Can Women Be Deacons?

An Office of Service

This is a perennial question that is an important one. Every church, practically and functionally, has to come down on a position. You’re either going to install women into the office of deacon—or not. I respect people and arguments on both sides. I think there’s room for both conclusions within the kingdom of God. Personally, I do think that the office of deacon is open to qualified sisters, and that has everything to do with what I understand the office of deacon to be.

I don’t understand that office, biblically, to be an office of authority and oversight. I understand it to be an office of service. Therefore, I don’t see a 1 Timothy 2:12 equivalent for the office of deacon. In 1 Timothy 2:12, Paul tells Timothy, “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.” I understand that to be forbidding the office and function of elder to women. And yet when it comes to deacons, we don’t encounter verses like that in the New Testament.

We do have verses like, “obey your leaders and submit to them” (Heb. 13:17). We don’t have a verse that says, “obey your deacons and submit to them.” We do have 1 Peter 5:5 that says “be subject to the elders.” We don’t have “be subject to the deacons.” So I think it’s a different kind of office altogether.

Now, will some natural influence in leadership accrue to a deacon serving well? Yes. I think that’s inescapable. As people have said before, deacons lead by serving, and elders serve by leading. I do think there’s something to that distinction. And yet here’s another big difference: deacons are not serving or exercising any measure of leadership over the whole congregation in the way that elders are. Usually a deacon is given oversight over a particular aspect of church life, which is limited in scope and in authority, whereas elders have been entrusted to care for the whole flock, and they will answer to God for the spiritual welfare of every sheep for whom Christ died and entrusted to their care. (Heb. 13:17)

And the last thing I’ll say on this, and again, I respect people who differ with me on this, but believing that Christ installs women into the office of deacon and that churches ought to is in no way a capitulation to modern-day feminism. You can look throughout church history—all the way from Spurgeon to Calvin and down to the church fathers—and see that even if it hasn’t always been a majority position, it has always been a legitimate position of understanding there to be both deacons and deaconesses as official office holders within the household of God.

I do understand from 1 Timothy 3:11 for Paul to be referring not to deacons’ wives but to women deacons. But even if that’s not what he’s doing there, which I think it is, I think there are other texts, such as Roman 16:1, referring to Phoebe. I don’t think she’s merely a courier or a patron or a generally servant-hearted person; I think she’s an office-holder in that particular local church. And in the appendix of my book, Deacons, I give the best argument I can for women deacons and the best argument I can against women deacons. And ultimately, I leave it to the reader to make the best judgment they can in light of God’s word.

Matt Smethurst is the author of Deacons: How They Serve and Strengthen the Church.

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