Hey, thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Today, Jason and I are going to talk about the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope you enjoy the discussion. Jason, there's nothing more important than the Church of Jesus Christ, and He has established offices that were designed to be a blessing to the Church. And we've been talking about deacons.

This is session number three with Chad Roach. It's a joy to be with you Scott and Jason as always. You know, we talked about last time about this whole matter of getting margin for the most important thing in the world called the Church of Jesus Christ and how, you know, everybody who becomes a deacon has to ask, do I have the margin to do this? And in our last podcast, we were just encouraging guys, hey, find the margin for the most important things in the world. And, you know, there really are needs in the church of Jesus Christ.

So, but we want to talk about some different things today. And, you know, the Bible says that deacons should be tested. And you know, as we've been talking particularly about young deacons, you know, how do you test a young deacon? You know, when you're young, you haven't gone through the same length of time of testing as when you get the older you get, the more you get tested. And so those things are verified over time.

But So I want to just have us talk about how does how does a young Deacon get tested? Yeah, that's a great question Scott and I think that the idea and the concept of testing is It's it's to assess readiness for the mission, right? So there's this call for Deacon and what we're looking for is, are you ready? Are you gentle with people? Are you the kind of person that discerns well between majors and minors?

Do you resolve conflict well? Are you ready relationally? So there's multiple aspects of readiness. Are you ready in terms of your work? Have you been faithful in your work?

Young men, they've got some track record in terms of their work. How have they been doing? Did you take risks? How did you handle that? How about your faith, your vision?

Are you a man of faith? Are you ready for the battle? There's a spiritual battle when you take on an office with the church. Are you ready for that? How do you deal with trials?

Do you overcome sin? Do you discipline yourself to win the race? Are you the kind of person that starts things but doesn't finish them? Are you a quitter? What do you do when you face resistance?

Are you humble? Are you correctable? Are you proud? What's your track record? And then here's one other thing I would say for young people particularly.

If you want your church to know that you are ready. You need to live in the light and walk alongside others in relationships so that they can see you. Walk with your elders through your trials and through your life such that they can see how you handle trials, how your character is formed, the lessons you've learned. Be open with your life. Let other people in and see so that they can see what's happening inside.

And then I think that will actually help them, your church, assess your readiness, and it will help them come alongside and give you encouragement and strengthen you and be more ready in the future. You know, you can find old guys that aren't manifesting all the things that you mentioned. You know, being old doesn't necessarily mean that you are mature. And you know, men can be tested for years and fail those tests and be immature when they're, you know, 40 or 50 or 60 years old or 70 years old. So age is not a category of the qualification for a deacon.

And I think you just pointed out so many basic elements of Christian maturity that you can see in young people. And often young people are more mature than some old people. So when the apostle Paul introduces the requirement for testing, He actually attaches a qualification list to it, so let me just read that text. First Timothy 3, 8 through 13. Likewise, deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience.

But let these also first be tested, then let them serve as deacons being found blameless. Likewise, their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. Let deacons be the husband of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. For those who have served well as deacons, obtain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus. So they are to be tested before they serve.

Test them, then let them serve. And I think if you flip forward a couple of pages to 1 Timothy chapter 5, what Paul says there is don't lay hands on anyone hastily. So the laying on of hands is to set someone apart for a specific work and then commission them into that work. So don't do that hastily. Don't set these men apart to this specific work in local churches hastily, but observe them over a period of time across these categories, these qualifications that are listed, and then the ones that sort of pass the scrutiny over over time, then they're ready for that work.

And All of those things that are in the scriptures and what you've been saying, Chad, these are things that are observed in real life. It's very much the same thing with the qualifications for an elder. How do you know that this guy's qualified to be an elder? Well, you catch him doing the kinds of things that elders are qualified to do. You see those things running in his life.

You don't say, hey, do you want to be an elder? You say, wow, we've seen all these things at work in your life. Who's doing it without the title? Who's looking around and just noticing things that need to be doing and then doing them without having to be asked? Those are a really good starting point when you're looking for potential deacons.

And here's one note I would say, future deacons, if you want to be tested, go out and start doing some things. Start a Bible study, mentor a young man, start mowing the lawn of a widow in your church, start serving at a local pro-life rally, start a business, do things, get into the arena of life, serve others, and then that will test how well you do in that and how gifted you are in that area of service. The deacons are mercy ministry. Start showing mercy. See how it goes.

The word deacon is actually just a transliteration. In other words, this is not English. This is actually what the Greek looks like if you put it in the English alphabet, and it literally means servant. It's the Greek word for servant, which can actually make some things in the New Testament a little confusing, but deacon is a service position in the local church, serving the local church in particular ways. Yeah, so there you have it.

Anything else to say about how deacons are tested? Because the Bible doesn't say test the deacon on this, this, this, except for the qualifications. And I love your list, you know, earlier Chad, is there anything left unsaid about testing young deacons? Yeah, so I don't think we want to talk about them one by one, but two in particular. One is not greedy for money.

Deacons are going to be handling the congregation's money. In many cases they're going to be dispersing money. They're going to be helping people who have financial needs. And so if you have a greedy person, it's really going to be a temptation for that person. That is a terrible recipe.

The other one is that there's actually qualifications for their wives. Isn't that amazing? Here's what it says, likewise, their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things, and I think that's for a number of reasons. One is deacons' work is often really helped by a wife being right at your side, particularly ministry to ladies in the congregation. It's so helpful if your wife can be right there at your elbow for that.

It's often a blessing to the person who's being served and ministered to. Secondly, hey, the deacons are on the inside loop. They know lots of things that are not generally known in the congregation. So if you do not have a discrete wife, this is also a recipe for disaster because she's going to know things that most people don't know. So if she's not discrete, this is potentially a disaster.

She doesn't have to share everything that she hears. She must not. She's very discretionary. She's a confidential person, and she keeps things close to her chest. And I think that's what it was referring to there when it talks about not a slanderer.

Because if you are the kind of person that loves to talk negatively of others, you know, some people, you know, we have the gift of negativity, right? You know, there's nothing like church ministry to give you fodder for negative speak of others, right? It is what's called a nutrient-dense environment. There's just a caution and a warning here. If you or your wife tend to like to talk ill of others, this is an area that's going to be a cause for struggle because this is the area where you need to serve those who are struggling and hurting not talk about them.

Well where mercy is needed, weakness exists. That's right. Yeah, you're looking at people kind of with their pants pulled down, right? You're looking at people in their vulnerable moments. Yeah.

If your benevolence ministry in the local church is only for people who have no self-inflicted wounds, you'll find yourself helping no one. So often our wounds are self-inflicted, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be caring for those people. And I want to talk a little bit just about the reverence quality as well. So a deacon's wife must be reverent. I think this applies also to the deacon, but I love Joel Beeke's description of what the fear of God is, what reverence of God is.

He basically said this, he said, and I'm going to transliterate a little bit here, but he basically says, God's smile means more to you than the smiles of other men, and his frown is more loathsome to you than the frowns of other men. And that's what it means to be Godward and to have a reverence for God. And I think that that's an important reminder that you can't be in this ministry to be a people pleaser. Some people have a natural affection to service and serving others because they are people pleasers, but the ministry of the diaconate requires a particular godliness and reverence in your serving because it will not always please those you serve when you serve well. And if you are a people pleaser, you will not find the ministry of the diaconate ultimately fulfilling like you might find a nonprofit puppy ministry fulfilling, right?

There are other kinds of ministry that work better with people pleasing. The deacon is not one of them. Yeah, I agree. In fact, think about how the deacon, it was launched in the book of Acts. It was out of a lot of dissatisfaction.

These were not popular men necessarily. They were making hard calls that people disagree with. Somebody was probably not on board initially with what they did. Okay, hey, this is really helpful about the testing of a deacon. Let's talk about, really this is one of the great problems with deacons.

Deacon boards in American Christianity, particularly in the 20th century, became governing boards. They became kind of the rulers of the church. But the Bible doesn't present deacons as a governing board with authority. There seems to be no authority but service. Here's a really dangerous view.

The deacons are there for balance of power. They offset, they make sure the elders stay in line. Actually, no, that's what plurality among elders does. A plurality of elders ensures that it's not just one man who with a consolidation of power and one individual or one personality in the church. Deacons are a completely separate function and are not an offset to the elders.

It's actually a complementary role. I think Alexander Strzok said deacons should be spoken of as assistants to the elders, never overseers with authority, not an autonomous body, but actually, you know, working in concert with the elders to serve the needs of the church. And there was another word he used, Scott, that I really like as well, and it's the word agent, Because the deacons do go out and make some decisions and do some things, right? They're not there just like, it's not just the Walmart, what can I do to help t-shirt that they wear? But they're actually going and executing as an ambassador, extending the reach and the arms of the elders.

They are agents of, they don't possess their own authority, but it's more of an ambassadorship of mercy and service to the church, right? On behalf of the elders. So they extend and expand the effectiveness of the ministry. And I think that, you know, it's a little bit like thinking in a business context here, a church, sometimes I think that churches think they need more elders. What they actually need is a few deacons to make their elders go further and be more effective.

You don't always need more CEOs and CFOs. Sometimes you need a few assistants to the CEOs and CFOs in your business to just help them be better at what they already are doing. And I see the deacons doing that. They're just expanding the effectiveness of the men that they are the agents for. You know, when you go to Acts 6, which I think is the genesis of deacons in the New Testament church, in Acts 6, the leaders of the church in Jerusalem say, appoint these men to this work of service and we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.

So I think elder teams need to be focused like a laser beam on three things. Shepherding, the people work to help people in a congregation make progress in the faith, and the ministry of the Word, both publicly and from house to house, and prayer. And deacons actually should be aggressively attempting to take things that don't fit those three categories, shepherding, the Word, prayer. If they're doing things that don't fit in those three categories, deacons should be pulling those things off of their plate and taking care of them. Matthew 18 Yeah, and let's turn to this whole matter of what is on the plate of a deacon.

Of course, deacons are ministers of mercy, but there's kind of an elephant in the room here. I think, Chad, you might have called it the elephant in the room. What do deacons do in an affluent society where you can't hardly even find any poor people anymore. The poorest people have televisions and cell phones and microwaves and dishwashers and cars and you know, the poorest of the poor live like that. So how do you, how do you have a ministry of mercy when nobody's poor.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I, I, I see the, the Diacolmo ministry is the mercy ministry of Christ. But the problem that you mentioned is, is that in America, we have another God and it's the state And that God has deacons called social welfare programs. And they're very busy serving people according to their religion, right?

And these social welfare programs like welfare and others, they have replaced the average American's perception of their need for a deaconate, right? Federal programs help people buy homes, subsidize borrowing for businesses, pay for childcare, provide education, even nonprofits or NGOs get into the game of distributing food and clothing. So who needs a deacon, right? Who needs a deacon? And really who even wants help from a deacon?

Because deacons are interested not just in physical help, but also spiritual engagement as well You know the deacons job is to care for the body of Christ Not just to hand out food and I think that's really one of the issues is there's a lot of help that you can get from the nanny state with no accountability. Big brother can help you. All he cares about is your adjusted gross income on your 1040. He doesn't really care about your soul, your heart, your family's health, the fruit in your home. Right?

And that's, I think, one of the challenges is being a mercy ministry that brings Christ message and mercy together under the umbrella of the count on ability of a local church when there are so many other substitute mercy ministries out there. And unfortunately, the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. These mercy ministries of the state, they won't actually reach the needs that the deaconates can and will and are supposed to. I mean very practically as Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is eventually run out of other people's money. So I think one thing deacons need to remember is this can't go on forever.

But what we also need to do is we need to teach people that engaging with Christ and His body and under accountability and the holistic mercy ministry that the church brings is actually a better, sweeter, more fruitful thing than running off to the state for their quick cash. Yeah, a couple of comments. One, Chad, the church where you're serving, I know Kevin and team brought in men from across the country to consider what areas of need really are, and a lot of it was focused around people who are aging. So you might not have specific acute financial needs, or you might, but a church might not have that, but they certainly have people with aging parents and grandparents. And our care for the aging is not what it ought to be.

And deacons can play a role in sensitizing us all to caring well for people who are in the last stages of their life. I think deacons absolutely ought to be thinking about that. The second thing to say is not all needs and kind of care ministry needs to be focused on finances. There's more care than is needed than just, hey, I'm short this month. And so, for instance, in our congregation, we have some people who are significantly physically disabled.

So financial needs are part of that, but the needs go well beyond just the need for money. And so visiting and caring for the sick is always a concern for a deaconate. Well, I was gonna say, one of the things that no government program does is encouragement and visiting and relationally connecting with the people. You can be sick and it's one thing, if you end up letting Medicaid pay your bills, but I'm sorry, Medicaid does not take you through the trial of sickness the way that Christians must go through the trial of sickness. And so you are so right.

There's so much more than the money at stake here. And it is the care and the love and the true heartfelt mercy that happens in those moments of care, whether it's the aging, whether it's the sick, whether it's the hungry, it's so much more than the money. Never heard of a prayer line for Medicaid. You know, you have, I just appreciate that point. There's so much more that a local church, you know, can offer.

You know, in our church, you know, the deacons, you know, are very focused on helping the elders just to focus on the ministry of the Word and Prayer. So they do all kinds of administrative things that are so helpful. Scheduling who's involved in the services. We get spreadsheets on this. We don't have to maintain all these spreadsheets.

Executing banquets. We have a lot. We do a lot of feasting at our church, there's a lot of celebrating retreats. When we walk in the building, all the lights are on, it's either heated or cooled appropriately to the men, just kidding. The women are usually colder in our church.

But, you know, the sound, the recording, the internet services, everything is in order. We don't have to think about one administrative thing when we walk in. We walk in and we preach and we pray and we relate and we fellowship with the people. That's all we do on Sunday. But the deaconate is just such a power machine in a church like that.

Scott, let's continue that thought. There's more here that needs it than it's just what the elders or even the deacons themselves need to be doing. One of the roles of the diaconate is to stir up the body to love one another and to help utilize and organize the gifts and the callings of the body themselves. And that's definitely not something a program can do because what you're actually doing here is you are helping connect, oh, here's a struggling person. Here's a family that is floating out there that doesn't know how to serve, I'm going to actually connect the two of those.

And it's not always Chad Roach is running over to mow the lawn of someone. But if I know someone who's got a lawnmower and a heart to serve and someone who's got long grass, now all of a sudden you're actually facilitating body life beyond just doing it first name. I'm so glad you said that because there is a real danger here, and the danger is if you have a really high-powered group of deacons, they can actually deprive the rest of the congregation of service opportunities because they're just on top of everything. People are never more discontent than when they're not investing anything. And we all actually need to be serving in our local church, whether we bear a title or not.

And so especially highly competent, high-powered groups of deacons need to be careful that they're not actually doing too much in depriving other people of the opportunity and the necessity of serving. Yeah, amen. Well, hey, this is fantastic. I really, really am thrilled, you know, by the whole discussion. And Chad, thank you for joining us again.

It was a blessing. So many rich things, you know, were communicated. We're gonna think of some questions and do a part four. Oh boy. Just to make you come back.

There you go. Yeah, hey, thank you so much for your time, Chad. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Scott. What a joy it is to talk about such an important topic and may God grant the churches of this nation strong deacons.

We are in a time in our country, I think of what Alexis de Tocqueville said. He once said America is great because America is good and the secret to our goodness is in our churches. And as we look around us and we see the decline in our nation around us, I think what it points to is we need exactly what's on the banner that's sitting right behind you, Scott. We need strong families and we need strong churches. And for strong churches, we need a strong diaconate.

And so I just would encourage anyone out there who's even just bothered by what they see to the left and to the right of them in our culture today, to hear the call that Christ has to his body and to just consider this noble vocation of the Deacon. May it ever be, thank you so much. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast and we hope you can join us next time. You to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com