Y Safle

The issue of Elders and Deacons came up on MInTheGap’s blog, so here is a follow up to my “Apostles” posting discussing Elders, Overseers and Deacons.

Anyone attempting to come to an understanding of a Biblical church structure will at some point need to address the roles of Elders, Deacons and Overseers.

The issue is complicated by the various denominational baggage with which we all approach this issue. In order to understand what the early church understood by these terms we must first try to dispense with any notions of Bishops, Presbyters, Elders, Deacons and Pastors that we may already have.

Some would have us believe that the issue is clear, but the plethora of church governments tells us this is not the case, and as we study scriptures we find that the terms were not originally defined as specific church offices at all.

Consider Paul, who in Phillipians 1:1 tells us he is a servant of Christ. This word servant is from the Greek “diakonein” or deacon.

In Luke 17:8; 22:26 we see that all leaders are commanded to serve. (See also John 12:2; Mark 10:43-45; Matthew 20:26-28).

The word “diakonia” literally means “service” or “ministry”, so all of us called to a ministry are deacons in one sense at least.

Look at Acts 12:25 - This journey was a ministry, mission or service.

Rom 15:31 - Paul’s collection of alms was service, also in 2 Cor 8:4 etc.

2 Cor 11:23 - Paul is a servant (deacon) of Christ

2 Cor 4:1 - Having this ministry (diakonein)

Rom 11:13 - Paul’s ministry (diakonein) as apostle of the gentiles

Col 1:25 - Paul is a deacon of the church

1 Tim 4:6 - Timothy is a deacon of Christ Jesus, also 2 Tim 4:5

Now having said this, we are often told that the seven called to serve the hellenist jews in Acts 4 were deacons, but it is worthy of note that these seven were never called deacons. The ministry these seven performed was a unique ministry in the life of the church and these men were not strictly analagous to later ministers of the apostolic ages, but were rather ad-hoc representatives of the interests of the hellenists with the Twelve. They were also clearly evangelists, disputing, teaching and baptising alongside the apostles.

The office of deacon then must have surely arisen later, alongside the office of overseer (episkopoi), and we should thus turn to later writings in an attempt to understand these offices.

1 Corinthians 12:28 gives us the first hint of an emerging church structure when Paul speaks of administrators and helpers, but it is in the Pastoral Epistles that we truly start to see the emerging early church structure.

There are two passages of note:

1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1:5-9.

It is often considered that Titus is a more condensed version of the Epistle to Timothy, and that the instructions to Titus on the appointment of Elders is a repetition to the instructions to Timothy to do the same.

I do not disagree with this view, but it is often also noted that Paul talks only of elders to Titus, whereas he talks to Timothy of overseers and deacons.

It is then contested by many that overseers and elders are synonymous, and that Paul simply omits teaching of deacons. I believe this interpretation to be incorrect.

Paul speaks of Elders in the first letter to Timothy in the fifth chapter (verse 17) where he says “Elders who exercise leadership well should be worth of double renumeration, especially those occupied in preaching and teaching.”

From this we know that elders are associated with church leadership, and some elders are associated with the ministry of preaching and teaching. This is worthy of note - not all elders are expected to preach or teach.

The function of an elder, according to Paul, is to exercise leadership in each congregation. That is to say they exercise a general oversight similar to that exercised by the elders in a Jewish synagogue. Now this again is an important point, for the church had much in common with first century judaism, and we will best understand the structure of the early church if we try to understand that structure in the light of the structure of the synagogues of the time.

The term elder had already been applied to the elders of Jewish synagogues, and now the analagous role within the early church was being recognised with the same title See also Rom 12:8; 1 Thess 5:12 for other examples of early church leadership.

Now the term “those occupied in teaching …” suggests that the elders who were exercising this general oversight were being subdivided in some sense. A narrower group of elders was being defined, and it is my belief that this narrower group were the overseers, whereas the remainder of the elders were what Paul here refers to as deacons.

Note also that Paul is speaking also of those elders who “exercise leadership well”. Now he may simply be saying some elders are bad at their job, but surely it is much more likely that Paul is especially singling out the overseers here. The overseers are those with a specific gifting towards leadership, and are thus able to exercise in some sense this general oversight, and who have perhaps taken a full time role in this administration. Assuming this interpretation we see immediately that Paul would naturally have singled out those occupied in teaching and full time service for the greater renumeration that he mentions.

Now we can see that in 1 Timothy 3:2 that teaching is especially the role of the overseer. A qualifiation of an overseer is that he is able to teach, whereas this qualification is omitted from the qualifications of a deacon.

The emerging church structure would then appear to be this: Each assembly had a board of elders, just as the jewish synagogues did, and within the board of elders there was a subdivision, analagous to the subdivision in a jewish board of elders.

The subdivision was between those who had oversight in leadership, conducted the preaching and teaching and were in general full time elders - the overseers - and those who had a leadership role, but were under the authority of the overseers and most likely took care of the day to day concerns of the assembly, as well as other pastoral responsibilities distributing money to the poor and the order of widows. The latter group would generally have other jobs to support them and their families. These were the deacons.

Where Timothy and Titus fitted into the picture is a little harder to assess. Some suggest that they were pastors, a different group in their own right, but there is no reason to necessarily assume that the ministry of “pastor” was ever meant to encompass their ministry. They may have been proto pastors or this may have been a specific ministry for a specific situation. We know that they were sent to the churches by Paul and with his authority granted to them. In a sense he was their delegates just as Paul was Christ’s delegate, but we have already seen that the authority they had cannot be called “apostolic”.

Some have suggested that they were supposed to be elders, the first among equals in a sense. This view sits quite comfortably with their roles within these churches, except that both Timothy and Titus seemed to have an itinerant ministry for the most part in the same sense that Apollos did, and we must ask whether either Timothy or Titus were supposed to settle in their respective cities once and for all. If they were sent to the churches for a limited period to establish the churches and to build the board of elders, it is hard to reconcile this fact with the understanding of the pastrorship  associated with one local church.

Another possibility put forward is that the roles of Timothy and Titus were ad hoc roles to which we can give no special title. Paul saw the need to send men to these churches for a limited period to stabilize them, to ground them in truth, and to set up the church structure we have discussed so that the church would survive beyond the apostolic age.

As with my post on Apostles, an important caveat applies: there is no reason that churches today should have the same structure as the early church. Church structure was never meant to be prescriptive and absolute, as witnessed by the many structures in the New Testament. If I am right in my understanding above, then what we should gain from this understanding is an ability to see how Paul’s discussion of the roles and responsibilities of elders and deacons then can be used to benefit similar ministries today.