The Deacon

Summary

R.C. Reed, professor of ecclesiastical history and polity at Columbia Theological Seminary, published this article in The Union Seminary Magazine in 1903. Under six heads he treats the office’s origin in Acts 6, its confinement to the church’s temporal interests (against the episcopal use of the diaconate as an apprenticeship for preachers), its importance, its qualifications, its possibilities, and its relation to the session, which he says must keep the final word even on finances.

Writing with a dry wit, he reckons a good deacon officially worth two good elders and laments the church’s habit of rewarding such men by electing them elders and so retiring them from the work they do best.

He contrasts the Jerusalem church, which chose its most Spirit-filled men for the office, with congregations that use it to compliment prominent families.

Excerpt

To avoid friction between members, to promote happy pastorates, and to develope the grace of liberality, nothing is more important than a good deacon, one who can be patient, who can smile at unreasonable people, and speak a soft word to turn away wrath, one who is willing to give time and take trouble on himself, and make himself “all things to all men” in order to promote the interests of his Master’s cause.

A good deacon is the pastor’s most valuable ally. Officially he is worth two good elders. The one trouble about a good deacon is that the church, desiring to compliment him, will very soon elect him an elder, and thus place him on the retired list. His splendid gifts will at once fall into innocuous desuetude. “For they that have served well as deacons, gain to themselves a good standing, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

Happy is that church which has such deacons, and whose deacons decline to give up that “good standing” for another office in which their talents will probably not be so usefully employed.

The Deacon

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