The Deacons

This short extract comes from John Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances, the church constitution of Geneva, reprinted in the first issue of Ordained Servant. Calvin recognizes the ancient church’s two kinds of deacons, one deputed to receive and hold goods for the poor and one to tend the sick, and revives the pattern in Geneva’s procurators and hospitalers.

The regulations that follow are concrete: keep the public hospital in good order, lodge the sick apart from the aged poor and orphans, retain a doctor and surgeon for the poor of the city, send ministers to inspect quarterly, and post an official at the church doors to enforce the prohibition of begging.

Reading it shows how Calvin made the diaconate a working institution rather than an ideal.