I’m one of the deacons at my church. When I read Acts 6, I feel like we should be doing everything we can to help the poor around us, but some of the other deacons think that our job is to take care of the church building and finances and maybe help with pressing needs inside our congregation. Who’s right?

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Deacons bless the church tremendously. They are a gift from God for the good of His people. Thank you for serving as one!

God, through His apostles, gave this office to the church to oversee the business of feeding hungry widows (Acts 6:3). Deacons do not just wait tables but oversee giving to the poor. Deacons should take care of the church building and finances so that they are able to do everything they can to help the poor around them. But even caring for the poor is not the end in itself. Caring for the poor is an important part of disciple-making. We urge our good deacons to not see care of the church’s property and the poor as competing interests, but rather as complementary efforts. Here’s what we mean:

The goal in Acts 6 is multiplying disciples through the spread of the Scriptures. In verse 1, Luke writes that the disciples are multiplying, and in verse 7 he records that they are multiplying greatly. This theme fills the book of Acts. So, the story here is about a barrier to disciple-making named poverty. A two-sided deprivation hinders the work of God’s Word: hungry tummies do not hear well, and differing languages make communication and organization impossible. The Greek-speaking widows are being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So, the apostles decide to address both problems: they appoint seven spiritually mature Greek-speakers to the job of making sure that there is food on the widows’ tables. Removing the linguistic barrier and the food barrier results in the disciples multiplying greatly.

The goal of the deacon, then, is to multiply disciples by removing barriers to the spread of the Scriptures. Sometimes our communities have systemic or chronic barriers (e.g., language, underemployment, addiction, homelessness) that hinder people’s ability to disciple or be discipled. Deacons work to tear down those barriers. Sometimes we have immediate or crisis barriers to our disciple-making (e.g., hunger, cash shortage, medical emergency, unexpected expensive repairs); again, deacons help the church remove those barriers.

In a way, deacons are irrigation experts. The Word of God flows into the church community, running in little streams into the homes and hearts of our people. But sometimes, through sin or God’s good providence, the waterways become blocked. Deacons remove the dam so that the disciples can multiply again.

The removal of these barriers requires careful stewardship of the church’s resources. The needs of the poor always seem to exceed the resources of the rich. Jesus did say that the poor would always be with us (Matt. 26:11), but this should not discourage our diaconal efforts as God also said that there will be no poor within the church community as we share generously with one another (Deut. 15:4; Acts 2:44–45; 4:34–35). There will always be poor people, but not every person will always be poor. Deacons make sure that the right food ends up on the right table at the right time. The church needs deacons who know what their church has to offer and what is actually needed in a certain situation. Deacons cannot give away what their church does not have, and seldom do the poor just need cash. Careful stewardship of congregational resources empowers deacons to remove barriers to disciple-making.

Even managing the church’s building contributes to the work of empowering the poor to participate in Jesus’ Great Commission. In some cases, our buildings can be maintained so that some can find housing there or perhaps be fed there. But, in all cases, church buildings can be managed so that the poor can find friendship there, with both God and fellow believers, and that matters most of all. According to books like When Helping Hurts, what the poor often need most is respect and community. They certainly need the gospel more than anything! Is your building accessible to the poor? Is the community forged within your building accessible to the poor? These are important diaconal questions. Stewardship of buildings and budgets has great gospel significance. Our buildings are the atmosphere in which our community gathers to worship, and our budgets proclaim our priorities (Matt. 6:21). Do the poor appear in our buildings and budgets?

Like the king in Jesus’ parable (Matt. 22:1–10), the church stands at a magnificent feast in need of empty stomachs. Deacons hasten to the hedgerows and hills to bring anyone in the grip of poverty to the table. But, deacons must have a table around which the poor may sit, and they need food to serve. Thus, the management of the church’s property and the care of the church’s poor are complementary activities, not competing ones.

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Have a question on your heart that you’d like to see answered here? Send it to info@rpwitness.org.

James Faris and Noah Bailey | column editors