If you’re one of our listeners, please go to our website mortificationofspin.org. If you’d like to make a donation to the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals so that they can continue to provide good content for you, please do that. And again, thanks to David Nakhla and Tim Hopper, our guests. Really appreciate the conversation. And to our listeners, thank you so much for being with us, and we look forward to being with you next time.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to Mortification of Spin, a podcast of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. For more on topics like this, visit mortificationofspin.org, where you can find other articles by Carl and Todd, browse the archive of past episodes, and make a donation. We’ll talk to you next time on Mortification of Spin.