The Necessity of Deacons

Recovering a Social Vision for Mercy and Justice in Our Churches

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I never really knew what a deacon was until I became one.

My wife and I were ordained as deacons together in 2015. Our leadership training was really the first time I had examined the Scriptures for what they taught regarding church leaders, sometimes referred to as the offices of the church. Through his apostles, I discovered that Jesus had instituted the offices of elders and deacons to teach, equip, and serve his people. As I understood it then, the elders were primarily responsible for teaching and shepherding the church. The deacons were to take on the responsibility of serving the congregation through their care of physical and practical needs.

I am grateful for how this church first exposed me to the importance of these offices. Still, the implementation of deacons in this church did not always align with what I read in Scripture. The deacons, my wife and I included, were not so much assigned to the care of practical needs but the volunteer leadership of various ministries. My wife and I were assigned to the children’s ministry, which we had been leading for about two years. Rather than those who served practical needs in the congregation, we operated more as volunteer staff for church operations.

Only when I came into the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition was I exposed to an understanding of deacons that fit with what I found in Scripture.

Deacons, collectively referred to as the diaconate, are an office instituted by Christ for the merciful and just service of the church. Deacon, taken from the Greek word diakonos (διάκονος), literally means servant. It is the same word used by Jesus, who taught us:

Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant (diakonos), ²⁷ and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—²⁸ just as the Son of Man did not come to be served (diakoneō), but to serve (diakoneō), and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:26-28)

The diaconate, then, leads the church by demonstrating in their ministry how Christ serves his people.

The need for deacons arose out of a grave situation of ethnic supremacy and injustice. In Acts 6, we read of how the Hellenistic Jews (those who had adopted the Greek language and culture) were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. The apostles were simply doing too much on their own. As a result, people – especially those outside their own ethnic culture – were suffering.

The apostles determined to set apart seven Hellenistic men to become the first deacons. These men were assigned to the merciful care of the church even while the apostles continued focusing on prayer and teaching the Scriptures.

The diaconate would continue to develop in the following decades. The Apostle Paul instructed both elders and deacons together (1 Timothy 3:1-13) so that God’s people would know how to conduct themselves in the church (1 Timothy 3:15). Paul greeted both elders and deacons as joint leaders of the churches (Philippians 1:1). What we see in the New Testament is the emergence of church leadership with elders leading through prayer and teaching, and deacons leading the congregation in works of mercy and justice.^[1]

Throughout church history, however, the office of deacon has waxed and waned in prominence. It has often been manipulated under various forms of church government to be nothing more than an assistant to bishops, priests, and elders. In other cases, it has become the lowest rank in a hierarchy of offices, descending from bishops, elders, and finally deacons at the bottom.

The Reformed tradition, beginning with John Calvin, revived the office of deacon and restored it to its biblical prominence. As I will demonstrate below, deacons played an essential role in the flourishing of Calvin’s Geneva – and not just in the churches.

Even so, while the Reformed tradition has championed an elevated diaconate with our words, we must lament how little our words have translated to practice. We can join our theological ancestors in confessing that we have not strengthened the office of deacon as we ought. As a result, our churches are little known for works of mercy and justice, the marginalized are overlooked, and our evangelism lacks the power it could. We must admit this to our shame.

In this essay, I aim to recover a biblical vision for the diaconate as expressed in the Reformed tradition. Deacons are the heart and soul by which our commitment to Christ’s love, mercy, and justice rises or falls. By examining five theologians across multiple generations of the Reformed tradition, I will show that an elevated diaconate is an essential feature of the Reformed tradition. Following this examination, I will conclude with brief thoughts on strengthening the diaconate and empowering works of mercy and justice in our local churches. While I am spending my efforts in the Reformed tradition exclusively, these words are for all those who want to strengthen their deacons and recover a vision of mercy and justice in their local church.

John Calvin (1509-1564)

After a brief two-year ministry in Geneva, Calvin left the city in 1538 over significant disagreements with its leaders. Upon receiving a letter from Martin Bucer to come and join his efforts in Strasbourg, Calvin began pastoring the French church in Strasbourg until his return to Geneva in 1541. Many of Calvin’s ideas that would be implemented in Geneva upon his return should be credited to his time with Bucer. This includes Calvin’s views on the diaconate.

Beginning in 1536, Bucer actively worked toward a system of church government that empowered the offices as he found them in the Scriptures. This included the deacons, who were chiefly responsible for caring for the poor and sick in their churches.^[2] The diaconate was to collectively examine the needs of local churches to determine who needed the church to provide the “necessities of life.” They were to discern between those who genuinely needed help and those who were unwilling to work for themselves. Deacons were also to search for those who were too ashamed to ask for help so that poverty in churches might never be a cause for shame.^[3]

John Calvin would use Bucer’s vision of the diaconate as the foundation for his own. Upon returning to Geneva, the institution of the office of deacon was one of Calvin’s requirements for the city to adopt in their 1541 Ordinances. In examining Calvin’s vision for the diaconate, we find that Bucer walked so Calvin could run.

In returning to Geneva, Calvin found great hostility growing between the city’s wealthy and poor. This scandal gave Calvin reason to prioritize the work of the diaconate, for Calvin understood that “both the religious and the material life of believers are subject to the same divine order.”^[4] Calvin thus saw deacons as a vital and necessary office alongside the church's elders.

In his reading of Scripture, Calvin believed that there were originally, and still ought to be, two orders of deacons. One order would primarily care for those in poverty (procurators), and another for the sick and those in the hospitals (hospitallers). These deacons were placed on the same footing as other leaders in the church, for “it is quite as important for a church’s life that the moral life as well as the material life of its members should be regulated according to the Word of God.”^[5]

Further examination of Calvin’s 1541 Ordinances reveals an emerging, robust system principally concerned with the poor, the sick, and refugees. Under Calvin's vision, an elaborate social welfare system was instituted that was to be executed by the diaconate in the city.

Calvin’s deacons had four primary sources of income: money from the city, revenue from city fines, financial gifts or alms, and the sale of items for charity. While the connection between church and state was much different in Geneva than in our Western context, one-third of city fines went to the poor directly and another third to the deacons, which reveals the city's concern for the poor under the deacon’s leadership.^[6] Many deacons in this system were lay members and went unpaid. Still, some deacons, especially those who worked in the hospitals, were employed under the diaconate for their full-time vocations.^[7]

Calvin’s vision for mercy and justice in Geneva was clear, organized, and effective. According to historian Fred Graham, “The church… was vitally concerned with the bodies, as well as the souls, of its members. Nothing in Geneva bears this out more clearly than the diaconate, and that body’s chief arena of action, the hospitals.”^[8] Graham went on to conclude, “In Geneva, Christian concern for the poor, the sick, the orphan, the widow, the refugee was institutionalized by the diaconate and legislated by law.”^[9]

John Calvin set a trajectory in the Reformed tradition that would continue emphasizing an elevated diaconate within churches. Unfortunately, Calvin’s empowering of the diaconate appears to be the only time in our tradition’s history that made a significant impact. Later developments, as we will see, will continue emphasizing the importance of the diaconate while lamenting our tradition’s failure to act on our convictions.

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920)

Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck were leading figures of the Dutch Neo-Calvinist stream within the broader Reformed tradition. The neo-Calvinist tradition could be summarized as a “critical reception of Reformed orthodoxy, contextualized to address the questions of modernity.”^[10] Those in the neo-Calvinist tradition, like Kuyper and Bavinck, seek to apply the historic Reformed faith to the challenges and questions of every age.

Kuyper, an accomplished theologian and politician, wrestled with many issues in his day. He is most remembered for his doctrines of sphere sovereignty and common grace, the foundations of his political philosophy and social thought.

Yet, of all the questions Kuyper wrestled with, one question rose above all others in frequency and importance in his work. In his 1891 address to the first Christian Social Congress in the Netherlands, Kuyper said there was one question, one “burning life-question” that defined his age. In his estimation, there was “no other problem that reaches so deeply into the lives of the nations and agitates public opinion with such ferocity.”^[11]

That great challenge was what he and his contemporaries called the social question: the injustices faced by the poor, the lower class, and the worsening problems of class inequality. The severity of this problem could not be denied “as long as you still feel a human heart beat within you, and as long as the ideal of our holy gospel inspires you.” If this is the case, “Then every higher aspiration you have must clash with the current state of affairs.” If Christians do not answer the injustices of the social question, “life on earth will become less and less a heaven and more and more a hell.”^[12]

Following Calvin's example, Kuyper recognized that a Reformed vision for mercy and justice must carry Calvin’s vision for the diaconate forward. For “Calvinism alone has restored the Diaconate to its place of honor, as an indispensable and constitutive element of ecclesiastical life.”^[13] Through the diaconate, Christ intends to “make it manifest that for the whole man, and for the whole of life He is the Christus Consolator, the Heavenly Redeemer, anointed and appointed by God Himself, for our fallen race, from all eternity.”^[14]

Kuyper understood that the diaconate “must abound in the consolation of the Word,” and because of their importance, they must, in most cases, be a part of the church council. “The diaconate likewise belongs to the ministry of the Word, and ought also be interwoven in the ruling body of the churches.”

The neo-Calvinist scholar Michael R. Wagenman has correctly identified Kuyper’s emphasis on the diaconate as a critical feature of Kuyper’s ecclesiology. Following Kuyper, neo-Calvinists believe that the Reformed must embrace “the role of the deacon in mediating Christ through acts of justice and mercy.” It is through the diaconate that neo-Calvinist churches have addressed “poverty, labor rights, and a host of other ills, not merely as humanitarian good works, but as a tangible form of the proclamation of the Gospel to the world, which is the church’s unique power within neo-Calvinist ecclesiology.”^[15]

And yet, despite this apparent necessity of the diaconate in the Reformed tradition, Kuyper lamented how little this vision was lived out. In the face of so much injustice and skepticism toward the church, Kuyper confessed, “The Christian church would certainly gain greater respect in the eyes of the world if the church’s diaconal work were more strongly developed.”^[16]

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921)

Like his contemporary, Herman Bavinck also saw the importance of the diaconate for the mission of the church. Ever the comprehensive thinker, Bavinck examined several Christian traditions and concluded that the Reformed had the best grasp of the diaconate as an idea. Yet, joining Kuyper, Bavinck lamented how little the role had been defined and developed within the churches. The strengthening of the diaconate was a need “which the distress of our time calls for.”

Bavinck offered an 11-step proposal to correct this error and develop the diaconate further (the full text is included below as an appendix to this essay). A few items in Bavinck’s vision for the diaconate are worth emphasizing.

First, Bavinck agreed that the diaconate “must be honored more than it has been up until now.” Elevating the diaconate will lead to love and mercy being “recognized and practiced as the most outstanding Christian virtues.” In addition, it will lead to the ministry of mercy having a much greater “place on the agenda of all ecclesiastical assemblies than has been the case up until now.”

Second, Bavinck believed deacons have a teaching role in discipling the congregation regarding their finances and social ethics.

Third, like Kuyper, Bavinck wanted deacons to be given a vote alongside pastors and elders in ecclesial bodies.

Fourth, Bavinck maintained that the diaconate must not be absorbed by social welfare and must retain its unique character.

Fifth, deacons should be charged with collaborative work to care for the poor in other churches and beyond.^[17]

At the turn of the twentieth century, the neo-Calvinists within the Reformed tradition elevated the diaconate to new heights. We could summarize and say that the diaconate is the distinct and foundational feature of a Reformed vision for social justice.

Johannes H. Verkuyl (1908-2001)

Johannes Verkuyl is a little-known theologian within the Reformed tradition. That we have forgotten about his works is only to our loss and shame. Verkuyl was an esteemed Christian practitioner and theologian, having served as the Professor of Missions at the Free University of Amsterdam and a missionary to Indonesia. Like his neo-Calvinist predecessors, his works seek to confront an increasingly globalized and unjust world with the historic Reformed faith.

Verkuyl understood the work of deacons to be essential to the missionary task. “The kingdom does not only address the spiritual and moral needs of a person, but his material, physical, social, cultural and political needs as well. For this reason Jesus came not only as one who preached but also as one who served.” He believed that the apostles considered diaconal responsibility “as an implication of one’s Christian confession.”^[18]

Like Calvin before him, Verkuyl believed the diaconate needed to be empowered for many forms of service, including their role in strengthening education, social welfare and medicine, disaster relief, refugee aid, political prisoners, any victim of unjust social structures, the elderly, orphans, and the disabled. Even this “kaleidoscope list” is “far from complete.” The needs are great, and our best efforts will feel like a “drop in a bucket.” Still, it is to be celebrated that we would have a “veritable army” of persons trained and equipped to meet needs in Jesus’ name.^[19]

Verkuyl not only emphasized the necessity of the diaconate in foreign missions but also within urban communities in our cities. “The task of the diaconate in the cities is to reveal something of the greater love (1 Corinthians 13), the abundant justice (Matthew 5:20), and the shalom that is beyond our understanding (Philippians 4:7).” Like his Reformed predecessors, he lamented how little of this vision was presently being carried out. Many obstacles in his day – such as White flight to the suburbs – made it difficult to support the diaconate as they needed to be. Verkuyl offered his own 5-point proposal for recovering the diaconate, which I will summarize here.

First, we must respect and express the unity of word and deed. Evangelism is incomplete until people have come into contact with Christos diakonos, Christ the true deacon. The most faithful evangelistic missions in church history integrated the work of evangelism with the diaconate. These efforts must work together.

Second, in choosing and organizing the diaconate, keep in mind the entire community to be served. This is important if the diaconate is to truly serve the community. Deacons must be able to mobilize the gifts of the congregation to meet every kind of need in the surrounding community.

Third, acquire insight into your context's total situation and real needs by working with other congregations, sociologists, and other specialists. Churches too often work haphazardly. Deacons must be equipped to study their context so they can be more responsible in urban mission.

Fourth, each local diaconate should draw up a clear plan that defines its task. This plan will define the projects and programs it will commit to and include strategies for mobilizing the gifts and talents within the local congregation to serve.

Fifth, deacons should frequently review its programs and consult with professional advisors. Deacons must remain flexible and alert, always aware of when a change in direction is needed.^[20]

Verkuyl’s expansive vision for the diaconate was integrated with a robust understanding of mission and evangelism. His approach avoided the either-or polarization so frequent in our day. Proclaiming Christ requires that people come under the service of Christ through his people, especially the diaconate.

Tim Keller (1950-2023)

Before becoming a world-renowned pastor, author, and church leader, Tim Keller led his small denomination (The Presbyterian Church in America) in rediscovering a vision for the diaconate. In fact, Keller would not have been the leader he was without having first championed the cause of the diaconates in our churches. Here is Keller quoted at length in his own words. His transformative experience summarizes our study:

While I was in my first pastorate in Hopewell, Virginia, I decided to enroll in a doctor of ministry program, and my project (the “thesis” of the course) was on training deacons. In Presbyterian church organization there are two sets of officers—elders and deacons. Deacons had historically been designated to work with the poor and needy in the community, but over the years this legacy had been lost, and instead they had evolved into janitors and treasurers. My program advisor challenged me to study the history of the office and to develop ways to help Presbyterian churches recover this lost aspect of their congregational life.

I took the assignment, and it was a transformative process for me. I went to the social work department of a nearby university, got the full reading list for their foundational courses, and devoured all the books. I did historical research on how church deacons served as the first public social service structure in European cities such as Geneva, Amsterdam, and Glasgow. I devised courses of skill-training for deacons and wrote material to help church leaders get a vision not only for the “word” ministry of preaching and teaching, but also for “deed” ministry, serving people with material and economic needs.

After my pastorate in Virginia, I went to teach at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. In my department were four faculty members who lived in the inner city and taught urban ministry. Each week I would go to the department meeting a bit early and have fifteen minutes or so alone talking with the chairman, Harvie Conn. Harvie was passionately committed to living and working in the city, and he was keenly aware of the systemic injustice in our society. As I look back on those times, I realize I was learning far more from him than at the time I thought I was. I read his little book Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace twenty-five years ago and its themes sank deep into my thinking about God and the church.

Inspired by Harvie’s teaching and by all the experiences I had in urban churches in Philadelphia during the 1980s, I answered an invitation to move to the middle of New York City in 1989 and begin a new congregation, Redeemer Presbyterian Church.^[21]

Keller’s study of the Reformed diaconate transformed him. It was a key that unlocked his ability to integrate rich insights into the mission and purpose of the church, ultimately leading him to plant a church in New York City to become the man we know him as today. If you know of Keller at all, and if he’s had any influence on you, it is likely only first because he committed himself to the necessity of the diaconate.

Conclusion

The Reformed tradition understands the diaconate to be more than an optional tagalong for local congregations. Deacons are an essential component of the church and a foundation of our social vision. Their ministry leads the Christian community into being a doing people (James 1:22), people who press deeper into Christ's heart and administer his compassion for the strengthening and building of his church.

With our Reformed ancestors, we must lament how little attention has been paid by our churches to the development of diaconal ministry. Too often, deacons are secondary in the life and leadership of the church. I have heard too many stories of elders and deacons being at odds because of how little they interact and integrate their mission. Deacons often operate as little more than building managers. As a result, our congregations frequently lack a comprehensive social vision, mercy, and love are not recognized as fruits of our faith, evangelism wanes, the marginalized are overlooked, and private charity is restricted, if it exists at all.

Where should we begin? This is for every local congregation to decide. I can only conclude with a few ideas that seem right to me as ways to start our recovery of the diaconate for this present age.

First, we ought to seriously examine our tradition's precedent, beginning with the figures summarized here. Bavinck’s proposal contains several points on which to riff and build in any local church.

Second, we must recover a vision for the diaconate informed by Scripture and our tradition. Such a vision will instill in us the necessity of the diaconate and its role in congregational care, discipleship, evangelism, and mission.

Third, no church should establish itself without deacons. Too often, churches believe it is only necessary to launch with a couple of elders alone. This, they say, follows the biblical precedent of Acts 6. We must remember that Acts 6 is not only an underdeveloped example of the diaconate within Scripture itself but also that Acts 6 clearly models how much injustice occurs without the presence of deacons. Furthermore, with elders alone, too many churches launch with an emphasis on words but lack in deeds. Such churches become thinking and talking people; it is much more difficult for such churches to follow Jesus in becoming doing people.

Fourth, churches should involve deacons in leadership decisions with maximum effort as their model of church government allows. While deacons in my Presbyterian denomination cannot have “ruling” authority, they ought to meet frequently with elders for collaboration and discussion. A church may assign a committee of deacons and elders to collaborate on budgetary proposals and the prioritization of ministries.

Fifth, deacons should receive adequate training to meet the needs of their congregations and surrounding communities. To the best of their ability, church budgets should include funds for the training of deacons through conferences, books, and coaching from specialists in the city.

Sixth, deacons ought to have their fund that congregation members can give to. A certain percentage of the church’s general fund should also go directly to the diaconate. If mercy will be a priority in our churches, our budgets must at least reflect such a commitment.

Seventh, deacons ought to disciple the congregation in their finances and social vision. The diaconate is both our structure and means for executing social justice. Let it be so.

Eighth, deacons should be encouraged to collaborate with other congregations and Christian organizations that share their social vision. Such partnerships will strengthen the diaconate and open up opportunities for congregants to participate in mercy ministry.

Ninth, and most importantly, we must search the Scriptures and meditate on Christ’s servant compassion. Unless we have a real experience with being served by Christ, we will little care to serve others like Christ.^[22]

Herman Bavinck’s 11-Step Proposal for the Recovery of the Diaconate^[1]

1. That the diaconal office be honored more than it has been up until now as an independent organ of the priestly mercy of Christ.

2. That love and mercy be recognized and practiced as the most outstanding Christian virtues.

3. That deacons be instructed to persuade all the members of the church, particularly the wealthier ones, in the name of Christ, to practice mercy and to warn and guard them against the sin of covetousness, which is a root of all evil.

4. That the diaconate stimulate, regulate, and guide—not kill—the practice of private benevolence.

5. That in large churches the bearers of this office avail themselves, if necessary, of the assistance of deaconesses in the same way the two other offices employ catechists and pastoral visitors of the sick.

6. That they distribute their gifts, in Christ’s name, as taken from the tables of the Lord on which they have been deposited by the congregation and given to Christ himself (Matt. 25:40).

7. That they extend their help to all the poor, the sick, the strangers, the prisoners, [those with intellectual disabilities], the mentally ill, the widows and orphans, in a word, to all the wretched and needy who exist in the church and are either completely or partly deprived of help from other sources, and that by word and deed they seek to relieve their suffering.

8. That the ministry of mercy be given a much larger place on the agenda of all ecclesiastical assemblies than has been the case up until now.

9. That, along with ministers and elders, deacons be delegated to the major assemblies of the churches and be given a vote in all matters pertaining to the ministry of mercy.

10. That at these assemblies the ministry of mercy be organized in terms of general principles, bearing in mind the difference in congregational circumstances; that for general needs it be undertaken communally and expanded by asking the local church to assist other churches and further by assisting poor and oppressed fellow believers abroad.

11. That this diaconal work be maintained as an independent ministry and not absorbed in or fused with the work of inner mission or state welfare, which bear a very different character.¹

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^[1] Note that there are examples in Scripture that defy such a tidy classification. Stephen, a deacon, was stoned to death after preaching the gospel (Acts 7). Phoebe, a deaconess, was responsible for carrying and teaching the letter to the Roman church (Romans 16:1). Likewise, elders are not exempt from leading through works of mercy and justice. This brief summary of the offices of elder and deacon merely describes what is distinctlytrue of each office, not what is only true of them.

^[2] André Biéler, Calvin’s Social and Economic Thought, 84.

^[3] Bradford Littlejohn, “Against the Infinite Stimulus of Greed: Martin Bucer’s Reformation of Welfare,” https://davenantinstitute.org/against-the-infinite-stimulus-of-greed.

^[4] Biéler, 135.

^[5] Biéler, 136.

^[6] Fred Graham, The Constructive Revolutionary: John Calvin and His Socio-Economic Impact, 98-102.

^[7] Graham, 104.

^[8] Graham, 104.

^[9] Graham 114.

^[10] Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction, 293.

^[11] Abraham Kuyper, The Problem of Poverty, 54.

^[12] Kuyer, Problem, 51.

^[13] Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 2.8.

^[14] Ibid.

^[15] Michael R. Wagenman, Ecclesiology in T&T Clark Handbook of Neo-Calvinism (eds. Nathaniel Gray Sutanto and Cory Brock), 145.

^[16] Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace, 2:388.

^[17] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4:428-429.

^[18] Johannes Verkuyl, Contemporary Missions: An Introduction, 212.

^[19] Verkuyl, Contemporary Missions, 212-219.

^[20] Johannes Verkuyl, Role of the Diaconate in Discipling the City (ed. Roger S. Greenway), 218-220.

^[21] Timothy Keller, Generous Justice: How God’s Mercy Makes Us Just, xvii-xix.

^[22] Many thanks to the diaconate of Reformed Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, whose practices inform this list, and who inspire me daily to be faithful to the call of a just and merciful ministry on the Near Westside.

1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4:428-429