Deaconing Ministry

A couple of weeks ago or a week ago, someone told me about a fellow who took out a full page ad in New York Times and LA Times and then proclaiming something wildly fanatical like he was the Christ. And then, and this was, you know, this wasn't the Podunk Gazette, this was the New York Times. And then Mike Gere called me yesterday already and said that this fellow had been sending information down to the news station. And lo and behold, he was on Channel 4 this morning. His name, well, the name of the guy that appeared was sort of his prophet, whose name was Benjamin Creme. C R E M E. And here's. For example, you may want to look at this afterwards, but here's a reduced version of what the New York Times full page ad was saying. You can see it. Possibly the Christ is now here and he goes through. And how will we recognize him? Who is the Christ? What is he saying? When will we see him? But let me just read the last line, the last part. He has not yet declared. Now this Benjamin Creme was on TV today talking about this fellow whose name was Maitreya. That's the going name, Maitreya. How many of you saw that today? Anybody? Just a couple. Okay. If I miss any of this, you can correct me. He has not yet declared his true status and his location is known only to a very few disciples. One of these has announced that soon the Christ will acknowledge his identity and within the next two months will speak to humanity through a worldwide television and radio broadcast. His message will be heard inwardly, telepathically, and by all people in their own language. From that time, with his help, with a capital H, we will build a new world. And that's set for May 14th. Yeah. It's just trying to be so holy. And you almost get the impression that if we are possibly seeing the emergence of the Antichrist, if we. Well, I don't know. I just bring that to your attention because, you know, I want you to. Join me in my bomb shelter. No. Hallelujah. I'll tell you folks, We're not talking about some little. This guy is making these outrageous claims and the national. He's been on some national talk shows. I understand too, the prophet. So we have some things to be praying about and Lord willing, you pray for the covering of people who, you know, that are vacillating between Christ and some other philosophy and that they not. The Bible says that many false prophets will arise and deceive. A few. Many, many. Even some of the elect, if it were possible. So this Is an interesting thing to. Now why do we want to talk about deacons when the Antichrist might be coming? Right. There's a reason. The reason is that Jesus said, occupy till I come. Jesus, Jesus said occupy till I come. That means that we function as a body and beloved. Contrary to some of the questions that have been raised, There's a very critical, I'll use that word need for deacons in our body. If you have your Bible, turn to Acts 6 and I'm really going to zip through this because I want to be done with this whole presentation, as it were, in maybe 10 minutes. Now, the principal flow of the questions that have been coming to us as elders have been in three areas. The first one is what do deacons do? What do deacons do? Look at Acts 6. Now, this is the principal passage from which we draw the rationale, as it were, the biblical precedent for deacons. Now, in these days, when disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews. The Hellenists were the Greek speaking Jews because their widows were neglected. In the daily distribution, there is the need. And that's the principal thing. We see that deacons connect resources with need. They are the channel whereby those who have can transfer to those who have not. In any area, in any area. That's what a deacon does. He sees to it that those who have manual skills, food, money, anything, that the needs that are out there in the body can be put in touch with those who have the resources to meet those needs. And the 12 summoned the body of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Okay? And so what we're talking about here is connecting the resource with the need, Administrating the body, that is to say, causing the things that can easily bog down the functioning of the body so that what is important so that the preaching of the word and the edification of our spirit and so on, those things can get neglected and even forgotten because of a breakdown in details. And you know, we've had lots of those kind of things that have come against us even. And it's a very normal thing. But you have to understand that administrating the body. Is all the areas that have to do with functioning. Like here at Bradley's. If we came here tonight and the chairs weren't set up, what would we have to do? We'd take seven or eight minutes and get all the chairs set up. If the sound system wasn't up, what would we have to do? Same thing. And you could see where it would be 8, 15, and we'd just be getting started and then. Do you understand? All right. Now, in our body on these first two points, in terms of resources with needs, there's all kinds of people who come to us with needs. I don't know how many thousands of dollars have changed hands from those who had to those who needed within the body. All of that basically has gone through the elders in the office at this point. People who have needs for food or for house repair or automobiles or tutoring or you name it. All of that's been coordinated at this point through the elders and the office. And it's been a load. And I think a lot hasn't been done because it's been a load. Administrating the body has to do with the whole area of functioning and communication. The whole area, okay, the greeters that's administrating the body, the nursery facilities and situation, all of that is administrating the body. And the third area specifically I put here is care for the needy. And what that means to me is care in specific, by being with. Caring by being with the needy. Who are the needy? Well, the sick, perhaps the elderly among us, the new believers among us, those who are in trouble and struggling among us. Anyone who's needy in the body needs to be cared for. And this, particularly if you taking this down, which probably wouldn't be a bad idea, is visiting and being there. Deacons are a being there kind of ministry. Alright, those are three general areas then. Any questions at this point on this particular section? What do deacons do? Any specific questions that are in your mind about deacons at Northway as related to what do deacons do? What? I had asked this at the home group and I think I was going to ask, but I thought I'd ask again. Would deacons, a particular deacon, be assigned a particular. Okay, that comes later. How do deacons function? Come later? This is just what they will do. These are areas they'll be responsible for. Or is it clear? Second, then what gifts, abilities, talents should they have? Well, we've made it clear, I don't need to get into it. But in First Timothy 3, if you've been in your home group study at all, above all, it's character, right? There's no gift of deaconing, it's character. That's the primary thing here in Acts where we have our markers. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom that we may appoint to this duty it's character, it's the heart of God, the nature of God at work in the believer. And that's a servant's heart. A deacon, his primary qualification is that he has a servant's heart. He has a heart that's willing to give without being told. That's what a servant does. Takes care of a need without being told about it necessarily. And the third capacity is sort of an administrative coordinator or a servant leader. Now, what this means is that as the needs arise in the body, the deacon isn't he or she isn't responsible to do it as much as they are responsible to see that it gets done by calling forth others in the body to help with with the service. And the primary channel of that is what your home group. So let's say, for example, that we have a need in the body of seeing to it that the nursery is staffed for an evening meeting like this, and there's a deacon who's in charge of the nursery responsible for that whole area. They would be sure that either through their home group or through a pool of names that they would have brought together that that would be covered. All right, Questions about the gifts that deacons would have, Jerry, Number two and. Three are the first. Two and three are the second. Are you getting that from the word? I'm getting it from what they did, yeah. Acts 6. What they did was they took care of dispensing the food to thousands of people. That's administration, Paula. Well, based on what we know of character, I think that would be discouraged. It says in 1 Timothy 3 that they should have had it tested or examined. Ministry. All right, and then how will they function at Northway? This gets down to Mike's question. Well, they'll function according to the needs and the need. How do they find the needs? Well, they'll find the needs through the elders, primarily. If you in the body know of a need, then you can go to a deacon that's overseeing a particular area perhaps and let them know about it and save the elders from having to deal with it. So it's according to need as they discern their interests. Now, some deacons will not really have a strong interest in the whole area of visitation. And it would be unfair to say that because you're a deacon, you have to visit. But we're trusting the Lord that out of the pool of deacons, some will want to visit, some will want to care for the specific nitty gritty details of setting up and all this kind of thing. Some will Want to minister to new believers. Some will want to pray for the sick, perhaps go visit the sick, this kind of thing. So as the Lord leads them in their interests and their call might even be a better word there. And they will function in conjunction with their home groups. That is to say, as I mentioned, that if they need resources, they'll come back to their home group first, try to work it out. If they can't, then they'll go to the larger body and do that. I guess that's off the. Okay, now, does that answer your question, Mike? In other words, no, you're not selected because, yes, I have a heart to run the co op ministry. For example, remember we started the co op ministry talking about it last November? Well, never went anywhere because we didn't have anyone to oversee it. That's what a deacon would do. But once they got together and the needs were presented, then the deacons would pray about those needs. And those who felt called would fill in and. And trust the Lord that they would all be covered. Okay, John, I have a question. It sounds as though a deacon would be over a certain thing, Saint Clement, for instance. And then you said that the deacon would go back to his home group. Does that, in a sense, tie the mission of the home group to the same mission as the deacon? Is the. Because you said if the home group didn't meet, then they would go to the larger. Is that. Yeah, I think, again, this is where flow is going to have to be the rule. If you go back to your home group and you're in charge of food and your home group says, we just, you know, we have 11 men in our home group and we just can't come up with the food, then it wouldn't be wise. There's no rules here, folks. I mean, what are the two underlying principles of deacons from what we discovered, how they came into being? First, two things that they were principles that the early church worked under to bring them flexibility and creativity. Now, I also want to point out that I don't think a deacon who would, say, volunteer to take over the oversight of the food ministry would be locked into that. But I think for a season they would have to be responsible for it. Otherwise, it's like anything. If you don't know which one of your kids is going to cut the grass, then no one does it. Right. All right, one or two other questions or five or ten. How do you tie that in with. This was a. Variance there. I use this in our study. To me, what it evidenced to me was that that the deaconing ministry was no small calling, that a man of this caliber would be placed in there and associated, called a deacon. I agree with you. It seems like if Stephen were here among us, he'd be on the platform doing something probably. Or maybe at Soldiers and sailors, probably. So my sense is, Paul, that you have to keep in mind also that we have no idea how much time has elapsed there. It may have been just because verse eight follows verse seven. We don't know if that was two months or four months or a year and a half at least. I don't think we do. I don't remember any chronological. So he may have grown into that as he was serving as a deacon. Because one Timothy does say that there is great reward and serving as a deacon. Want to add to that? I just thought verse three really tells me why that he was full of the Holy Spirit and anyone walking in the Lord, signs and wonders will follow him. Praise the Lord. Good. All right, anyone want to add anything? Jack or Grant or Roy? Anyone? Any other questions, feel free to get them out because this is all we're going to do on this. No deacons, quizzes or anything tonight. We're just going to do it. Bill. That's one reason that Northway is really growing. Let me just share personally there that this is an absolute essential need in my life right now. And I think the other elders would agree with that. When we get together, our hearts say get in the word, be in prayer, deal with the things that are before us. But the list of must do's, the crying things that are. We have to talk about those kinds of things. And it just gets to be a wrenching and it's very much true for me personally as well. And I'm just available. And that's probably a mistake, but in a way it's important because I want to be in touch and so on. But it can easily begin to, you know, the ledger can be pulled all the way down to where that's all you're doing and you're not being with the Lord. I don't know if you've ever said publicly in one of the meetings, but how did the call come about for the deacons? May we share that with the elders then? Did someone speak to that? I'm not sure if I understand your question. Well, from what our hunger leader said that at the end of prayer session or so on with the elders, that there came an awareness that. The need. For deacons or the deacon ministry was. Came to, was brought in. Brought to. Your attention by the Spirit. Could you relate that to us somehow? Well, I think the need was brought to our attention over the course of many months. The need to those of us who are constantly receiving the request for all of these things and who are constantly aware of things that aren't getting done at all, the need has been there. The vision for how we were to do this, that is going through the home groups. That came at the end of a prayer time. We were on our elders retreat, which was, I think, two months ago now, and we had been talking about how do we bring forth deacons without going through the whole procedure again of just submitting a bunch of names because we wanted people who had recognized ministries. And the Lord just at the end of a couple hours, seemed to speak very clearly to us that it was to be through the home groups. Because you people in the home groups know the people in your fellowships that are functioning according to some of these characteristics. And that's how we came to that. And I, you know, I'm still very much affirmed in that. I would just say, as far as the specific of how that happened, there. Wasn'T a prophetic word to that point, but there was a clear sense that as we prayed and as we discussed, there was. It seemed like there was a hindrance. There was a barrier. No one was saying, gee, there's a hindrance here, but it was like we were treading water and not getting anywhere, or you pull one foot out of. The mud and the other one goes in the same. There was a spiritual sense that that was the kind of place we were in. I can't even remember who it was that suggested the idea that somewhere in the home group functioning that there ought to be the answer to this or something. We were thinking together so much that you can't put any authorship to it, except the Lord was directing it. And once the idea began to come, it was like the barrier was gone. And it was. There was such freedom to progress. And everybody was saying, yes, and this and yes, and this, and it all just. It fit. And we were just rejoicing. It was super. There was a sense of oneness and harmony and a release and a joy that feeds as we sense. That's how I would describe it. Okay, June, Are deacons just to minister. To the needs in the body? Okay, the question is, are deacons just to minister to the needs just in the body? And my sense on that is no. I think that the deaconing ministry can be a bridge to reaching out to people who have needs around us. You know, we have to be judicious about it. Yeah. We are all servants the deacons are charged with, though. You see, the responsibility of seeing that it gets done, for example. These are silly. Not silly. These are everyday examples. But no one has been greeting for the last two weeks. That's an absence to me. There's a little void there. All of us can't say that, well, it's your fault, Sandy, you know, But what we're saying is that needs to be done, and a deacon would be responsible to see that it's done. Okay. Yeah. Ken, I don't think we can bypass the parallel, though, between the spiritual qualities of deacon and the servant qualities. Because in the chapter six, it said, first of all, they were chosen from among the disciples, and the disciples drew and the disciples. Then they were chosen from the disciples. Stephen and Philip were both. And they had tremendous ministries. Paul had a miracle ministry. They had a great preaching ministry. Poor Stephen, and great martyr that he was a tremendous spiritual man. So in answer to the first question about a new convert becoming a deacon, I don't think we can bypass the spiritual project and the spiritual ministry of. The mission as well. Not just the sermons. Well. And in fact, I think what we'll see is, as these deacons are touching lives with these very physical kind of things, that spiritual breakthrough is going to occur. When you take a plate of food to somebody, you have an opportunity to minister to them, or when you see to it that new believer has followed up or whatever the case may be. Now, all right, I don't want to open more questions than there are any other questions. This is the last call here, Doug. And so if you don't know the story, let me just tell you that on for about six weeks, we scoured the north hills for a place to meet. And on March 20, 1981, after repeated postponements here at Bradley's, they agreed to let us come and meet here on March 29. Our first meeting, Their first day of open business was March 28th. They've been close for 4, 14 months. And so the Lord opened the door just in time. Well, after last year, things have gone well and we've had an excellent relationship. And as you know, we've been praying for their prosperity. And they went through some difficult times. And now I seem to be emerging out of that. And consequently, it puts pressure on us. And there are a lot of things in the midst of this that have not been functioning very well. One of them is the youth ministry. It's not a commentary on Blaine or the people involved. It's a commentary on the fact that when you have 20 or 30 junior or senior hires and you put them in a house, well, try them in your house for a night. It's just very difficult on a consistent basis. And our vision is to have many more people coming, young people coming to the lord. And that's been a ministry that we just has been very much handicapped by the absence of a facility. We've been running office space in the open door. That's been terrific. No problems there. But once again, when blaine joined the staff, that put two people, a secretary and all of her equipment and one part of the same room with blaine, which means that he now spends most of his mornings away from the office Trying to get some quiet time and study done. And it's not really a very good arrangement there either, but it's been workable. Hallelujah. And by far, in our hearts, the most important thing is that we are obeying the lord in the building up of the body. Now, the principle that we've been functioning under has been what I call the principle of accommodation. Accommodation means that we will do nothing to acquire people and growth and numbers, but that by God's grace, we will do everything we can to accommodate the people that he brings. Do you understand that what I just said? In other words, we believe it would be irresponsible and disobedient if God sent his people and we didn't do everything we could do to care for them. And I'm talking about children as well as adults here. Now, in the last weeks and months, things have become increasingly difficult in terms of any kind of arrangements here. One week it might be fine. Like last Sunday, Everything was provided. This coming Sunday with mother's day, There's a good chance we're going to be sardined again. The bradleys as people, have been gracious, but clearly they're here to do the best they can, and we're somewhat susceptible to what that means week by week. And there's the limitations of other things that you are all aware of. Now, what that meant was that for some time now, we've been praying as elders, and I know some of you have been praying as well, that, lord, what options are there? And as we saw, we had three. The first was to stay here and do the best we could with what we had and realize that there were going to be times that the children would not have a place to meet and times when we would have 350 people in a room that was made for about 250 the most. And times when it just wasn't possible to meet, when we needed to meet and this kind of thing. Second, we began to pursue the option of finding an existing structure and to ask the Lord for any possible door, anything from supermarkets to school buildings to. You name it. But when you start, I just wanted to throw that in. Maybe you thought about these things. You got to remember how big a thing we're talking about. I mean, just a meeting facility that could accommodate the number of people we have already. They're few and far between. And, of course, the third option. But there are some out there. The third option, of course, was to ask the Lord for some property and present ourselves with the prospect of, well, do we begin the process of building a structure that could accommodate the growth that the Lord's brought to us Now I'll pause there and ask the brothers we met at length last night, coming to tonight. And do you want to jump in here at any point and share anything else about the groundwork? Ray Spiker, by the way, is in Virginia on a business trip that he couldn't rearrange, so he couldn't be here tonight. One thing that it might be helpful for you to have me say, and that is that I really began Northway with the whole beginning involvement here, with the whole clear sense that I personally would respond very well to the idea of never having our own facility and using public space so that we could put money and time and effort into people rather than into bricks and mortar. Because I know that there are a lot of fellowships in other places that do that. But the reality that I have come to see is that here in this area, regardless of what is done in other areas in this area, there is not only a significant lack of spaces, plain facilities big enough to handle the body that the Lord has given us, but the one avenue that is used so many places for a meeting place being the public schools, is absolutely, by all appearances, anyway, to our exploration and pressing. And everything is simply a closed issue here. We have a circumstance here where the school board seems to be very strong in their interpretation of the separation of church and state, to where they've completely reversed the intent of what that law is in the first place. The law, we believe, was made to keep the state from messing with the church. But now what we have is a complete reversal of that, where the state is saying, we cannot have anything to do with any church anywhere. And that reality has been, to me, I've come about this very with great difficulty. It's hard for me to accept it. But I really. This is where I am. I see that our one live option is to have our own facility in this area. All right, Jerry. I don't know if this is in. The way of a community. I talk about president of North Hill School. He referred me to Glenn man who handles grounds and buildings and so forth. The school buildings are perfectly open to us. They're available. Got a letter here offering us the Westview Junior High auditorium for $200 per use all the way through the summer. Or if we use it more than five times, it's $100. You know, you could go bigger and move up to the other auditorium up. In the. Main complex, the high school building. That's a big auditorium and they all rent that to us. They said the only thing that we may get chased on once in a while if there was something going on. But on a Sunday morning they wouldn't. You know, it's unusual. School would have something going on. So I think as a possible out there is that available to us. And you're really helping the school district too by renting the building rather than sitting and leaving a bakery. That is one out. And the other one was the Hamilton Martin building. It's only 325 seat auditorium. We have a lot of classrooms. There are two buildings there. The parking isn't the greatest, but there could be additional parking down the road. The location is not the greatest. That's for sale and possibly for rent too. Where we could rent the whole building. And they would. They would want a clause subject to, you know, subject to being sold out money, which they do have four to six months to move out into another area. There are some. Well, let me speak to that on two fronts. First of all, in North Hills. I appreciate what you have there, Jerry. I'd like to look at was our understanding that each school principal had the authority to grant you access to his facility and North Hills High School would not grant that access to it. Us. That's the word we got. Now, you may have heard something else and I'd like to talk to you about it. A couple other things we do need to consider location seriously because we recognize that God's called us to minister principally to a geographical area. And that's another concern. But it's certainly not a question what you're talking about. An NA write on their forms because I've dealt with them in the past. It said permits shall not be issued for any religious group. Period. And they have become. Three or four years ago I was able to get them to whatever the word is, to lay aside that clause and let us have a concert there once in a while for the high school kids. But that just. It's absolutely whammo clause. So. But I'd like to pursue that with you and certainly we'll talk about that because we want to be open to every option. All right. That doesn't, by the way, speak to the youth thing and it doesn't speak to some of the other questions, but go ahead. Another thing I'd like to mention with respect to that is the idea that we're not going to be looking for something for once a week. I hope this church of ours is going to be a seven day a week affair and we need to be looking for space that's going to be available for us that's not subject to somebody else's whim or whether or not they're doing well at what they're doing, or whether they're going to have another affair at that particular time. Whatever. I think we need to be on a broader basis. The second thing that I'd like to mention here is going back to what Jay began to talk about was the idea here of property of our own. Most of us, I believe, did come into this with the idea here that we didn't want to be looking at that kind of thing, that we didn't want to become debt encumbered. And I'm not sure we want that yet. As a matter of fact, I'm quite sure we don't. But. We got to remember that we're a Bible oriented church. And when we review the Old Testament, we find out there's one of the most famous church buildings that ever existed in mankind there that God blessed tremendously and was owned by the Jews. And that was the Temple at Jerusalem. It was quite an architectural structure as it's described in the Bible. Many, many pieces of gold coin, you know, invested in it. But God blessed that for one reason, because that temple wasn't the most important thing to them. The thing that was important to them was the God that reigned there, that the God that they built this house for. And this is what we have to keep foremost in our mind, that we are the Lord's children. And any facility that we have around us is just for our convenience to do that which we're led to do and to be blessed in it. Thanks. Okay, so we come to. Did you want to. Joyce? Yeah, that's been an option. Churches, you know. Well, there's two things. First of all, there's not that many buildings that could accommodate, like Wexford Presbyterian here just isn't big enough anymore for us and so on. And second, we would have to take another. Time. And the general sense that I get is that that then begins to culturally become an obstacle and so forth. It's not out of the question. We thought about Saturday nights. How many people would like a Saturday night worship time and not a Sunday? It's a good thing you put your hand up, Joyce. I was hoping. No, there's just a lot of. Okay. But yes. So anyhow, we come to tonight. One more. Ray. Forgive me, but this isn't a rebuke to our congregation, but I'm getting to sour from what I'm hearing here that we're a bunch of paupers. And I believe that I am the king's child and I'm the king in Christ's kingdom, but I don't have to go around begging for a place. I believe that if God speaks to our elders here of a place that we go in and possess the land, that we take prayer and start using prayer here to possess what God wants to give us, and that we're not. Beggars in North Hill. Thanks, Roy. All right, let me just share with you then, next step of where we are. And we come to you tonight very openly about this. And we haven't come to you with a decision. We've come to you where we are and to consider some of these options and to now present you with a particular option that's been made available, or I should say, has been brought to our attention, and it would be available to us. Okay. Yeah. We're not trying to sell anything. No. Why that needs to be said. We're not trying to sell anything. All right. I don't know if any of you have done any pricing of property. You know, you need to be a king's kid. But what God has made brought to our attention is a piece of property. And it's at the stage right now where we simply establish the contact and have made inquiry and have now come to the point of knowing that it's available and what the price is and what would be involved in it. And we don't come to you with a decision saying this is God's piece of property for us. We don't come to you saying that we've already said, yes, we're buying it. We're just saying that we believe that to this point, God has made this property attractive to us. And we feel that God is saying to us to pursue the possibility of this being the property where we could raise a structure perhaps that would accommodate our community. And the property is located at the intersection of North park and Route 910, which Pierce Mill Road comes up this way into Warrendale and Cranberry. And if you follow the Orange Belt on over to Route 8, it's just a few more miles. The people from Sewickley would come.