If You Are a Deacon

Nathan Trice, pastor of Matthews Orthodox Presbyterian Church in North Carolina, wrote this Ordained Servant article to renew deacons’ sense of the weight of their office. From Acts 6 he draws two purposes for the diaconate: broadly, to protect the elders’ ministry of Word and prayer by taking on any delegated leadership concern, from mercy funds to church property; particularly, to lead the church’s mercy ministry as the deed-hand that complements the elders’ word-hand.

Deacons are servant-leaders, willing to do the most menial tasks yet authorized to direct the whole congregation’s involvement in them.

Trice then traces God’s concern for the poor from the Mosaic law through the prophets to the Messiah, and closes by arguing that diaconal ministry rightly extends beyond the congregation, adorning the gospel to the world, a conviction the OPC embodies in its missionary deacons and disaster response.