By: Waylon Bailey

Last week I had the joy of spending time with a young (younger than me) pastor from north Louisiana. We had a delightful time talking church.

I’ve done this over the years. Sometimes I am the one asking questions and sometimes I am the one answering questions. This time I answered the questions. The questions were simple in nature: “How do you do this?” Every pastor has that kind of question for other pastors.

Those questions are never asked so that you can do something the way others do, but it does help your process of thinking and planning for your own church.

As we talked, the question of deacons came up–both how we elect deacons and what our deacons do.

Somewhere in the conversation about deacons we discussed how our deacons serve. They basically serve as assistant pastors. They pray, visit, call, and generally try to give pastoral ministry and spiritual guidance to the congregation.

At that point I told my friend about a software program (Sharepoint) we use to help us keep up with the needs of the congregation. This generally consists of prayer lists and hospital and nursing home notifications. I get those notifications by email. I reached for my phone to show him one of the emails. My most recent email was a Sharepoint report made by one of our younger deacons who had made a hospital visit within the hour.

When I showed it to my pastor friend, he simply said: “wow.” He wasn’t referring to the software program; he was referring to the serious way our deacons understand their ministry.

We are blessed to have deacons who take their service seriously and who seek to provide for the spiritual needs of the congregation.

Deacons are servants. I thank God for those who serve well.