What is A Deacon?
Since the role of a deacon is not a headship role, but an assisting role, and since Romans 16:1 speaks of Phoebe as a deacon of the church (the NIV translates the word as "servant", while the context -- "of the church" -- points to the role of a deacon and not just somebody who serves -- Paul uses different words for that in the next verse), the Anglican Mission, and almost all of the Anglican Church world-wide, also ordains women to the diaconate.
Acts 6 is often looked to as the key text in understanding the diaconate. The apostles ask for the church to choose seven men "of good repute, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom," to serve (the Greek word for "serve" is where we get the word deacon) the people so that the apostles could attend to the ministry of the Word -- and they chose seven and laid hands on (ordained) them. While Acts 6 gives an expression of the diaconate in the early church, it is actually not the defining text. The diaconate is defined by the Lord Jesus Christ. In Matthew 20:28, Jesus said, "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
In the New Testament, we see that Jesus fulfills the role of the High Priest and the King. What we also see is that Jesus also sets forth himself as the model for the deacon - He is the One who came to serve. Not only did Jesus come to serve, but that aspect of His ministry is the one we are called to make our own. We are not called to become High Priests, we are not called to become the King: we are called to serve. Paul writes, in Philippians 2:5-7, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." The deacon, in living out this role of serving -- and calling others into service, is a model for the whole church, and was foundational in the New Testament Church. Each one of us is called to be a deacon, we are to be servants.
At the heart of the cross, at the heart of our salvation, is Jesus as servant. Because of this truth, not only are deacons a model for the whole Church, the diaconate speaks to the heart of Jesus and His ministry and work on the cross. Jesus has modeled for us what it means to serve. He is the first deacon, He is the servant: and we are to do what we see Him doing. Do we come to be served if He came to serve? No, we come to serve.
The problem is that by 325 in the Church, the hierarchy that marked the world also marked the church. If you wanted to "be somebody" in the church, you had to be ordained . . . and the deacon was the "first level" of that hierarchy. If you were more gifted, you could be ordained a priest, and then maybe even a bishop. The deacon, then, became the lowest rung on the ladder of "upward mobility" in the church. But this is not the model the Lord gave in Matthew 20:26, "Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant." The heart of the Christian life is not to be "upwardly mobile," but to be "downwardly mobile," to become the servant of others, to take on this nature of Jesus as our own. He wasn't grasping for recognition and power -- He made Himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant.
In Matthew 25, when Jesus describes the Day of Judgment, He says that all the nations will be gathered before Him -- every person ever born -- and He will separate them between the sheep and the goats, between the just and the unjust. And what is the criteria for this separation, how are the sheep known? Service. Matthew 25:34-36 "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'" We are not saved by works, we are saved by grace through faith -- but the evidence of that great salvation, the evidence of His grace in our lives, is that this service marks our life: that we are deacons as the Lord Jesus is a deacon.
This emphasis on service is does not mean that a deacon serves instead of others -- the deacon is called to serve and to help others step into a life of serving (just like having ordained priests doesn't demolish the "priesthood of all believers" -- one of the functions of a priest is to help all believers step into living out the priesthood of all believers). Deacons exemplify service in their roles in the liturgy through reading the Gospel (they go out into the world just as Jesus went into the world), by preparing the communion table during the offertory, and by dismissing the congregation at the end of the service: to go into the world.
We need this truth today -- we need deacons today -- because all too often the church tries to move by power as the world defines power and we lose the power of the Holy Spirit bringing revival. If we could grasp this truth of being called to serve, if we could walk more in this truth that we are called to be deacons, called to be downwardly mobile, then the church moves with the power of Jesus and not the power of this world.