Deacons

The Presbytery of Baltimore will strengthen the spiritual leadership of deacons within our seventy two congregations. The Commission on Spiritual Leader Development is in the process of creating specific programs to support these ministries.

Joe Small, the former Associate for Theology and Worship of the PCUSA wrote of the ministry of Deacons in this way:

Calvin’s distinctive approach to the church’s ordered ministries is clearly evident in his transformation of the office of deacon. The Catholic Church’s deacons were assistant ministers (future priests), and thus part of the clergy as distinct from the laity. In the emerging Lutheran churches, deacons were no longer clergy, but laity – usually civil servants – charged with care for the poor. But for Strasbourg-Geneva Reformed ecclesiology and practice, deacons were not “clergy,” but were not “laity” either, for they held ecclesial office as an essential component of the church’s ministry. Diaconal functions – care for the poor, sick, widows and orphans, refugees, and others in need – are the responsibility of all Christians, of course, but for Calvin, ordered deacons were charged with leading the whole church in officia caritatis. Deacons were no longer a sub-set of another order of ministry nor were they removed from the church’s orders of ministry. Instead, deacons were persons with dual vocations, secular and ecclesial.