Baptist deacons in many churches have been going through an identity crisis for several decades. They are not quite sure what it is they are supposed to do. For the most part, small rural churches with bivocational pastors have escaped this identity crisis, but it has hit urban and suburban deacons particularly hard. It has also been a problem regardless of the theological orientation of the church.
I have not seen or undertaken a formal study of the problem, but I have experienced it firsthand through interim pastorates, supervision of doctor of ministry students, church consultations and preaching/teaching engagements with local churches in numerous states.
Every Baptist pastor knows the offices of a New Testament church. Before making such a blanket statement, I took the precaution of polling several Baptist pastors.
Not only do they all know the offices, when they tell what they know it sounds like the recitation of something they have committed to memory. When I ask “What are the offices of a New Testament church?” the answer comes back, “The two offices of a New Testament church are pastor/elders and deacons.”
The number of offices is part of the answer established by centuries of practice. In this case, one could substitute the word tradition for the word practice.
In the first London Confession of 1644, the early English Baptists identified the offices of a church as “pastors, teachers, elders, deacons.”
In later editions of the London Confession, however, pastors and teachers are omitted. The Somerset Confession of 1656 took a much less specific approach about the offices in a church. It declares that a church may choose gifted people “for the performance of the several duties, whereunto they are called.”
While these two confessions expressed the thought of the Calvinistic Baptists, a stream of Armenian Baptists had sprung up even before the Calvinistic Baptists. Their thoughts on church offices were expressed in John Smyth’s Short Confession of Faith in 1610. These confessions speak of three offices in the church: teacher, elder and deacon.
By the time of the Second London Confession of 1677, the London Baptists had clarified what they intended in the first London Confession concerning the offices. Several terms were used interchangeably for one of the two offices. The words pastor, teacher, bishop and elder all referred to the same office.
The new confession explained that a particular church gathered and completely organized, according to the mind of Christ, consists of officers and members.
The officers are appointed by Christ and are to be chosen and set apart by the church. They are to administrate the peculiar ordinances and execute power, or duty, with which Jesus entrusts or calls them.
The confession would have great influence not only in England but throughout America as it became the model for the confessions that the Baptist churches in America adopted beginning with the Philadelphia Confession of 1742.
BF&M beginnings
The New Hampshire Confession of 1833, upon which the Baptist Faith and Message of Southern Baptists in its various forms (1925, 1963, 2000) is based, retained the Second London Confession understanding of the offices of a church, describing them as “bishops or pastors and deacons.”
The 1925 Baptist Faith and Message described the offices as “bishops or elders and deacons,” but the 1963 and 2000 statements of the Baptist Faith and Message use the more current terminology of “pastors and deacons.”
It is interesting to note that while these confessions identify the officers of a New Testament church, they do not provide a job description for the offices. The failure to provide a job description does not necessarily mean that the early Baptists did not know what a pastor or deacon was supposed to do. On the contrary, it suggests that the role of deacons was so clearly understood that it did not need to be mentioned.
At the same time Baptists were first organizing in England, the Mennonite stream of the continental Anabaptists adopted the Dordrecht Confession in 1632 in which they enumerated some of the tasks of deacons and deaconesses.
This group understood the task to include the responsibilities to visit, comfort and take care of the poor, the weak, afflicted and the needy, and also to visit, comfort and take care of the widows and orphans; and further to assist in taking care of any matters in the church that properly come within their sphere, according to their ability.
In regard to the deacons, that they … may also in aid and relief of the bishops, exhort the church, … and thus assist in word and doctrine. Though the English Baptists from whom Southern Baptists descend had no formal relationship to Anabaptists such as the Mennonites, the Dordrecht Confession illustrates that baptistic groups had an understanding of what deacons were supposed to do.
When we move into the 21st century, something interesting has taken place. Though Baptists continue to affirm in their most important theological documents that a New Testament church has only two offices, pastor and deacon, one must scour the countryside to find a church that has only two offices.
Churches today have committees, councils, task teams and ministry teams, with their corresponding chairs, directors, coordinators and supervisors. The teaching ministry of the church is shared by Sunday School teachers, Royal Ambassadors and Girls in Action leaders and a stable of other people involved in curriculum-related teaching.
The confusion of deacons over their role grew throughout the 20th century as Southern Baptist churches underwent an organizational revolution.
The pragmatic revolution helped Southern Baptists become the largest Protestant group in the United States, but it occurred largely without relating the new organizational pattern to the biblical model. Thus, Southern Baptist pastors and leaders continue to say that the two offices of the New Testament church are pastor and deacon, but the local nominating committee knows better.
Share with others: