Deacons - David Bercot

Lesson Transcript

So this morning we're going to be talking primarily about deacons. We will mention elders as as well. And while we're discussing it, as Justin mentioned, we're looking at appointing some deacons. It's a pretty big group that we don't have a single deacon. But there's a reason why it's happened that way. We actually, the congregation started off with a deacon that was Justin, and then he was promoted up to elder. And at that time, I don't know what our congregation consisted of, about six families.

And so Justin just kept doing the responsibilities of deacon in addition to elder. And it wasn't too overwhelming, or maybe it was. I shouldn't say. But, you know, it was going along. And then, I don't know, like a year and a half ago, we were like six families still. And then suddenly just everything exploded. Our church has just had this tremendous growth, which is something you're excited about. But it happened so fast.

Yeah, we never got around to ordaining deacons because we hadn't particularly needed one just not that long ago. So yeah, now we're realizing, oh, we badly need, yeah, not just one, but probably more than one. We've been talking about it for the last couple of months at brothers' meeting. This isn't something new, just happening today. But we're realizing we really need to move on this.

And so we thought it would be good to just talk about the subject of, you know, what a deacon is as we talk as a group about the selection and ordaining of some deacons. So just, you know, exactly what is a deacon? The Greek word is diakonos. And it just, it was an ordinary Greek word. It simply meant a servant or somebody who ministers, who assists, who helps somebody else. It's used all throughout the New Testament, and nearly always it's used in this sense of a servant.

There may only be two places where it's actually used to mean a church official or ordained person in the church. So like I say, normally it means servant. And that's important to remember because that's what a deacon is. That's what really all of us are. The apostles used this term diakonos about themselves because they were serving as well. So just being a Christian is all about serving. And a deacon is just somebody with special responsibilities. But we all do this as a congregation.

As I said, it eventually came to refer to a specific ordained position that we call deacon. And it just comes from that Greek word diakonos. It's just, you know, a transliteration of it. And here is, I guess the first place it's used in the scriptures to talk about a church ordained ministers is Paul and Timothy. This is the letter to Philippians. Bondservants of Jesus Christ. So he refers to themselves as slaves or servants to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons.

So that's, I think, our earliest reference that there was an ordained position of deacon. And you notice bishops is in the plural. A bishop was the same position as elder. The term was used interchangeably in the New Testament. So the deacons were men who assisted the elders in their ministry. And that was wherever they were needed. It wasn't like it was spelled out that this is exactly what a deacon does. It was just elders, the ones who are doing the shepherding, they need help.

And so the deacons were there to assist them just whatever way that they could do that. This was usually in non-teaching capacities. It doesn't mean they couldn't teach. But when you look at the list of the qualifications of an elder and the list of the qualifications of a deacon given in 1 Timothy 3, that's kind of the noticeable difference. The elder had to be qualified to teach. The deacon didn't. It doesn't mean a deacon can't teach. It just means they didn't have to.

And so they particularly were doing a lot of the non-teaching, non-shepherding, well, spiritual shepherding. They were dealing with the physical needs of the congregation, which is a form of shepherding, a very important form of it, actually. Without the deacons, the elders and bishops would have had a very difficult time carrying on their ministry effectively. And it's that way today. I mean, it's come to the point for the three of us elders. I mean, we're just realizing we are horribly swamped.

There's no way we can keep up with all the responsibilities. We just badly need some deacons here to assist us. Otherwise, things either need to get neglected, end up being neglected, or, like I say, the elders end up being overworked and having to kind of shortshift the teaching and shepherding in order to take care of more physical needs. And the entire church, it suffers spiritually when you have that. When the elders are just overworked, then everybody in the church suffers.

So that's where the deacons come in to assist wherever they can to help carry that load. Jesus likened Christians to a city on a hill. And so each church, we can think of ourselves as a city. I mean, we function like just a small city. There is so much that goes on to make a church. Now, some churches, I mean, they basically consist of people come on Sunday morning, hear a sermon, sing hymns, go home. And that's mainly what church consists of. I don't think most churches fit that description, but there are some.

And yeah, in that kind of situation, I don't know, the church doesn't function as a city. But where there's really a lot of shepherding going on, where needs are taken care of, physical needs, yeah, it's like a city working with all these different departments and things that have to be done. In fact, every city, if it's going to have a government, if it's going to be a place that's livable, I mean, just think of Chambersburg. If you took the government out, and I assume we have a city council.

I don't even follow the politics here whatsoever. But yeah, so the city council, maybe there's a mayor and a council. And then, yeah, they oversee things. If you took all those people away and everything was on its own, I mean, it would be a mess living in the cities. I mean, you'd have whatever, sewage backups, streets, you know, big potholes. Who knows what would happen? So Jesus, knowing that, wanting us to be a small city, he arranged for each congregation to have a church government.

I mean, he arranged this for the world, and he arranged it for us here so that we can be a church working together. Now, the body of elders, just in using this illustration of a city, it would be somewhat like the city council. That's where the buck stops. If things go wrong in the city, normally everyone is going to complain at the city council. And it's like, you know, vote these people out of office, look at this mess and all that. That's where the weight of responsibility is going to fall on the city council.

The deacons are kind of like the heads of various city departments, like the head of sanitation, the street department. What else would we have? The police, the municipal courts. I should have looked it up online. I thought, I'm sure there's 10 or 12 departments here. And each of them would have someone who oversees that. And that's kind of like the deacons who are overseeing a lot of the physical needs. But the congregation as a whole, they're like the city employees who keep things running.

In other words, with the best government in place in a church, with elders and deacons who are functioning, it's still we all have to be diakonous servants because a whole lot of the work is still going to be carried on by individuals. No single person, no small group of people can do it all.

And that's why we have been able to function successfully as a church, even without deacons, is because lots of people have been carrying loads, getting lots of things done, sometimes officially, and sometimes they've just taken it on themselves, and that's been done. And I really want to thank everyone who has participated. And that's just about everybody in the congregation, some more than others. Now, diakonos never lost its original meaning of a servant or one who ministers.

So as I said, we need to be a congregation of diakonous, that's the plural, or servants. We all have to be there. So with our ordaining deacons, it's not going to mean, oh good, those of you who've been carrying on different loads, wow, it's going to be all on their shoulders. It would just be impossible. We're going to look at some of the tasks. And I've thought of a whole lot more after I finish this that could be added to that list. And probably everyone here will be able to add a lot of things to that.

And you're going to see there's just no way a couple of people can do that. But you know, the whole idea of deacon, it's nothing new. God's leaders have always had helpers and assistants from the time of Moses on, if not before. So we're going to look at some of the deacons or assistants throughout history. When we go to the law of Moses, you had the high priest and the priests. They did the sacrifices. They did a lot of other things.

If you look at the book of Leviticus, there were a lot of things that only the priests were allowed to do. And so that's why there was a number of them. There was only one high priest, but there were a number of priests, just like there's a number of elders, because one high priest couldn't have carried on the load for everyone. So you had a lot of priests carrying on those functions. But then they would have been overloaded too. So God ordained the entire tribe of the Levites.

They were set apart specially to be the assistants to the priests there in Israel. Can any of you think of some of the things the Levites did? Some of the jobs that fell on them. Well, one, when they had the tabernacle, they were the ones in charge of taking it down, setting it up. That fell under the Levites. I was going to go through Leviticus, Deuteronomy, just to see what all some of the others. I know they were in charge of the cities of refuge as another thing.

But they would have, yeah, just taken care of so much of the needs of the priests who were busy doing the sacrifices. They had families in that the Levites were involved in making sure they had enough food. And just again, wherever the priests needed help, unless it was a function that was only a priest could do, then the Levites were there to assist them. Another example in the Old Testament is Elijah and Gehazi. We usually remember him, if you remember, he was the servant who helped.

I mean, he was there as Elisha's right-hand man, just helping him any way that he needed help. Sometimes he ran errands. Some of the miracles, he was involved in doing that under Elisha's control. Yeah, just there, however he could help. And then he ended up misusing the position. And that can happen in the churches as well. When we get to the New Testament, this is something that Justin had pointed out the other night that I thought was good. And this was the women who ministered to Jesus.

In the New Testament, you read about, it doesn't say a whole lot. It doesn't describe all they did. But there were women who traveled with Jesus and the apostles on many of their journeys who ministered to them. Now, I'm guessing it was probably involved in checking on housing, finding places for them to stay, and providing food for them, cooking. And a lot of them provided, they had funds.

And yeah, out of their money, they provided these provisions that Jesus and the apostles could focus on the teaching and the ministry that they had. So this is, I think this was a good insight on Justin's part, that this was kind of the first that situation. They weren't officially deacons, but of carrying on this ministry of serving, assisting people who were in the ministry. And then we come to Acts.

And a lot of people would say, okay, these were the first deacons, the seven men who were ordained to oversee food distribution. And they're never called deacons, but it is kind of a perfect illustration because the apostles said, you all remember the situation there in Jerusalem. You had Greek-speaking Christians, and you had Hebrew or Aramaic, probably Aramaic-speaking. It could have been Hebrew, either way.

And if I remember it correctly, the Greek-speaking ones were saying, wait a minute, our widows aren't getting their fair share. They're being overlooked in this distribution. And the apostles could have personally got involved in that and said, okay, we'll get this thing straight. But it's like, wow, we have this huge responsibility of teaching, of praying for the church, of leading. I mean, the whole church of God was in their hands.

And it's not right that we should neglect that in order to be dealing with food distribution. So the congregation was told, select seven men. And it was amazing that it was unanimous. Everyone picked these seven men as these are the most godly. These are people we trust. If they're in charge of the food distribution, we know everyone's going to get a fair shake. And it's amazing to have people like that. Now, why I say they weren't necessarily deacons is because they went on to carry on so much ministry.

I mean, Philip was out making converts everywhere. Stephen was there speaking to the priests, arguing with them, disputing with them, showing the truth of Jesus Christ. So they were carrying on ministry way beyond just the food administration. But that's where it started. And it gives us a perfect example of what the position of a deacon is. Okay, this was something physical. It was important, though. It was very important. There wasn't Social Security back then.

I mean, if a widow didn't have children who were supporting her, yeah, she may not have any means of eating. I mean, if her husband was poor, died and left her nothing, and she had no children, yeah, I mean, she was dependent on the church to feed her. So it was an important task. And it was important that it be done equally. What you don't want is in a church for people who are feeling like, oh, this group, they get special privileges. They're treated a certain way. And this other group are treated differently.

And so it's a very important position that they had. And then all throughout Paul's letters and the book of Acts, you see that Paul always had people assisting him. He was never, well, never you can always find an exception. He was rarely out there on his own. He almost always had somebody who was helping him. One example is Onesimus. If you remember him, he was the runaway slave of Philemons. And he was a pagan, ran away, went to Rome, and ended up becoming a Christian.

And he ended up being, Paul was in prison there. He ended up being a very big help to Paul. We don't know what all he did. He may have been able to act as a secretary, writing letters. We aren't sure. Paul just said, he's very useful to me and asked Philemon if he would let him come back and serve him. And you had Timothy, Titus. You have a whole list of people. You look at the letter of Romans, you get to the last chapter. Paul lists all these different people who assisted him.

There were a lot of women who assisted him. There were a lot of men. It was a lot of people together. None of these were officially ordained as deacons, but they all were there assisting Paul. And he couldn't have got the work done, done all the things that he did without that assistance. In the military, I've read this on several sites. I can't personally vouch for it. I've read, though, that it takes seven support personnel to keep one combat soldier in the field.

So we think of the men fighting the wars, the guys out there with the guns and who are risking their lives. But behind them, and sometimes these people are risking their lives too, there are seven support personnel for every guy with a gun. You've got to get food. You've got to get equipment. You've got to take care of sanitation. You've got to take care of clothing. You have to handle medical needs, not just when people are wounded, but their sickness and all of that.

I mean, there's a whole staff that's behind the soldier in the field. And we're an army of God. There has to be the same thing in the church. The ones who are carrying maybe the greater load, yeah, they need a lot of people behind them to help them get it done. Okay, so I'm going to ask a question. Were deacons appointed or were they elected, voted in by the congregation? We'll read a couple of scriptures here. It says this. So when they had appoint, this is Paul and Barnabas.

So when they had appointed elders in every church and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed. So the elders, when we read in the book of Acts, they go from city to city and they appointed the elders there. They were not voted in by the congregation. Deacons aren't even mentioned yet. Like I say, I only found two places and I didn't do a thorough search where deacons were mentioned, two passages mentioned as an ordained position.

Likewise, Paul wrote Titus, "For this reason I left you in Crete that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you." So Titus, who would have been one of those assistant apostles, you might call him, that was one of his specific jobs. Okay, Paul had gone, had planted churches along with others who worked with him. And he says, "All right, now go back. They've matured.

Time has passed." And Titus' job as a, like I say, sub-apostle was to appoint elders in every city. So they weren't voted in by the congregation. They were appointed. And then in Timothy, where we have the one passage, and we're going to be looking at it, where it talks about deacons, Paul starts off, "This is a faithful saying. If a man desires a position of a bishop, he desires a good work. A bishop then must be blameless." And he goes on and gives the qualifications.

Now, it's interesting that the qualifications given for a bishop, which are also given in Titus, and they're in Timothy for a deacon, he's giving these to Timothy. He doesn't, in his letter to the Corinthians or to the Galatians or to the Romans, say, "Now, these are the qualifications when you select your bishops and deacons." He gives this, and one of them is in a letter to Titus, who is specifically ordained to appoint elders.

And then to Timothy, he's giving these qualifications, the thought being that Timothy would be the one ordaining these men. Now, I'm saying all of this, we have not come to a decision in this congregation on appointing or electing deacons. We're going to talk about this at our brother's meeting that's coming up, in case you're wondering where's David going with this. But this is what I'm seeing in the scriptures.

Now, however we decide to do this, whoever is selected is going to be, needs to be someone who has the approval of the congregation, that the congregation will have some kind of say in it so that we don't accidentally appoint people or however it's done who don't have the confidence of the congregation. So one way or the other, we all will be involved. Clement of Rome, and this letter was written AD 96, so like one year after when we think the Gospel of John was written or at most a couple of years after.

And he was an elder in the city of Rome, probably knew Paul. And he writes this, and he's talking about the apostles. And he says, "And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits of their labors, having first tested them by the Spirit to be bishops and deacons of those who would afterwards believe." So our earliest record, like I say, just right after the close of the New Testament, he's just writing historically. He's saying, "This is what happened.

The apostles, they appointed bishops and deacons." This quote is interesting, just showing how whoever is ordained to any position needs the confidence of the congregation. Ignatian says, "It is fitting also that the deacons, as being the ministers of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, should in every respect be pleasing to all." So it's very important that people selected for this, again, have the confidence of everyone.

You don't want a controversial person in office or somebody who has a stigma that everyone would be saying, "Well, he shouldn't be there," whatever. I'm not saying that doesn't ever happen, but you want to at least start off with people that people have confidence in. Now, Paul gave Timothy the qualifications of a deacon. We're going to look at these now. This is 1 Timothy 3:8 through 12, the passage where he gives the qualifications.

Likewise, deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money. Do you think those are difficult qualifications to meet? Again, you think it's a trick question, so no one's going to answer. I wouldn't think so. I would hope that would fit every one of us, that we're reverent, we're not godless people, that we're not double-tongued, that we say one thing to one person, turn around and say something to someone else. You never know whether to believe us or not.

I think just about everybody here is a teetoter, I guess 100% of us are. But you weren't required to be, but he says, not given to much wine. So whoever it was, and in those days, wine would have been an ordinary drink you would have had at the table that, yeah, you weren't somebody who was always drinking. Maybe you had a cup at the dinner table and that was it. And obviously, not greedy for money. If you're materialistic, your heart's not going to be in the ministry.

And since the deacons did handle a lot of the almsgiving, yeah, you certainly didn't want someone like Judas who might end up stealing it. Holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience. Again, hopefully this would be most Christians. I realize not everyone meets all these qualifications, but they aren't something just extraordinary. There's something that most Christians should be striving to meet these men or women. But let these first be tested, then let them serve as deacons being found blameless.

Now, you're wondering, well, how are they tested? Well, this has been going on for the last several years in our congregation. I mean, different brothers have been handling all kinds of assignments. And so, yeah, we have a pretty good idea of who's dependable, who you can depend upon to get something done, and who, yeah, they're a nice brother, but probably don't want to be a deacon. Now, we've also had the same thing with sisters, a Julian sisters who've been carrying quite a load.

All right, so holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience, let them be tested to be found blameless. Now, again, some people want to take that, oh, well, they have to be perfect. I mean, yeah, this brother, I remember he stumbled here. He had this fault. Well, wow, nobody is perfectly blameless. He's not meaning that. He's just meaning they've been given jobs and they did them well. Likewise, their wives must be reverent, not slanderers.

That would certainly mean not gossipers, temperate, faithful in all things. Now, I've gone back and forth on this. The Greek word there translated wife is the same word for woman. So this could be translated likewise, the women must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. And he would be talking about women who are assigned different positions to take care of this thing in the church, take care of that.

If you're going to assign a sister responsibilities in that sense, they're not going to be ordained, but they are carrying on responsibilities. They need to meet these things. I've kind of gone back. I think it is talking about their wives only because the next verse, he's still talking about deacons. So it's in the middle of it. If those two verses were reversed, I'd say, no, I think he is talking about women who are being used, but it would still be true. But it does affect the wife.

If you're an elder, if you're a deacon, the load isn't going to just fall on you. The wife is going to be just, it's just going to mean a lot of extra work for her. When you're an elder, a lot of sisters will often be talking to your wife, wanting counseling that they particularly want to talk to a sister. If you're a deacon, you're going to be carrying on just a lot of things. And so it's important that the wife be godly, not be a gossiper. She is going to hear things.

We as elders, we don't talk church problems with our wives, but like I say, sometimes things come out or overheard or whatnot. So the last thing you want in any of these positions is someone who's going to go around gossiping and that. Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their house as well. So if your home is a mess, well, yeah, you don't need to be in charge of the church. You need to be focusing on your home, first of all. Your children need to be in subjection.

And it says ruling their house as well. So your wife should be in subjection. If she's ruling the house and you're appointed a deacon, guess who's going to really be the deacon? It's going to be the wife. I mean, if she's the one running the house, she's going to be, yeah, if her husband's made a deacon or an elder, she's going to be the one doing a lot of that. And that's not what God wants. So he wants people whose houses are in godly order.

Now, as I said, interesting, nowhere in scripture are any specific tasks assigned to the position of deacon. He gives the qualifications. He talks to the Philippians about appointing them, or he greets them, but he never says, "These are what the deacons do." History does tell us though, so we're not just having to sit and guess. Now, the seven men who were appointed, who are often called deacons, well, their position, their task given them was to oversee the distribution of food.

Every church had a program of making sure that the widows, the sick, whatever, that they were being fed. And that was a position that fell largely on the deacons. So they administered relief to widows and orphans. And these are just from early Christian writings. They served as ushers. Some of the assemblies, as the church grew, they got fairly large. And yeah, having telling people where to sit, showing them, keeping order in the church itself was one of their responsibilities. They assisted in baptism.

They didn't do the baptisms, but they assisted in various ways. And likewise, in the love feast, making sure there was food, that things were done orderly. They didn't preside over the love feast, but they were involved with them. They delivered communion to the sick. Now, this is something we don't do. We don't have the manpower right now. Maybe someday we will or won't want to do this. But it was a practice.

If you were sick and weren't able to come to church, normally one of the deacons would bring communion to you, to your house where you could have communion. They would ordain or consecrate. When they consecrated the bread and wine, they would consecrate enough. There would be some left over that the deacons would be able to do this. They were the messengers between churches, particularly during the times of persecution. You weren't going to send letters by any ordinary means.

They would have to be delivered by Christians. Usually, these were the deacons traveling to other churches, bringing news, bringing letters from one church to another. They visited the sick in their homes and the martyrs in prison. In a lot of places in prison, it's this way in some countries even today. If someone's not bringing you food, either you don't get any food or you're going to get really awful stuff.

And so it was a responsibility of the deacons to make sure that the brothers and sisters who were in prison for the faith, that food was brought to them, that they weren't just having to live on prison food and whatever other things that could be brought to them to meet their needs. They were responsible for maintenance of church property. When the church began to buy houses that they turned into meeting halls, the deacons were the ones often doing the buying, making sure everything was in repair.

We probably won't have this ever as a responsibility. They didn't have morticians back then. So the deacons had the responsibility of burying the dead. That was a very sacred thing to ancient people, particularly anyone from a Jewish background. It was extremely sacred. And so it was a big responsibility to take care of the burial, to make sure that was done, that there was a place that nobody's body would just be discarded somewhere.

When the church bought in Rome, bought the catacombs, and that was bought as burial grounds. It's not where they met in secret, as in all the different novels. It was just simply burial grounds. The deacons were in charge of that. It was a big responsibility because they had to keep digging and digging to make room for people to be buried. And then they served as special assistants to the bishops and elders. Just whatever needs they had, they had deacons there to take care of that. And it was just varied.

But like I say, they were their right-hand men. Without the ministry of the deacons, it would have really hampered the elders. Now, we were looking the other night, and I'll go try to go through this quickly. I can see we're running out of time. Just in our church, looking at the responsibilities, all the different responsibilities that go on in the church and the things that the elders are doing or should be doing, like I say, assuming we can have the time to do that.

Because shepherding the flock, that's a big responsibility. The spiritual condition of this congregation falls on our shoulders. Not that everyone else doesn't take some share in that, but like I say, that's the load. That's where we're going to have to answer before Christ, have we shepherded the flock well? Overseeing the teaching in the church. We're very blessed that we have a church with lots of brothers who are good teachers, who are able to participate in the teaching.

It doesn't all fall, or most of it doesn't fall on us, but we do oversee it. When a visiting speaker comes, the name wasn't just drawn from a hat. We look carefully at who we invite to speak here and who speaks in the church. Dealing with church disciplinary matters, we haven't had a lot of this, thankfully, but it's always going to be there. And that falls on the shoulders of the elders. I had a dream last night. It's a bad idea to be reading your notes right before you go to bed.

But I was reading over my sermon notes, and wouldn't you know it, I had a dream about we were having a church discipline problem. There were somehow a whole bunch in the congregation who were smoking marijuana. Anyway, so I'm not sure how you got involved in this, Jason. You weren't one of the ones smoking marijuana. But since you were new here, I thought, oh, I'm going to show you how we handle church discipline. So I was inviting you, if you want to watch. Kevin, he wasn't going to flog us.

He was going to have a talk with the one smoking marijuana. So I thought, well, I'll show you how we do things. Now, the bad part of the dream is I was one of the guys smoking marijuana. I don't know what Kevin was going to say because at that moment, the alarm clock went off. Well, I was glad. Okay. Maintaining a continual church vision. Some churches don't have a vision other than, let's just stay. Well, I guess it is a vision. Let's not lose what we have.

We've tried to always have an ongoing vision in the church and making sure we're not drifting from that. Being on top of issues and trends going on inside the congregation. I mean, we don't have spies out here or anything like that, but we do try to keep our ears to the ground that we know what's going on. And yeah, if there's dissatisfaction or whatever, that's our responsibility to take care of it. We also look at the future needs of the church.

I mean, any of us can look at this building right now and see that we are nearly full. If we'd had a large group of visitors today, we would have been bringing chairs from downstairs. And of course, that's good news. It's what we want. The church wants to grow. But yeah, it's exciting. But for the elders, particularly, I know it falls heavily on Kevin, is where do we go from here? Yeah, we're going to figure it out on space for people. At some point, do we divide into two congregations?

The final decisions on a lot of this will be made by the brothers meeting. It won't be made by the elders. But it's something, yeah, we're already thinking about this, yeah, the future needs. Okay, administering baptism and communion, discipling members and newcomers. So there's a discipling program that goes on in this church that Kevin has set up and oversees, but other brothers are responsible in that as well. It's been one of the blessings in this church.

Making sure we don't lose either our vision or our church standards. We don't want to have mission drift where we start off, this is what our dream is, our vision. This is where we are as a congregation. And I guarantee you, if somebody's not overseeing that, every congregation drifts. They drift from wherever they started. So it does involve some diligence. Kevin oversees our brothers meetings. That may seem like an easy thing.

Having a meeting that runs, you sisters probably noticed your husbands don't get home at midnight from our meeting is because Kevin really keeps a tight ship on our brothers meetings. Everyone has room to talk. Everyone is encouraged to talk, but he makes sure this thing doesn't go on till 10, 11, 12 at night. Overseeing evangelism and outreach. A lot of people here are involved in that.

Of course, Patrick would be number one probably in outreach, but the whole vision of having sound faith and reaching out to people across the United States, across the world with the message of the kingdom is something that's overseen, again, largely by Kevin, but the elders carry that responsibility. Arranging baptismal instruction. If someone's going to be baptized, we want to make sure they understand what baptism is, that they understand the basics of the faith, that they truly are ready.

We don't want someone being baptized in our congregation and then later coming back 10 years later and saying, "Oh, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just following what everyone else was doing." So we may not always personally do the instructing, but we assign somebody if we don't do it ourselves. And then being prepared to handle the unforeseen. I mean, you don't ever know what is going to happen. COVID would be a perfect example. Nobody could have foreseen that.

Nobody that we would until maybe the week before or something, but that suddenly the state would say, "We don't want any meetings and you got to wear masks and all of that." And yeah, we had to decide, okay, what are we going to do here? Our decision was to obey Caesar as long as it didn't cause us to violate Christ's commandments. But we tried to keep close watching over that, that the congregation wouldn't suffer during that time period.

So these are some of the things that we're doing as elders, and it does leave little time to be handling some of the other responsibilities. Now, here's some of the needs that, like I say, would fall on deacons and the church in general, maybe with the oversight of deacons, but it's a long list. So as we go through this, you can be thinking about some brother you would like to put all these responsibilities on. Yeah, I think I'll nominate him. Okay. So right now, there's the accounting.

I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, not a lot in the sense of the world, but money comes in the church, money goes out. I mean, we have to pay for the church building. We meet needs of sick. We meet various needs, paying the bills, carrying on the banking. Right now, Justin has been shouldering all of that. Like I say, since he started off as a deacon, he's gracefully carried this, but that's an awful lot on him. Setting up communion, making sure there's wine and bread.

Right now, we don't have anyone in charge of that. It happens. It gets done. In fact, everything. If you come to church, you might be a visitor. You get here, the heat and air are turned on. The lights are on. The doors are unlocked. Communion is set up. The sound system is going. You may think, "Oh, just the angels just do it." It doesn't work that way. There's people behind the scenes doing that. It would be nice to have some people specifically in charge, but like I say, it's been being done.

Locking the church after the service. I mean, it's nice just when you're ready to go to just leave and go. But someone has got to make sure this building is locked up, particularly when the cameras are here. And often it does fall on one of the elders. Not always, but often. It would be nice, yeah, just to know there's somebody in charge. We don't have to worry. That church is going to be locked up. We don't do this now, counting church attendance every Sunday.

We don't have any desire to post the numbers up here like some churches do. It would be nice to know. I mean, people ask me and it's like, "Yeah, I don't know. We've never counted the numbers. I don't know how many people are in attendance." We may want to do that. Overseeing and arranging special church events, like when we did the Penn Valley retreat. Like I say, a lot of these things I'm listing are falling on the elders that it would be very nice to be able to delegate.

We don't have a specific Sunday school supervisor. Maybe Andre would come as close, but the brothers meetings, we decide, yeah, who's going to be doing it next, but we just never had this position. Maintenance of the church building. Right now, Conrad and Zach and Radford and Patrick have been handling that as a committee. We appreciate what they're doing. Overseeing cleanup at fellowship meals. This falls on the Bregwheel family right now. And they haven't complained.

And setting it up, all of that, it would be nice, again, to have someone with that responsibility. Not that they have to clean up every time, but that, yeah, they've made sure somebody other than the Bregwheels are doing that. Working with families on budgeting. When you have a church that's evangelizing, this is what I saw in Texas. Everybody, the only exception was Dean Taylor and his family, but everyone else in our church, they came in with a mountain of credit card debt and all kinds of problems.

And if you're going to evangelize, you're going to have there is going to be a need to sit down and teach budgeting to a lot of families just so that they can understand how that's done. They've never been taught. It's not their fault. I think most Mennonites grow up in families where there's been tight budgeting and it kind of, I did myself. So it's something I grew up with. But I realized, particularly now, and they taught it in school. When I was in school, that was part of the civics class.

We spent a week just on learning how to budget. I don't think they teach that anymore. But so there's a need there that can bless a lot of families. Once you learn how to do it, it just solves so many problems. Youth activities. Again, Bill has been handling most of this. I don't think that's going to change. But we don't have, like I say, any deacon or someone specifically in charge.

We want our youth to have activities, but we do not want unsupervised youth activities where the youth run wild, where the youth do things that they shouldn't be getting into that, yeah, there's someone responsible overlooking what the youth do in their activities outside of their parents we're talking about. The singles. We don't have any ministry right now, but Mennonites tend to be very family-oriented. A good thing.

It means if you're a single person in a Mennonite church, you're often kind of just left out of a lot of things. And not because anyone doesn't like you or anything. It's just they're doing things as families and inviting other families. And when you're single, that's sort of overlooked. It'd be nice to have a specific ministry that way. We don't have it now. Greeting visitors. I think everyone who comes here gets greeted, is made to feel at home.

It'd be nice to have someone who's that's, and most churches have this, greeters. They aren't necessarily deacons, but just to make sure no one ever comes and doesn't get made to feel welcome and explain seating and things like that. Providing ushering when needed. Contacting visiting speakers concerning time of service, directions, parking. I'm usually the one contacting people and setting up their speaking.

But it'd be nice to have someone who could follow up and remind them, "You are coming this Sunday, right?" And yeah, where we park, the meeting times, and maybe follow up with a thank you note, something like that. Signage in a church. I was reading a book on making people feel welcome in your church. And it said one of the top things was signage. That means the signs in the church. Are they clearly marked, the restrooms? I've been in a lot of churches. You go there and, yeah, where are the restrooms?

You don't enjoy having to go and ask someone, "Where's the men's room?" I mean, it's what you end up having to do. It's nice there's signs that a visitor, we all know that, but where a visitor can walk in and clearly see where things are. We need somebody to sign out front. I mean, it just says CCF. We know what that means. Someone driving by, they don't have the slightest clue what CCF is. Just things like that. It just, like I say, a lot of responsibility. We just haven't been able to do it all.

Visiting the sick, this is something everyone has been doing, but we don't have anyone specifically in charge of it. Arranging for household help if a housewife is laid up, just getting her house cleaned, etc. Making arrangements for love feast. Again, one of the elders oversees it, but there's a lot involved in making the arrangements. Right now, a lot of different sisters are doing that. Arranging hospitality for out-of-town visitors. Our church, we get a lot of people. We get a lot of visitors.

We get out-of-town visitors. And I always feel awkward because we're not blessed. So many Mennonite congregations, they've got all these families with these big farmhouses. And if a visitor comes, man, they've got a bunch of rooms, typically if they've got some grown children who've moved out, they've got extra rooms. We're a family. We're a group, our church, of mainly young families, not just lots of extra spare bedrooms in our church.

And it would be nice, yeah, someone who can arrange when we have out-of-town visitors that they're not just left out in the cold or that. This is being taken care of. The song leading and music oversight, we take that all for granted. Lynn Martin has been overseeing that, been doing a nice job. But again, it doesn't just happen. It's been being arranged. And like I say, assisting the elders any way they need it, which cannot always be predicted.

Now, this list I added because right now, this list has been almost totally, nearly totally handled by Jeannie Wadle. Things that she's been doing. I said, "When you're a deacon, a lot of the work not officially falls on the wife, but she ends up doing a lot of it." And because Justin was our deacon, yeah, Jeannie has taken this on. Hopefully, with deacons, we can get some of this shared out. Again, we're going to have a lot of sisters helping with these things, but yeah, too much has fallen on her.

And I'm mentioning her in specific, but I know Julie does a lot. Deborah does a lot. And of course, Bree does a lot of things in our church. Like I said, there's been just lots of people helping, but some have had, I think, just, and I know Jeannie has carried way too big a load. So just the church directory is so handy having that directory. I'm always referring to it. But I thought, when someone moves in our church, we think of, "Hey, great. They've got a new house." We help them move and all of that.

For Jeannie, it's like, "Oh, great. Now I'm going to have to update the directory." Someone has a new baby. We're all rejoicing a new baby. Whoever does the directory is like, "Oh, great. Now, another name, another birthday I've got to have." That sort of thing. Yeah, it'd be nice if every year maybe that was someone different handling that or whatever. Church cleaning schedule, again, everyone takes part in the cleaning, all the members, but Jeannie's the one who makes the list, calls people, and all of that.

Same with the host families who make sure that any visitors are invited for a meal. Meal planning for new mothers, sick mothers, I think that's been spread out a good bit. A lot have taken part in that. I know that. Important part of church life. Love feast, meal planning and organizing. Again, Jeannie has done a lot of that. I never even thought about keeping the foot washing towels and basins clean. Did you know they didn't automatically clean themselves? I mean, I just assumed they did. I see the towels.

I see the basins. I don't see them again until the next love feast. I just assumed they just get clean. It just happens. Didn't even realize Jeannie was doing a lot of this. Maintaining paper supplies. Plates, cups, napkins, plasticware, bathroom supplies, coffee supplies. A lot of this has been Jeannie. Other sisters I know have participated in that as well. But again, we take these things for granted. You come to church, there's always coffee down there when we need paper plates and things.

Somebody's doing all that. Somebody's out there shopping, buying that. Hopefully, like I say, some of this can be where it doesn't all fall on one or two people. Setting up chairs for communion. I think, Conrad, are you the one doing that? Yeah. So I never even knew until a few weeks ago who's doing it. You just get here on Sunday morning and the chairs downstairs are automatically set up for communion because they're different for Sunday schools. Every Sunday, you've got to redo that.

And I had no idea who's doing that. And found out it was Conrad. Setting up tables and chairs for Sunday school. This gets done, but after communion, then we've got to get the tables, get everything set up for Sunday school. No one supervises that. There's always been a lot of volunteers making sure it gets done. The sound system, the video system, Daniel's been handling that. Unlocking the church doors on main days. We all take that for granted. Have you ever got here and been locked out? Probably not.

Again, usually Daniel's the first one here and gets it unlocked. If not, it's Justin or sometimes me or Andre. But yeah, someone is making sure they're here early so the church doors are unlocked. Arranging and overseeing cell groups. This is being done largely by the brothers meeting, but we don't have anyone specifically in charge of it. This isn't a need right now, but visiting and helping the elderly and shut-ins. It will be.

Every one of you someday, unless you die young, will be an elderly person and might be a shut-in. Someday, yeah, we will need deacons who are making sure that the elderly and shut-ins are not being neglected. And then just other things. Christmas caroling. The couples' night. Each year, the couples have this wonderful banquet that the sisters organize. Apple Cider Day. None of these things are in the New Testament. Apple Cider Day. I don't know. That sounds like an ancient practice.

I'm going to check the early Christian writings. I kind of think that might be in there, but if not, it's a great idea. And not that any of that has not been handled, but again, Bree and Rosie have taken charge of that. Came up with the whole idea of Apple Cider Day. I think it's been a nice tradition for our church. It's a blessing. Church can't be just all instruction and discipline. There needs to be times of just joyful fellowship.

I think it's for a good reason that Jesus' first miracle was changing water into wine at a wedding. I think that was he was saying, "I want my people to have joyful times. It isn't just all drudgery being one of my disciples." He wants it something joyful. Not just joy in serving him, but joy in just fellowshipping with one another. So I'm going to stop. Well, that's as far as my list goes. I could add a lot of things to that list.

And probably every one of you here probably thought of a bunch of things that didn't get listed. So why I said we need more than one deacon, I mean, to oversee all of these things. And a lot of these things, like I say, will still be assigned to various non-deacons, the sisters in the church to carry these things out because it's just too much for a couple of people. And I do think I'm so thankful we have a congregation of Dianca Noos, the plural of servants.

And like I say, when you need something done, there's nearly always somebody who volunteers to do it. But yeah, hopefully we can have some of these things. The elders won't have to be worrying, "Oh, has this been done or has that been done?" That yeah, there's a deacon in charge who will make sure that that is being done. And we can focus that much more on our responsibility of shepherding.