Concerning Women as Deacons
The congregation I attend recently put out a letter inviting nominations for elders and deacons and gave a list of all the men who regularly attend to choose from. I wrote this up as a means to encourage the leadership to include women in these roles.
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Dear X and X,
I wanted to bring your attention to a major missed opportunity in the recent call for elder and deacon nominations. The relaunch of our congregation is the perfect opportunity to examine and change our methods, and I strongly feel that including women in the role of deacon is the perfect first place to start.
This change is not only fully supported biblically, but it is the right move to invite and recognize women to be a more central part of the power and decision-making structures of our congregation.
I’ve offered a few reasons why I feel this is of the utmost importance.
The deacon in the Bible
The term deacon is transliterated from the Greek word diakonos. This word is used 29 times in the Bible. Mostly it is translated as “minister” or “servant”, specifically as when Jesus says, “Whoever would be great among you must be your diakonos.” Every time Jesus uses the term, it carries this meaning of a servant.
Of the 29 times, only twice is it in reference to a specific church position. In Philippians 1:1, Paul directs his letter to the overseers and diakonos of the congregation there. The second time is in 1 Timothy in the passage you quoted in your letter.
In his writings, Paul specifically calls three people a diakonos in a way that suggests they have an appointed role in a local congregation: Phoebe (Rom 16:1), Epaphras (Col 1:7), and Tychicus (Ephesians 6:21).
Only one variant of the word appears in Acts when the twelve apostles say, “It is not right for us to neglect the word of God and diakonein” (usually translated “wait on tables”).
The word is not mentioned at all in the Titus passage quoted in your letter.
All of this says that there is no Biblical mandate for having an official office of deacon at a local congregation. It was most certainly not created by Jesus, and does not appear at all normative in the early church.
Where it does seem to be an officially recognized position, authoritative lexicons limit the meaning of this office to “one who, by virtue of the office assigned to him by the church, cares for the poor and has charge of and distributes the money collected for their use”.
Despite the lack of biblical backing, we have the freedom to create such roles and fill them as we see fit. However, we should not view them as a mandatory biblical position.
Current standing of deacons at our congregation
Based on the size of our congregation, it makes sense to have officially recognized leaders of certain ministries who can focus on their administration while the elders attend to praying and studying the word.
Though I am not deeply aware of our congregation’s leadership structures, I don’t think our current role of deacons purely “biblical” in the ways explained earlier.
Just as offering the opinion of an outsider, the current role of deacon at our congregation seems to be either given to those men who lead certain areas (e.g. the grounds crew), or as a way to give an official title to younger men who are not yet mature enough for the role of elder.
While the first seems like a sensible role, the second seems to be an unnecessary title of authority that does not help either the congregation or these men.
Appointing capable people as leaders of certain ministries and granting them authority to administer as they see fit seems like a good practice. Moving to a place where deacons are appointed leaders of specific ministries (specifically those related to distributing funds to the poor) seems like a good model.
Women in leadership in the Bible
As disciples of Jesus, we should first look to how he treated women. Jesus never passed any regulations about if or how a woman should serve a congregation. Our Lord greatly elevated the role and status of women on many occasions. He had a regular group of women who served alongside him as he moved from place to place. He defended women from attacks from religious men, and went out of his way to show their equality.
Finally, the gospels clearly show that Jesus chose women to be the very first ones to communicate to the world that he had risen. It is clear that Jesus had no issue with having women be a fundamental part of his ministry.
Throughout the book of Acts, many women are mentioned as being leaders in local congregations and performing important serving, mentoring, and teaching roles (notably Priscilla, Lydia, Mary (Mark’s mother), and Tabitha).
Paul has several women that he mentions as important leaders, of course including Phoebe, whom he specifically calls a diakonos. In the 1 Timothy text, you have left out verses 11–13. While many translations use the word gunikas as “wives”, a quick reading of any commentary will show that there is considerable scholarly debate as whether it could be translated as women instead and refer to women who serve in the role of deacons.
Women in leadership at our congregation
Women undoubtedly play an extremely important role in the life of our congregation. They are leading at all levels and boldly and faithfully serve in ways far and above what most men do. Yet, we have never given them any public or official recognition as leaders of our congregation. Also, if the role of deacon is meant to be a “servant” of the congregation, then why not include those who are serving in such a large capacity? It seems to water-down the role of deacon itself.
It could easily be said that, despite the culture they lived in, the early church was more egalitarian than our congregation currently is. While it is undeniable that women have played a central role in the work of our congregation, if a historian were to come and write about it, what documentation would they find for all the work of these women? If they were to examine our website, our official documents, and our press releases, how many times would they find a woman mentioned as an appointed leader of any service?
Become more inviting to the unchurched
During the relaunch sermon for our congregation, the very first change that was communicated was “become a people who are inviting to those who are unchurched”. If this is true, there is no more way to be repulsive to the unchurched than to parade the appointed and recognized “leaders” of our congregation in a few weeks and have only white men present on the stage. Yet, it is clear to anyone that without the support of our women, we would cease to exist at all.
This kind of falseness is easily seen through by those outside our culture. Any visiting person can pick up on this extremely quickly and is often actively looking for signs of egalitarian power structures and diversity, and we fail miserably at both.
The only people in our current culture who would be comfortable at seeing only men as recognized leaders in a congregation are those who are already heavily churched and these people have plenty of other places to attend.
The most recent sermon concerned reconciling relationships, one of the primary ones being between women and men. Many women who have served faithfully as a part of our congregation have had to endure being kept out of meetings and decision-making meetings due only to their gender.
Publicly appointing women as ministry leaders in no way changes our message, motivation, or mission.
Our blind spots in leadership
Finally, it is my firm belief that our refusal to cede any power and authority to women has crippled our leadership ability. Because we deny women the right to lead with authority, we have often made poor decisions, not seen additional context, not been welcoming to others, been more focused on our own congregation than the world outside our walls, and so on.
I deeply believe that immediately introducing women as appointed, unrestricted, promoted, respected authorities would lead to a much healthier congregation and would unlock the momentum struggle our congregation currently finds itself in.
In summary, this is a great chance to make a positive change to out methods that:
- is entirely biblically defensible
- reconciles relationships with women in our congregation, and
- makes our congregation more culturally inviting to others
I urge you to treat this matter as of utmost importance and do not delay this decision for another year in order to take things slowly. There is no biblical prohibition to appoint women as ministry leaders and we have dozens of women who are immediately ready for these kinds of roles and who require nothing but the command to go and serve faithfully.
Should you choose to adopt these changes, I would be happy to recommend several people who would assist in making the positive transition.
Should you choose to continue on with the current model of excluding women, I would ask for a detailed response as to the reasoning. I’m also happy to gather together a diverse group of people to vocalize support for this measure.
Your brother in Christ,
Neil
