It is no secret that the office of deacon in many Baptist churches is not rightly ordered. Because this office, in living memory, has functioned according to practical conventions rather than biblical directives, many people have antidotal stories that illustrate the dysfunction that this has produced. Though these stories are part of our experience, they are not helpful to us today, and I have chosen to give them little attention. Rather, I think it best to give my attention to preaching a biblical understanding of this office.

A disordered church and church leadership create dysfunction. Dysfunction creates dissatisfaction with and confusion over the purpose of biblical offices. There are three common responses to such dissatisfaction and confusion.

1. Reject and disband the office entirely.

2. Limit or remove the authority and responsibility from the office.

3. Create new positions according to human wisdom and practical solutions to perform the tasks formally assigned to deacons.

The disorder of the deacon's office resulted from the practical taking precedence over the biblical. These responses continue in this trajectory by attempting to correct the issue with practical and secular solutions.

The only faithful response to disorder in the church is to return to faithful obedience to a biblical order. This includes the biblically assigned responsibilities, tasks, and authorities of the offices of the church.

In verses 8-13, Paul gives the qualifications for deacons. From this passage, I want you to gain a biblical understanding of the office, the qualifications for it, and the honor of it.

No church is perfectly rightly ordered; however, every church must have a heart to be as rightly ordered and faithful to scripture as possible. 1 Timothy 3 continues the teaching on the proper order of the church and the offices of overseer/ elder/ pastor and deacon. To introduce a biblical understanding of the office of overseer/ elder/ pastor, I will discuss these three areas: the problem (Where we are and how we got here), the terms (rediscovering the terms the Bible uses for those who lead the church), and the office (from 3: 1).

As Paul concludes his letter, he gives some final warnings and instructions. His final warning can be broken into two parts, confrontation of sin and examining your faith to test if it is genuine. In this sermon, I preach on the first part concerning the confrontation of sin.

Confronting sin and church discipline is something that most Christians know should be happening, but they have not seen a healthy or consistent model of how it happens. And a more honest assessment may be that many Christians have no motivation to faithfully participate in church discipline because they enjoy the lack of accountability in their church.

Understanding this passage and how to confront sin requires understanding three principles of healthy, godly discipline:

1. Discipline is motivated by love.

2. Discipline is connected to worth.

3. Discipline is connected to church fellowship.

Church leadership can be a complicated subject. Tradition and customs often have more weight on how we structure church leadership than the biblical witness. And there is always the human concern of who has more power than who.

The word elder is almost exclusively used in the New Testament in the plural form. The only references to a singular elder are greetings and instructions on how the church should respond to accusations against an elder. The point is simple: the church is to have a plurality of elders.

The office of elder is sometimes referred to as overseer or pastor. Every reference to elders recognizes the elders as the ones who have authority over and responsibility for the church.

I am confident that the more faithful we obey God’s word, the more the church will be effective and blessed. Thus, in this sermon, I hope to be as biblically faithful as possible, knowing that we do not perfectly reflect this teaching in our church and may find this uncomfortable. I do so that we might constantly examine our faithfulness to God’s word and continually move toward more faithful obedience.