Conviction and Vexation.

Our elders have decided to redefine the deaconate.

In effect, deacons are now explicity, rather than the historically implicit declaration, junior elders. From the pool of the deaconate, the next elders will be drawn. My problem with this is manifold.

There is no biblical evidence that the deaconate was a specific "office," though it could be argued to have become one at an early date. But whatever they did isn't well-spelled out in the text. But we do know that there were deacons, male and female. There is no reason to believe that whatever a male deacon was is different from whatever a female deacon was.

In creating the junior elders pool in the deaconate, we have officially gone outside the bounds of the biblical picture -- as well as closed off the area to women entirely. While many will accept the fact that women were deacons and some are even open to the idea of this becoming the practice again, many are uncomfortable with the idea of women as elders -- therefore, they could not be included in the pool of the deaconate.

Our elders are either saying one of two things: either women can be elders, which I doubt our eldership believes, or women cannot be elders and thus are excluded from being deacons, regardless of the biblical picture.

The ones who have abiblically defined what a deacon is and will do are the same ones who exclude women from participating in order to maintain what they believe is the biblical picture. It cannot be both ways. We cannot simply apply the Bible where it's comfortable to do so and change it when it's not.

This bothers me. A lot.