Musings about service

Been having some thoughts about service and what it means.


Deacons are servant people -does that mean our works is sociologic, theological, ministerial? How does it all work? Should we be looking at the service industry? The social work industry? History?


Well, ignoring all the above, and focusing on simpler things...


The other day I re-newed my Mango card.  For those of you not in land covered by Trent buses, its the local equivalent of the Oyster card.


The women who "blipped" my card to update its balance needed to ask me some questions, and it turn as the card was one of their earliest and showing its age had some for her about being able to transfer the information on it to a new card.


Now... what she could have done was treated that as a day to day thing, we would have both been satisfied and moved on...


But what she did, when she updated the balance on the card, as it gives her data on the screen about me, said "Well, TERRY, we would be more than happy to...."


Its such a small thing, but it takes it from being a casual interaction, to a personal one, I in turn could refer back to her by name by just casually observing her HUGE name badge.


Customer service gimmick? Something they are trained to do? No, I have been there a number of times and her colleagues have never done it... its the difference between having a customer who is "satisfied" with your service, and one who is "happy" with it.


It gets me to thinking about how we handle people in church, and the diaconal nature of that.


Deacons are "threshold" people, meant to be there to cross both ways.. will remembering names and faces make that big a difference, well, it did with me, so will it with others?


Christ welcomes everyone with open arms, the parable of the prodigal son goes even further, the arms are not just open, he is waiting, watching, and the moment he sees us coming to him there is a massive dust cloud because he is racing to be WHERE WE ARE to bring us the rest of the way.


How as Christians can we do anything else that to respond to that in kind by doing the same?


A good friend of mine has a simple saying about people wanting to become Christians, but actually aimed at those helping them in the journey...


"Belong, believe, behave"


The first step for them is being welcomed.. they are brought into the Family.


They begin to believe.


They learn our "mannerisms" (oh where would the church be without conformity!)  bad habits, destructive things they do that are against God, sins etc..


But it does not start without being brought into the family first... Christians meeting people where they are, and bringing them home.


I pray that God will teach me the lesson in this, and help me in living it.

Deeking 101

So… my girlfriend *waves to his girlfriend*, has complained that so far the blog has been all quotes with little to no personal thoughts.

I guess that is still because the thoughts are nebulous in my head… writing down seems.. to permanent.. what if I change my mind – almost as if my mind is convinced that once it sees it writing down it will then be “fact” and how it has to think rather than thoughts still in progress.

 

Ok… lets try to in some of these nebulous thoughts down, not to pin them down like some mad butterfly collector not realising he is destroying the very thing that he finds beautiful, but to try to pin down where some of my thoughts are right now.

Ok… thought one, and the predominant one… God has called me in that direction… I don’t get the exact reasoning, ask HIM, but.. hmm.. other things don’t “sing” in my soul, Reader? Meh.  Priest? Noooo! Verger? Nope but would not mind redesigning the cloak..  When I think Deacon, something deep within chimes, it resonates with a yes… What does that mean beyond the feeling of the call? No idea… well, beyond “oh.. this is gonna cause so much trouble”.

Thought two… Church of England thinking on Deacons is (at the time of writing), and even trying to be as nice as possible.. as MESS.  Deacons who are doing what they do know what they are doing, but higher up the chain, there is confusion.  The church of England seems never to have been able to nail down the idea.  They are that they are needed, but are not sure how much.  Currently their main use is as a stepping stone to the priesthood with the occasional “permanent deacon” being a mutation from the process rather than an expectation…. but… the early church had them in abundance (see various quotes).. and to the stages where the concept of the church being without deacons was unimaginable and a sign that church was in trouble – what then does that say about the church in its current state.  Is God like a teacher marking the church with “D -, see me, must try harder”?

Thought three.. there is no real theology of the deacon.. don't get me wrong on that one, John Collins has done some excellent work on the meaning of the deacon words, and some very clever scholars have giving their input into how it all works etc... but the bible is a little hazy on the details... the apostles commissioned the first deacons, but they did not do it in a way of "our commission to you is this... here are the exact details of what you will be doing".  Because.. well simply they were already in the church, so no need to explain, unlike in Churches where Paul has to lay down the law "when you speak in tongues..." etc.  That was fine then, but 2000 years later it causes "well, what should we be doing,, these people have good and valid ministries that are being blessed, but at the heart of it, if one of the apostles saw one at work would he say "ahhh, a deacon! They were always my favourite ministry", and this contributes to the issues in thought two, its an "inherited" ministry with an "inherited" view about what exactly it is... and to be fair to the theologians, there are some excellent thoughts and feelings about the theology of the diaconate out there, but it seems sometimes like someone took a huge jigsaw of the diaconate, shook it up and someone else lost the picture on the box, someone else mixed it up with another jigsaw you have to rebuild it piece by piece. 

Thought four... I am not convinced that thought two and three is not deliberate by God to create variety in the ministry.

Thought five... If we look at the American model, I think I am a definite "church deacon".

Thought six... I think my girlfriend is a "Community deacon".

Thought seven... I suspect God plotted that... and finds it very funny...

ok... that's it for thoughts now.. sleep is calling.. back to quotes tomorrow. 

Diocese of Sailsbury “God is calling” leaflet.

“Deacons are called to service, to be ambassadors bearing a message of God’s love in Christ to be God’s agents in the world attending the needs of others.  Through their ministry of service and proclamation they aim to make Christ and his redeeming love visible to the world… deacons serve where they are needed, but they may have a particular focus in their ministry depending on the needs of their local community and their own particular gift…”

Deacons help people cross the threshold into church and at the end of services they send the congregation out into the world to serve Christ.. they welcome and help to prepare those seeking baptism and those preparing for marriage.  They also share in ministering to the recently bereaved…

Deacons have a particular responsibility to lead the church in intersession for all God’s people who are need.  Deacons preach when required and they distribute communion and minister to the sick and the household.”

“A person considering a call to diaconal ministry will have leadership gifts that reflect a willingness to be a leader who assists rather than exercising a ministry of oversight.   

They are people who are happy to work behind the scenes as well as being a public representative for the church, with the communication and pastoral skills to proclaim the gospel in word and deed.

Since deacons share in the leading of worship in church, particularly in the intersessions and assisting at the Eucharist, they need to have sensitivity and presence to enable others to worship.”

Ohhhhh... bottom....

Drat...


Spotted...


https://deaconstories.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/world-and-worship-belong-together/

“For such a time as this” working party of the house of bishops, Church House publishing, London. 2001.

The working party has gladly taken to heart the concern of general synod that the renewed diaconate should be seen in the context of developing lay ministries, especially those of the reader and lay pastoral assistant.  This valued ministries are affirmed, not undermined, in the report.  It is clear than the phenomenon of ‘overlap’ is to be found in all the authorised ministries of the church of England” Pviii.

“What is being proposed here is an order of ministry that is versatile in support of the mission of the church” Pviii.

“…this report believes that the diaconate needs to be taken altogether more seriously in the church of England instead of being taken for granted much of the time, and should not merely be seen as a transitional stage on the way to the priesthood.”P1.  [Whilst I see where they are coming from, it is VERY confrontational, no wonder the report ‘got kicked into the long grass”]

“They [the authors] are convinced that the diaconate can be rediscovered as a distinctive, permanent ministry for some ordained ministers and as the fundamental commissioning of all ordained ministers.” P1.

“As bishop Stephen Sykes said in the general synod debate that commissioned this report ‘Any attempt to restore a supposed traditional diaconate would involve a more or less arbitrary decision about which of the diverse forms was to be taken as normative.” P5.

“A striking feature of the diaconate, viewed historically, has been its flexibility, its capability to be adapted to the changing needs of the church and society.  It has been the least specific, the most malleable of the three orders.  In rethinking diaconal ministry it is important not to lose that flexibility but rather to be somewhat relaxed about the different directions that the diaconate has taken and could c=take again” P5

“The responsiveness to changing needs, that has been a hallmark of the diaconal order, may be the key to its relevance today.  The need at the present time may well be to find an overarching rationale that brings together the diverse roles -  liturgical, pastoral, communal, administrative, catechetical and prophetic – that diakonia… has taken in the churches life.” P15.

“Though models of diaconal ministry have varied, the guiding thread seems to be the connecting nature of the diaconate.  It has tended to be an order of ministry poised between the sacred liturgy of the church presided over by the bishops, and the bishops presbyters, and the down-to-earth needs if a world longing (whether it knows it or not) for the salvation of God” P5.

Personal thought [Jesus gave his life, to give us ours.  If we are to respond to that the only way to do so is to give our lives for the sake of others in reflection of his sacrifice.]

“The present position in the church of England, defined by ordinals and canons, is that the deaconate is… in essence a non-presidential representative ministry of world, sacrament, and pastoral care” P9.

Personal thought following a mention of concern that Deacons are viewed in vocational groups as “well they make a good vicar eventually” [To resolve needs two types of vocational outlook.

• Do you want to be a vicar -> ok, this will be part of the stepping stones.
• Do you want to be a deacon? -> ok, let’s check that calling.

To view someone looking to enter the diaconate as a ‘potential vicar’ without testing it is the same as viewing someone who is called to be a vicar as ‘are they potential bishop?’ without asking ‘Is that what they want?’

We would not assume someone who is called to be a vicar wants to be a bishop eventually, so unless they want to work up to being a curate and specifically state that we should not assume an applicant to the diaconate wants to be a vicar at all]

“…at present there are no separate national criteria for the selection of distinctive deacons and no separate national guidelines for their training or deployment” P10.
[which 1) explains why its not being encouraged, 2) numbers are so low, 3) people get frustrated with the process…
Very dangerous – how many get rejected / discouraged from their vocation because they are not ‘vicar’ enough?]

“Within the Roman Catholic Church since Vatican II there has been provision for a distinctive diaconate for men (who may be married) as a ministry of Word, sacrament and charity… Those who are called to the diaconate become the permanent committed ‘servants of Christ and the Church’.“ P11

[expanding on the above] “..the deacon is described as ‘a living icon of Christ the servant within the church’ and ‘a driving force for service.’… the deacon bridges the liturgical and caritative tasks tasks of the church.  On the one hand, he helps the people ‘to write their lives to the offering of Christ’ whilst on the other hand, ‘in the name of Christ Himself, he helps the church to participate in the fruits of that sacrifice’… deacons often support and co-ordinate the work of lay people.” P12.

[Summing up main characteristics of deacons in certain denominations:]

• Lutheren – Mainly social outreach, differing opinions and no clear path of ordained / not ordained (changes between countries).
• URC – Mostly social outreach.
• Methodist – unclear.
• Orthodox – Mainly liturgical, step to priesthood but is a distinct step and will not cause a forcing to move to priesthood until / unless called.

“The worship (leiturgia) of the church and the service of the church (diakonia) need to be held together.” P15.

[Quoting the 1982 lima document of the faith and order commission] “Deacons represent to the church it’s calling as servant to the world.  By struggling in Christ’s name with the myriad needs of societies and persons, deacons exemplify the interdependence of worship and service in the churches life.  The exercise responsibility in the worship of the congregation: for example by reading the scriptures, preaching and leading the people in prayer.  They help in the teaching of the congregation.  The exercise a ministry of love within the community. They fulfil certain administrative tasks and may be elected to responsibilities for governance.” P16.

[Refers to John Collins Diakonia: Re-interpreting the ancient sources,]
Prior to publication diakoneo = "To serve or wait at table".
Collins disputes this 'inherited' understanding that the noun was in reference to something inferiour by drawing on the term diakonia in secular usage and re-examining the new testament usage based on that.

• He came to the conclusion diakonia/diakonos would normally be used in one of three meanings:
•  As a bearer of a message , a diakonas is a spokesman, envoy, courier, or go-between who is entrusted with important tidings.
• An ambassador or mediator, a person given a specific commission to carry out a task on behalf of someone in authority (diakonos)
• Diakonia, attendance upon a person within a house-hold upon whose behalf the attendant performs various tasks (think PA, butler and major domo vs waiter ) which was the inherited view.

In the contemporary Greek understanding the Greek usage of diakonia/diakonos refer (in one way or another) to a responsible agent performing a task on behalf of someone in authority.
P32.

 "...in classical Greek usage, the diakonia/diakonos group of words refer to a responsible agency on behalf of a person in authority and involve the fulfilling of a vital task.  These Greek terms certainly do not have connotations of inferiority or of menial service.
This fundamental meaning is carried through into New Testament usage.  the central sence is to do with responsible agency and an authoritative commission.  
The Apostles themselves are entrusted with a diakonia or ministry (Acts 1:17; 6:4; 20:24) which stems from the Lord's commission to carry the good news into the world.  St Paul refers to himself as diakonos in the sense of an instrument of Christ to bring others to faith in him (1 Cor 3:5).  In upholding his authority against his detractors St Paul insists that he is truly a diakonos with the Lord's commission, a minister of the new covenant  in the power of the Spirit (2 Cor 3:6; 6:4; 11:23).  The new testament word for servant or slave is not diakonos but (usually) doulos.  There are two specific text which prove a focus for these new empases" P32.

Mark 10:45 "The son of man came not to be served (diakonethanai) but to serve (diakonesai) and to give His life as a ransom for many"
Luke 22:24-30 Diakonon - refers to it as a leader as one who is prepared to serve. Servant leadership.

"The deacon is invested with authority by Christ through the church, in the person of the bishop.  The deacon is not set apart for menial service, is not expected to exhibit humility more than others, and is not called to bear more than his or her share of suffering for Christ's sake.  All Christian are called to present themselves as a living sacrifice in God's service for Christ's sake (Roman 12:1)" P36.

3rd Century - readers expounded scriptures and preached.
5th Century - made part of the inferior order.
English reformation -> minor orders abolished.
1561 Archbishop Parker reinstates them as a lay office.
1866 Readers commissioned 'to render general aid to the clergy in all ministrations not strictly requiring the aid of one in Holy Orders; to read the lessons in church' ; to read prayers ad holy scripture, and to explain the same."

"Readers of course no longer have a monopoly among lay people of reading the lessons in church, though they may still have a special liturgical role in reading the Gospel or Epistle.  Though other lay people may be authorized by the bishop to preach on occasion, readers preach by virtue of their office under the direction of the incumbent.  They administer the Holy Communion ex officio... they may be given the bishops permission to conduct funerals... many readers assist in Pastoral ministry within the parish." P40.

"The special role of deacons is to make connections and build bridges between the distinctive life, the koinonia of the body of Christ and the needs of the world.  They can help build up the visibility of the church by forgiving relationships, as ordained representative ministers, with the local community and... civil society, for example deacons can help to link the churches mission with initiatives in urban regeneration or tackling rural deprivation." P52.

"The calling of deacons is to focus, to encourage and to help coordinate the diakonia the divine commission of the whole church within the mission of God in the world and to do this in three ways: through the liturgy, through pastoral outreach and through catechetical work" P52.

"It is worth underlying here that deacons should take part in the conciliar life of the church at every level and may stand for election to various synods.  Their ministry may particularly lend itself to ecumenical collaboration." P53.

""The church builds trust and respect in the community for its message when it gets alongside individuals, households and local organisations in institutions in a personal way.  
General pastoral visitations of the parish is perhaps now one of the weakest aspects of the churches ministry, for various reasons.  But the fact is that people respond best of all to the personal approach.  Words alone cut little ice.  Loving concern and practical support are the best ambassadors of the gospel in the largely post-Christian culture." P54.

[Sum up of the liturgical functions of a deacon (being careful not to take away from the liaty):

• Assisting in communion.
• Reading the Gospel.
• Leading prayers of penitence, intersession and acclamations of people, inviting the sharing of the peace, serving at the altar, sending people out with the liturgical dismissal.
• Conducting daily (not Eucharistic) liturgical services (for example morning and evening prayer).
• Officiating at baptism when required.
• Ordering the church for community worship, with special regard to preparing the front of the altar, supporting and guiding the sacristan or verger.
• Conducting house and hospital communions by extension.
• Minister to the sick and dying.] PP55-56

Rosalind Brown – Theology of the diaconate – York conference 2014, Session 2

Until 12 century deacons were “icons of Christ” and not the priest.

The Christological foundation of the diaconate needs broadening and strengthening the Holy Spirit is life-giving and enhancing.

“The leadership of deacons is underplayed because it is not about governance, deacons are part of the dance of God”.

See John, 17: 20-23.

Interesting Greenbelt talk about Pope Francis and “The saving of the soul of the catholic church”.

To paraphrase the speaker, he summed Pope Francis up at one point as having the following characteristics:

“Revolutionary orthodoxy.

• Care over creed.
• Adaptable liturgy.
• Calculated simplicity.
• Audacious humility.
• Joyful aestheticism.

I think that is one of the ways I would want to be described – long way to go, but food for thought…

Rosalind Brown – Theology of the diaconate – York conference 2014, Session 2

from: https://deaconstories.wordpress.com/2014/11/29/theology-of-the-diaconate/

Until 12 century deacons were “icons of Christ” and not the priest.

The Christological foundation of the diaconate needs broadening and strengthening the Holy Spirit is life-giving and enhancing.

“The leadership of deacons is underplayed because it is not about governance, deacons are part of the dance of God”.

See John, 17: 20-23.

 

Missing notes from previous quotes from “Being a deacon today” (turned two pages at once (doh!))

“In the church of England where reader ministry is well established and valued, there is a danger of misunderstanding the ministry of a deacon as a duplication, even replacing, that of a reader.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Readers were established in the nineteenth century as a lay ministry that has its origins in the earlier order of lector.  This is a quite different origin and focus from the ministry of a deacon… Antonia Lynn uses the image of the deacon as ‘the old retainer’ servant who knew the family he or she served for years, and uses that knowledge to take the initiative and keep it running smoothly.  To do this, the deacon need not be a priest, but should have theological training and an immersion in the church that enables him or her to understand its needs and its ways.  The deacon should be content to be behind the scenes, facilitating the public ministry of the bishop [or priest].  Care and attention to detail are paramount, along with an unflappability and an ability in administration.” P8

“Deacons need to develop leadership gifts, for they are indeed leaders, but gifts that reflect a willingness to be collaborative leaders.  These is an art in leadership that enables others to fulfil their own responsibilities without unsettling or unseating them.” P10.

Thoughts that were noted down whilst reading Rosalind’s book.

Her introduction is better than the rest of the book – it is a shame she did not allow more of her personality and option in the later chapters.  Understandable, but as the book is not written in an unbiased way she may as well have done so.

Is a deacon’s ministry a “rainbow” one?  One in which there is never a specific place and action as there is a continued shift from one aspect of ministry to another? Church – World – Community , you cannot say a deacon is part of any one of those three specifically as their ministry flows between them to greater and lesser extents. The boundaries between them are not distinct as the deacons dance all over the thresholds.

If clergy are not wearing things like dog-collars as an outward sign of their ministry how then can we be surprised if people outside of the church think that the church is in hiding and irrelevant? If people don’t see a policemen they think the area is ignored by the police, this is why the police know it is important to be a visible presence and “do the rounds”.  If people do not see ministers as minister rather than just a face in the crowd how do they know they are there at all.  In the world not of the world…

“Being a deacon today” by Rosalind Brown, Canterbury Press. 2005.

 “If the first thing that God in Christ does is to alter His people and share their life in order that He may redeem and change it, then the deacon in his or her pastoral, liturgical and catechetical ministry I there to hold before the church the truth that, before you can change people, you must attend and engage them.” P vii.

 

“The church of England has generally lost sight of the distinctive ministry of the deacon seeing it as a rite of passage to the priesthood, or, when women could not be ordained priest, as an ordained, none presidential, ministry open to women.  Not only has this diminished the ministry of the deacon, it has also deprived the church of a vital resource in ministry and mission” Pxi.

 

“Essentially the ministry of the deacon is the ministry of the church and at the heart of the diaconal vocation is a love which reflects the love of Christ.  Deacon are lovers – lovers of God, lovers of God’s church, the body of Christ, and lovers of God’s word.” Pxi.

“Diaconal ministry has three particular strands enabling people to worship, providing pastoral care and proclaiming the Gospel.” Pxi [gosh, when you think about that one it’s really short and simple, but at the same time so deep and all encompassing]

“…the church needs to recognise the distinctive ministry of deacons and to affirm and support those for whom this is their vocation, seeing them not as apprentice priests, but as ministers in their own right.” Pxii.

“The diaconate needs to be recovered from the false idea that it is just a time of transition before the ‘real’ priestly ministry begins.  Instead it should be welcomed as a time (perhaps more than a year) in which to live into diaconal ministry unencumbered by the additional responsibilities of priestly ministry that will eventually develop rather than supersede diaconal ministry” Pxii

“You must join the family, Mr Dishart, or you are only a minister once a week” Quoting from JM Barrie’s The little minister.

[on the church as a family] “…families can be a source both of joy and irritation. We may love them easily, or we may have to work at it, but love them we must if our ministry is to be Christ-like and not a source of stumbling – congregations have an uncanny knack of knowing if they are loved or merely tolerated.” P13.

“Diaconal ministry is not just the caring, social side arm of the church that some assume it to be; the deacon is a constant reminder to the church of it’s showing in Christ’s servants ministry as the deacon encourages and helps all Christians to live their baptismal vows.” Pxiii.

"..it is the privilege of the deacon to be a catalyst for the ministry of all the baptised, encouraging and freeing them by our example to live for the glory of God.” P45.

"Deacons do not take over and do all… we need to remember that deacons point to the truth that who we are, rather than what we are, is the basis of life in the church.  There can be a temptation to take over the work of others and thus disempower them, but equally the church can collude with the deacon letting him or her do the work of ministry that others might be excused.” P6.

“…three strands to the ministry of the deacon:

Liturgical.

Pastoral.

Catechetical.

Here the deacon is attendant, agent and bearer of a message… far from being unrelated or even opposed to each other, one without the other two is incomplete – worship loses touch with life, teaching becomes academic and not transformative, and pastoral care becomes secular social work.  This is not to down play the value of each in it’s own right.  Many lay people are called to share in ministry in this way, but the deacon embodies their integration in in doing so reflects the ministry of Jesus Christ.” Pxiii. 

“Before anything else, deacons are worshippers.  Only thus can the deacon be a guide into the liturgy.  Worship led by a non-worshipper will be a performance” P47.

[talks about not needing specifically to have healthcare / social care qualifications in the C of E] “What is important whether or not the deacon has professional qualifications, is the ability to relate to people for whom the mainstream of society is a long way off.  In looking for possible diaconal vocations, the instinctive ability to get alongside people of different ages and social contexts and to speak their language is an important marker, along with evidence of a life of service outside the community.  The church could be identifying such people amongst its baptised and asking if this is a pointer to a diaconal vocation” P33.

“Deacons should be found on the church doorstep on Sunday mornings, inviting people to cross the threshold, welcoming both the regular worshipper and visitors.  We do not expect our guests to our homes to let themselves in, sit themselves down, and wait for us to appear.  Instead we greet them and welcome them, and if it is their first visit we show them where things are.” P43.

“…at the end the deacon, the catalyst for Christian discipleship in the world is the person who dismisses the congregation, getting them back over the threshold from the church into the world with the charge ‘Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.’ “ P44

“…it is the church, as much as the world, that needs a deacon on the threshold to make that margin transgressable.” P44.

“Deacons are there to ensure that worship is both heavenly and earthly, to hold liturgy and social justice together and open people’s eyes to the endless possibilities for the worship to affect the way we live, and thus to be expressed in the hundreds of different places the congregation end up during the week.” P48.

“Several of the deacons roles fit together to make visible the servant ministry of the church in the world, the deacon who calls us to confession is the deacon who last week sent us out in the world to proclaim the gospel and who know that we have inevitably slipped up in the course of doing that, and so now invites us to confess together.” P54.

“In a culture where most people can read and there are bibles in churches we should not forget that whoever reads the scripture proclaims the gospel on behalf of all the baptised community who themselves share that responsibility” P54.

“When the president introduces the sharing of the peace by recalling our peace and unit in Christ, it is the deacon who bids the people share a sign of peace, thus linking life and liturgy, giving expression to the truth that has been proclaimed and making preparation together around the table as one body. Then, having receiving the offertory gifts from the congregation… the deacon makes practical preparation of the altar for communion.

After communion the deacon clears up: a very practical and necessary task after a meal.  Whilst the soap and hot water part of washing up after communion takes place later, the fact that ablutions are done straight after the distribution is a very public reminder that the meal is complete, all is consumed and it is time to move on in  mission,  It is a sign of stewardship and the practical care we are asked to give to all things that are entrusted to us, since the care taken with the chalice after communion is indicative of the care we take with all the possessions God gives to us.  It is a visible reminder that the routine tasks of life belong to the group.” P55.

[continuing some time later from the above] “… and finally, the deacon sends us out to love and serve the Lord, gets us over the threshold and out into the world.  The deacon is one of the first over that boundary, greeting people out the door as they leave and effectively leading them out by example.” P55.

[Quoting John Chrysostom] “Adorn the altar with fine linen if you will, but do not forget your brother who is outside and without a coat.  For he is a temple of far greater wealth.” P56.

“…it is a misue of the diaconal vocation if the deacon find himself or herself duplicating the ministry of a reader rather than taking a particular role in liturgy alongside the priest, keeping before the church its own servant ministry flowing from that of Jesus Christ.” P56.

[Quoting Aiden Kavanagh] “…the server of servers, cantor of cantors, reader of readers.  He [sic] is the butler in God’s house, major domo of it’s banquet, master of its ceremonies.  Given the emphasis of his office and ministry, the deacon is the most pronounced christic the three major ministries.  This implies that it is not the bishop of presbyter who are liturgically ‘another Christ’ but the deacon.” P56.

“The deacon who has leaned to wait in Advent, to rejoice at Christmas and Easter, to repent in Lent, to wonder at assentation and to be surprised at Pentecost is being equipped to help people bring their daily lives into the story of God’s ways within the world.” P58.

“Whilst it is the priest that give the absolution, it is not without reason that deacons lead people in confession and then in sharing the peace when the reconciled church gathers for the Eucharist” P68.

“Because the cross is at the heart of our lives, we will be face with, rather than protected from, pain and frustration.  But at the same time we are people who sing the magnificat, we are people who hope in God. Diaconal ministry is essentially hopeful. If we do not hope in the assurance that our God comes to save, we might as well not bother.” P69.

[Quotes Francis De Sale] “Great works do not always lie in our way, but every moment we may do little ones excellently, that is, with great love” P71.

 

 

 

 

“New handbook of pastoral Liturgy” Michael Perham, SPCK, 2000.

“Whether the term ‘president’ is used or not, every leader of worship needs to understand he the concept that lies behind it.  It applies not only to the eucharist, but equally to some services where the president will not be a priest, but a deacon, a reader, or another lay worship leader.  At its simplest it is about holding the congregation together.” P30.

Quoting from common worship “The president at Holy Communion (who, in accordance with the provisions of canon B12.. must be an episcopally ordained priest) expresses this ministry by saying the opening greeting, the absolution, the collect, the peace and the blessing.  The president must say the Eucharistic prayer, break the consecrated bread and receive the sacrament on every occasion” P31 [rest of quote unclear, it seems the president can delegate parts of the service to an “officially recognised person”,  but unclear if it means from the above parts like the collect, or ALL OTHER parts of the service.]

[Discussed how the president during the service needs to be freed from having to ‘worry about every little detail’ so that they have time not only to be speaking the parts of the worship, but also partaking of the worship] “The tradition of the church gives us a second, complementary role of leadership in the eucharist, that of the deacon.  Always part of the Roman Catholic liturgical provision for the Mass, it was mainly lost in the Church of England, so that even a minister in his [or her!] year as a deacon before ordination to the priesthood rarely exercised a specifically diaconal liturgical role.” P34

[Quoting from common worship’s note on Ministries] “In some traditions the ministry of the deacon at Holy Communion has included some of the following elements: the bringing in of the book of gospels, the invitation to confession, the reading of the gospel, the preaching of the sermon when licenced to do so, a part in the prayers of intercession, the preparation of the table and the gifts, a part in the distribution, the ablutions and the dismissal.” [He continues in his own words] “The list of ‘duties’ might have been expressed a little more broadly. ‘The deacon invites the congregation – to confess, to exchange the peace, to make an acclamation, etc.  The deacon gives practical instructions – about posture, page numbers, etc.” P 34-35.

“Behind this note lie to main assumptions about the deacon’s role.  The first is that it is a ministry that makes explicit the element of service that lies hidden in all ministries.  The deacon serves God in serving both the congregation and the president.  The members of the congregation are served in the way the deacon encourages them and helps them through the service.  All through the deacon is inviting them to do things, and making it easier for them to do so.  But the president is also served by being relieved of some tasks and assisted with other tasks to lighten the burden, and that is important if the president is to be set free to be at prayer.  Throughout the liturgy the deacon is holding up to the priest and to the people a model of service, a service that, though it is of service, is not of subservience.  It is properly described as a complimentary ministry. To the deacon is assigned the liturgy of the word. To the deacon is assigned the task of dismissing the assembly at the end.  It is a two-person leadership of worship, a kind of team ministry, but one in which the roles are clear.  The two are not co-presidents, competing for a role… the belong together, often they stand side by side , they support one another, so that first one, then the other may move back into prayer, and then come forward to lead.” P35 
[I LIKE this guy!]

Edit - I found out later that Michael at the time of writing was the Dean of Derby Cathedral - ironic when I have been advised (in not exact these terms) not to bother by an Ex-deacon now vicar as "Derby Diocese does not understand deacons"... one wonders if his words fell on deaf ears...

Inferior Office?: A History of Deacons in the Church of England by Francis Young

Sorry about the delay between blogs, been busy.

Ok. This one I get to cheat on, as it was on kindle so I can get all the texts easily rather than having to type them out manually:

"The year 2014 marked 175 years since Thomas Arnold first proposed a permanent ‘order of deacons’ in a sermon in Rugby’s parish church in 1839, and 2015 marks 30 years since General Synod voted to ordain women as permanent deacons, but there has been little discussion of the diaconate in print since the publication of The Mission and Ministry of the Whole Church in 2007." Kindle location 79. 

"six decades of the twentieth century, but this era was atypical of the period since 1550. When the revival of the diaconate began in the 1960s, most were unable or unwilling to look back beyond living memory to the Victorian church’s bold experiments in diaconal ministry, or the older tradition of ministers in deacon’s orders who flourished in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries" Kindle location 223. 

"It is the argument of this book that deacons, and thought on deacons, have always existed within the Anglican tradition. However, the meaning and significance of deacons has undergone transformation many times over the course of nearly 500 years, making it well-nigh impossible to give a simple definition of what an Anglican deacon is. The same could be said of the definitions of priest and bishop in the Anglican tradition, but the roles taken by deacons have proved particularly fluid." Kindle location 235.

"According to Collins’s interpretation, deacons were the bishop’s assistants and administrators, his ‘staff’, as opposed to the presbyters, who represented the bishop in individual churches in his diocese with delegated authority. Deacons worked for the bishop, whereas presbyters represented him. In the first three centuries of the church, deacons often rose to become bishops themselves (without being ordained as presbyters along the way). Two relics of this era have survived in the western church: the practice whereby the bishop alone lays hands on a deacon in the ordination service, and the title of ‘archdeacon’" Kindle location 265

"Whatever the original meaning of the word ‘deacon’, by the fifth century (at least) the diaconate had been transformed into ‘the first step in a successful clerical career through the order of presbyters, up to the rank of bishop, just like the various career grades in the Roman civil service’." Kindle location 285

"In fact, deacon was not the lowest grade of orders, since from late antiquity until the Reformation there were five ‘minor orders’ below it. In the Roman Catholic Church, seminarians continued to be admitted to the orders of doorkeeper, reader, exorcist, acolyte and subdeacon until 1972." Kindle location 288 

"All of these orders, major and minor, are mentioned in a mid-third-century letter of Pope Cornelius, quoted by Eusebius in his Church History (324). Cornelius reported that the Roman church contained fifty-two exorcists, readers and doorkeepers in addition to its priests, deacons, subdeacons and acolytes." Kindle location  292 

"By the early Middle Ages, deacons tended to be defined by what they were not (priests), rather than by what they were." Kindle location  303

"From a liturgical point of view, early deacons were ministers of the sacrament of baptism and assisted the bishop or presbyters at the eucharist. Deacons were ministers of the church in the full sense, and the only functions they could not do were those specifically delegated by the bishop to the presbyters, such as presiding over the eucharist. However, deacons were ‘concelebrants’ of the eucharist in an important sense, their liturgical role being the critical one of mediating between bishop/presbyter and people. The presence of deacons at the celebration of the eucharist was originally a required element of the rite" Kindle location 304

"Whilst the meaning of the diaconate was inevitably diluted by its transformation into a ‘rank’ in the church, there were individuals in the centuries that followed who consciously chose to remain in deacon’s orders without proceeding to the priesthood. Famous examples include Alcuin, the ninth-century Northumbrian monk who became the architect of the Carolingian Renaissance; Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order; and Gerard Groote, the Dutch mystic and founder of the Béguinage movement. Three popes (Gregory the Great, Leo the Great and Hildebrand) were all elected whilst in deacon’s orders. William Wareham, later Archbishop of Canterbury, was a deacon when he was appointed Bishop of London in 1502, and Reginald Pole was a deacon when he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1556. The diaconate as ministry survived as an undercurrent within Christian history, and the sixteenth-century reformers took the opportunity to resurrect it." Kindle location 313

"It perteyneth to the office of a Deacon to assiste the Prieste in devine service, and speciallye when he ministreth the holye Communion, and helpe him in distribucion thereof, and to reade holye scriptures and Homelies in the congregacion, and instructe the youth in the Cathechisme, to Baptise and preache yf he be commaunded by the Bisshop. And further more, it is his office to searche for the sicke, poore, and impotente people of the parishe, and to intimate theyr estates, names, and places where thei dwel to the Curate, that by his exhortacion they maye bee relieved by the parishe or other convenient almose." Kindle location 333 Quoting the ordinal 1550 

"when the English liturgy returned under Elizabeth I in 1559, ordination practice differed little from the pre-Reformation era. Although the bishops made attempts to improve standards in the reign of James I, it was not until Laudian efforts to reform the church in the 1620s and ’30s that the year-long diaconate was widely (but by no means universally) enforced." Kindle location 346 

"The prescriptions of the Ordinal regarding the interval between ordination to deacon’s and priest’s orders were still widely flouted, largely because the 1662 Act of Uniformity made it impossible, for the first time, for deacons to hold benefices. This made it imperative for men who wanted to advance their clerical careers to be in priest’s orders." Kindle location 350

"The issue was finally resolved in 1985 when General Synod voted to admit women to the diaconate, although the first women deacons were not ordained until 1987. A sudden flurry of documents and teaching on the diaconate followed, but the discussion soon turned to ordaining women to the priesthood. This occurred in 1994, leaving behind a small ‘rump’ of male and female deacons."  Kindle location 378

"At the time of writing, the number of distinctive deacons within the Church of England remains tiny (around one hundred), with deacons mostly confined to the dioceses of Chichester, Portsmouth and London." Kindle location 384 

"it would be pre-judging the issue to assume that the diaconate is undervalued in the Church of England just because there are very few distinctive deacons. There is no prima facie reason why the traditional ‘transitional’ diaconate of one year may not be a valuable ministry in its own right. In reality, however, the vast majority of transitional deacons still serve as curates, essentially acting as priests who are unable to preside at Holy Communion." Kindle location  390

"The use of terms such as ‘distinctive deacon’ and ‘transitional deacon’ is just one example of the linguistic difficulties into which any historical study of deacons is bound to run. These are terms of very recent coinage, while the diaconate itself is very ancient indeed." Kindle location 394

"It is an irony that those who make the loudest claims in favour of the restoration of an ancient order sometimes make the heaviest use of newly coined language to refer to deacons." Kindle location 396

"In this book I have spoken of individuals choosing ‘to remain in deacon’s orders’ rather than choosing ‘to remain deacons’, since this would imply that priests and bishops are not deacons. Likewise, I write of the ‘interval’ between diaconal and priestly ordination rather than ‘the duration of the diaconate’, since the latter implies that a minister’s diaconate comes to an end when he or she is ordained priest." Kindle location 410

"The prevalent assumption that transitional deacons are mere priests-on-probation, whose diaconal ministry is more symbolic than real, is a recent one. In telling the story of the diaconate in the Church of England, it is important to avoid the glib assumption that the transitional diaconate was ‘merely’ a probationary period for priests, thereby denigrating it. Just as it would be wrong to assume that pregnancy is an insignificant event in a woman’s life because it is temporary, so it is wrong to disparage the experience of so-called ‘transitional deacons’ just because their time in deacon’s orders ends in priestly ordination and the apparent sublimation of diaconal into priestly ministry." Kindle location 414

"Advocates of a distinctive diaconate must not be tempted to create the impression that transitional deacons and priests are not ‘real’ deacons, since this attitude subverts the threefold order of ministry itself." Kindle location 419

"Reliance on the work of Tanner and Pinnock by other authors has meant that historical knowledge of the diaconate in the Church of England has not advanced since the early 1990s." Kindle location 461

"Tanner is hardly to be blamed for this, since Deacons in the Ministry of the Church was not intended primarily as a work of historical scholarship. However, it is regrettable that it has subsequently been treated as such, without any further effort at investigation." Kindle location 464

"The most useful secondary sources for a history of the diaconate are studies of ordination practices, such as Kenneth Fincham’s study of the Jacobean bishops and William Marshall’s study of the dioceses of Hereford and Oxford between 1660 and 1760." Kindle location 514

"However, it is in the nature of church history (and indeed religious history in general) that ideas and practices pass in and out of active life, their continuity enabled by the process we call ‘tradition’, which allows ideas and practices to be passed on even when a particular era or generation has lost touch with their original meaning. So, for instance, the parish communion that takes place in most Anglican churches on a Sunday in the twenty-first century did not exist in the eighteenth century in a form that most contemporary worshippers would recognise. But its elements, and the more ancient traditions upon which it draws, have existed in every age since the Apostles." Kindle location 622

"Canon Law of the mediaeval English church did not require men to be ordained priest before they were appointed to a benefice, and it was commonplace for individuals to be admitted to the order of acolyte or subdeacon at a young age in order to secure preferment before they proceeded to the major orders of deacon and priest." Kindle location 709

"The significance of diaconal ordination in the late Middle Ages was that it marked admission to major orders, and therefore a commitment to lifelong celibacy. It was the ‘point of no return’ that indicated that a man was definitively choosing a career in the church. A man could be in minor orders, as an acolyte or subdeacon, and still marry and pursue a secular profession." Kindle location 714

"It was an abiding theme of the European Reformation that the mediaeval church had allowed once significant institutions to become stagnant and corrupt. Bishops and priests, once true pastors, had become parasites who lived off the incomes of their dioceses and benefices without pastoral concern for the people. Although the reformers differed on the question of when the church had become corrupted, and when the popes had become Antichrist, they were at one in their view that the Reformation was not about innovation but about the revival of the purity of the primitive church." Kindle location 721

"Bradshaw has argued that Cranmer viewed the diaconate and the priesthood not as two consecutive orders, ‘but as two completely separate orders of ministry’. Whereas in the ordination of priests, the laying on of hands was intended to confer the Holy Spirit on the candidates, in the ordination of deacons, ‘candidates are expected to have received the Holy Spirit before hands are laid on them’. Cranmer thus distinguished between two different sources of power in ordination: ‘The power or authority given to deacons at the imposition of hands was the permission of the Church to exercise certain functions for which they were fitted. This power originated in the Church, which by divine providence working through the Apostles had created the office of deacons’." Kindle location 809

"The implication of Bradshaw’s interpretation is that whereas priests receive an authority from Christ, deacons receive an authority from the church. Thus, where priests are constitutive of the church, deacons are ‘of the church’ in such a way that a ministry of care and relief rather than leadership is imposed on them." Kindle location 815

"them we beseche thee, O Lorde, to bee modest, humble, and constant in their ministracion, to have a ready wyl to observe al spiritual discipline, that they havinge alwayes the testimonie of a good conscience, and continuing ever stable and strong in thy sonne Christ, may so wel use themselves in thys inferior offyce, that they may be found worthi to be called unto the higher ministeries in thy Church." Kindle location 869

"Not for the last time, the Church of England established a diaconate without sufficient theological consideration beforehand." Kindle location 876

"Elizabeth I’s first Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, showed scant respect for the Ordinal when he permitted John Scory, the Bishop of Hereford, to ordain ten men deacon and priest on the same day in 1559.31 However, the church was desperate for new clergy, since many remained loyal to the papacy and were deprived of their benefices." Kindle location 972

"A deacon was preferable to a lay reader, because he could baptise, marry and assist with the distribution of Holy Communion. However, there is some evidence that congregations of remote chapels-of-ease served by deacons were unhappy that they could only receive the sacrament at infrequent intervals." Kindle location 993

"Lancelot Andrewes elaborated the liturgical role of the deacon still further, suggesting that he should go in and out of the ‘sacrarium’ (chancel) to serve the priest during the service, recalling the practice of the deacon going in and out of the holy doors in the iconostasis in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy.37 Andrewes’s emphasis on the deacon’s intermediate role between the deacon and the laity, going into but not remaining within the sanctuary, recalled the practice of the early church but also suggested that Andrewes may have expected this liturgical role to have been fulfilled by a deacon rather than a priest performing the deacon’s role. Within the context of Andrewes’s project to enhance the solemnity of the liturgy, the deacon played a crucial role by demarcating the sanctuary space as sacred and the role of the priest as an especially exalted one." Kindle location 1025

"Puritans were not necessarily opposed to deacons per se, or to the idea of diaconal ministry. In 1570, the civic authorities in Norwich appointed two men identified as ‘deacons’ in each ward to have ‘oversight of the poore’, with duties that included keeping records of the poor, vagrants, struggling families and newcomers to the city, and ensuring that everyone who could work was put to work. Clearly, these men were not ordained ministers but deacons after the Calvinist model.38 Puritans opposed the idea that the ministerial office could be divided between presbyters and deacons, so that deacons could be delegated to perform some of the functions of presbyters." Kindle location 1035

"The Puritans’ assault on the diaconate was, in fact, part of their wider attack on the threefold order of ministry." Kindle location 1056

"In his Laws, Hooker argued that bishops, priests and deacons represented three degrees of power in the church but only two categories of ministry: priest-bishops and deacons.43 In Hooker’s view, the fundamental difference between deacons and presbyters was that, while the former were elected by Christ before his ascension, the deacons were appointed by the Apostles after the ascension. The primary purpose of both presbyters and deacons was to preach the Gospel, and Hooker did not devote much consideration to deacons’ work in relation to the poor." Kindle location 1066

"Most clergy passionately supported the idea of a Protestant monarchy, but a significant proportion of them found that they could not, in conscience, swear the Oath of Allegiance to William and Mary while James II was still living. These men, who were led by the deposed Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, became known as the Non-Jurors. Over time, they would develop their own distinctive interpretation of the high church tradition." Kindle location 1468

"Men who remained deacons for a lengthy period of time, or even for life, were most likely to be found at the lower social end of the clergy. Furthermore, deacons, unlike priests, were permitted to continue in a secular profession, and the lawyers or doctors whom Eachard claimed sought ordination ‘for want of employment’ may well have hoped to carry on their practice in holy orders. Ordination to the diaconate, in other words, provided additional social status (if not income) while they continued in their chosen profession." Kindle location 1527

"Queen Anne’s Bounty finally recognised the contribution of the ‘working clergy’, as opposed to the wealthy beneficed absentees, and marked the beginning of a progressive improvement in clerical standards that continued throughout the eighteenth century. By the middle of the century, the educational standards expected of ordinands were higher and more uniform, and it was unusual for clergy to be ordained priest after less than a year in deacon’s orders. The prescriptions of the Ordinal were followed more consistently, and a small number of lifelong and long-term deacons flourished, primarily as schoolmasters, but also as college fellows, perpetual curates, preachers and chaplains." Kindle location 1541

"It was amongst the Non-Jurors that an appreciation of the liturgical and pastoral importance of deacons was rediscovered in the first half of the eighteenth century. This was largely because the Non-Jurors, who prided themselves on their patristic scholarship, were keen to revive early forms of the liturgy. Anxious to defend themselves against the accusations of popery that their pronounced high churchmanship and support for the Jacobite cause attracted, the Non-Jurors turned to the Greek Fathers to assure their critics that their liturgical innovations were derived, not from mimicking Rome, but from the practice of the early church." Kindle location 1646

"His description of the office of a deacon, whilst clearly dependent on the Ordinal, added several new elements: 20. Deacon, T., A Book of Common Prayer or Clementine Liturgy (London, 1734), pp. 74-101. 21. Ibid. p. 232.   It appertaineth to the office of a Deacon, to be subservient to the Bishop or Priest in Divine Service, and especially in the Service of the Altar; to take care of the Holy Table, and of all the ornaments and utensils belonging thereto; to read Holy Scriptures and Homilies in the Church, and to instruct the Catechumens and the youth; to distribute the Eucharist, and to baptize in cases of necessity, where no Priest is to be had; to bid prayers in the Congregation, and to preach with the Bishop’s License; to correct and rebuke men who behave themselves irregularly at church; to attend upon the Bishop, and to inform him or the Priest of the misdemeanours of the People; to search for the orphans, and the sick and poor people of the parish, to intimate their estates, names, and places where they dwell, and to distribute to them such charities as shall be delivered to him by the Bishop or Priest towards their relief and assistance.22 22. Ibid. p. 237." Kindle location   1659

"Within the 201 clergy in the sample, there are a small number of individuals who did not proceed to incumbencies, and therefore may have remained in deacon’s orders. I have identified 17 of these, who make up 8.5 per cent of the total. On the assumption that Cambridge-educated clergy with surnames beginning with the first letter of the alphabet are a reasonably representative sample of men ordained during the period, it seems likely that the proportion of the clergy who remained deacons for life in the eighteenth century was a little under 10 per cent. If this figure is accurate, it would indicate that lifelong deacons were a much more significant group in the Church of England than has previously been recognised." Kindle location 1713

"It was only in the early nineteenth century that deacons came under the same general exclusion from politics and secular employment as priests." Kindle location 1801

"The cross-section of eighteenth-century lifelong deacons examined here has revealed deacon-fellows, deacon-schoolmasters, deacon-preachers, deacon-chaplains and deacon-administrators. However, lifelong deacons were the exception rather than the norm in the eighteenth-century church, and a far more significant group of clergy were long-term deacons, men who remained deacons for considerably more than the 1 year laid down by the Ordinal. The average length of time that the clergy in the sample remained deacons was 704 days, which equates to a little under 2 years. This was longer than was required by the Ordinal or Canon 34, which stipulated a minimum ordination age of 23 for deacons and 24 for priests. Of the 155 clergy in the sample whose diaconal and priestly ordinations are recorded, 37 per cent waited for less than a year to be ordained priest, and only 13 were ordained priest within less than a month." Kindle location 1866

"One important piece of information missing from Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses is the ages of the Cambridge alumni at the time of their ordinations to the diaconate. Tanner suggested that one reason for an interval of more than 1 year between a man’s ordination to the diaconate and priesthood could be his relatively young age. This may well be true, but it hardly explains the 14 per cent who remained deacons for 3 years or more." Kindle location 1875

"this was the general trend, with the interval in the Georgian era averaging out at a year and nine months, as opposed to a year and five months between 1660 and 1709. It seems unlikely that many clergy deliberately chose to remain in the diaconate for a lengthy period of time, since this limited their career prospects. One possible reason for the gradually lengthening interval was an increase in the number of clergy relative to the number of incumbencies available, at a time when the creation of new parishes was a very infrequent event indeed, even in response to a growing population (new parishes could be created only by Act of Parliament). Another possible reason was the application of stricter standards of examination of candidates for ordination by the bishops, who were concerned about the reputation of the clergy, as well as the expansion of the number of fellowships available at Oxford and Cambridge and positions as schoolmasters. These last two factors allowed more men to gain a livelihood whilst remaining deacons." Kindle location 1910

"John Wesley was a deacon for almost three years, between 25 September 1725 and his priestly ordination on 22 September 1728. In Wesley’s case, the gap between his diaconal and priestly ordinations can be explained by his status as a college fellow." Kindle location 1958

"To the end of his days, Wesley insisted that he was not a separatist from the Church of England, and was acting within the Anglican tradition."Kindle location 1998

"Wesley’s most dramatic departure from historic Anglican norms was his personal ordination of ministers for mission in North America, without the involvement of a bishop. Wesley’s views on orders had been changing since the 1740s. In 1738, he declared his belief that bishops, deacons and priests were ‘of divine appointment’, but in 1746, his reading convinced him that although the orders of bishop, priest and deacon were described in scripture, they were not binding on all churches. In 1747, the Methodist Conference concluded that the three orders of ministry were described in the New Testament, and had existed in the early church, but denied that ‘God designed the same plan should obtain in all Churches throughout the world’." Kindle location 1999

"Wesley was not necessarily acting as far outside of the Anglican tradition as might first appear when, as a mere presbyter, he ordained deacons contrary to the Church of England’s Canon Law and ancient practice. Richard Hooker argued that the difference between a priest and a bishop was a difference of authority rather than sacramental character; it was only deacons who differed in character from priest-bishops, since the power to absolve and consecrate was shared equally by priests and bishops, but not by deacons.49 Wesley had, in effect, been forced into assuming the position of ‘scriptural bishop’ over the Methodist connexion by the Church of England’s intransigence in meeting their pastoral needs. He was adamant that the ministers ordained by him could serve only outside England, since within England an episcopal government of the church prevailed. Thus, for Wesley in the 1780s, episcopacy was primarily a matter of authority rather than apostolic succession or sacramental character." Kindle location 2030

"There is no evidence that any of the early Methodist ministers remained deacons only, and after Wesley’s death, ordination of ministers by the imposition of hands fell into abeyance in the Methodist connexion, except for overseas ministry. Reception into full connexion took the place of ordination until 1836, although Wesley’s adaptation of the Ordinal retained official authority within Methodism. In 1846, a new rite of ordination merged elements of the rites for the ordination of deacons, elders and superintendents into a single text, effectively ending any vestiges of a threefold order of ministry in Methodism. It was not until 1993 that the Methodist Conference recognised deacons as an order of ministry (rather than a ministry of the laity) and revived the Methodist Diaconal Order." Kindle location 2044

"In 1817, John Brewster composed a series of reflections for newly ordained deacons that gives a sense of how the diaconate was regarded in the pre-Victorian church. Brewster noted that ‘The office of a Deacon occupies but a small portion of the life of a Minister of the Gospel in the Established Church’.52 Comparing the deacons of the New Testament to the deacons of the Regency era, he acknowledged that ‘the alteration of times has indeed made a considerable change in the profession of a Deacon; but the Church very wisely considers his situation as a state of probation’." Kindle location 2053

"Brewster made no attempt to pretend that the deacon was still called upon to minister to the poor and sick: ‘Though I am not now called upon, as a Deacon to search for the sick, the poor and the impotent, and to intimate their cases to the superior minister, or officiating curate; yet am I solemnly required to do this, and much more, for myself’.54 Brewster argued that the conferral of the diaconate by the imposition of hands by the bishop did not constitute a conferral of grace, but was rather ‘only a symbol of the power which confers the office, and of those ordinary graces, which are to be obtained by prayer’.55 This suggests that Brewster regarded the diaconate primarily as an office, rather than a sacred character. The diaconate was ‘the first opening of an ecclesiastical life’, which ‘brought with it a succession of holy duties’." Kindle location 2064

"At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the diaconate was at one of its lowest ebbs; men who remained permanently in deacon’s orders had largely disappeared, and a prevailing low theology of holy orders regarded the diaconate as nothing more than a ‘charge of probation’. But society was changing, and within a few years, the idea of reviving the original purpose of deacons would re-emerge with a vengeance." Kindle location 2073

"The conversion of John Henry Newman to Roman Catholicism in 1845 convinced many that the Oxford Movement was a Trojan horse for Romanism in the Church of England, while the Tractarians themselves made strenuous efforts to identify themselves with the pre-Reformation English church as ‘Anglo-Catholics’ rather than Roman Catholics." Kindle location 2098

"Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals were united, however, in the belief that greater professionalism was needed amongst the clergy. Part of the process of ‘professionalisation’ was the Pluralities Act, which made it illegal ‘for any spiritual person, beneficed or performing ecclesiastical duty’ to engage in trade or commerce.2 This represented a formalisation of Canon 76 of 1604, which forbade a clergyman ‘to use himself . . . as a layman’.3 ‘Any spiritual person’ included deacons, and the Pluralities Act thus removed the possibility of part-time clergy." Kindle location 2102

"The mid-nineteenth-century call for the renewal of the diaconate as an active order of ministry emerged from concerns about the speed of population growth in the cities and the inadequacy of the parish system as an effective model of ministry and pastoral care. The Poor Law system, which saw the poor committed to workhouses paid for by parish rates, was widely regarded as inhumane, and the church was accused of conniving at the mistreatment of the poor." Kindle location 2115

"They not only wanted more bishops, priests, and cathedral institutions, but collegiate institutions, hospitals, houses of mercy, female penitentiaries, sisters of charity, and monasteries. . . . For the Tory reviewers the Church of England, divinely ordained and apostolic, had a place in it for a diaconate which, under a bishop’s superintendence, could manage schools and almshouses and guarantee an effective use of the offertory.5 5. Roberts, D., ‘The Social Conscience of Tory Periodicals’, Victorian Periodicals Newsletter 10 (1977), pp. 154-69, at p. 159." Kindle location 2130

"In May 1841, Arnold published a pamphlet entitled Order of Deacons, in which he suggested that the church should repeal the canons that prevented deacons from being in secular employment. For Arnold, the main benefit of reviving the diaconate would be to introduce an intermediate order between clergy and laity that would broaden people’s conception of what the church meant: 6. Vaughan (1987), p. 28.   A link would be formed between the clergy and the laity, by the existence of an order partaking of the character of both. The confusion of confining the term Church to the clergy would be greatly dispelled: inasmuch, as there would be not only members but even ministers of the Church who did not belong to the clergy considered as a profession." Kindle location 2141

"Deacons were to be subordinate to local incumbents, and until there was one priest for every thousand people, the church should expect priests to ‘raise their cry and call for Deacons to be placed under them, while they may give themselves “continually to Prayer and to the Ministry of the Word”’. Mackenzie’s deacons were, in other words, to be parish deacons and pastoral assistants, although he also suggested that licensed schoolmasters could also be deacons." Kindle location 2221

"Mackenzie gave a number of reasons to justify his proposal. He insisted that ‘No change of ordinance, no Act of Parliament, no innovation of any kind would be needed’ in order to bring his scheme about.14 This was because his deacons would be full-time ministers, in contrast to Arnold’s suggestion that working men should serve as deacons. Mackenzie pointed out, quite correctly, that Arnold’s proposal would require the repeal of the Pluralities Act, and Parliament was unlikely to be willing to devote its time to such a matter. Most importantly, however, the existence of a renewed order of deacons would ‘establish a sympathy between the church and the lower section of the middle class’." Kindle location 2225

"Hale did not have sufficient authority, as an archdeacon, to revive the orders of deacon and subdeacon himself, but he enjoyed considerable influence. He was neither a reformer nor a supporter of the Oxford Movement, but an old-fashioned high churchman whose priority was the suppression of innovation. The attraction of the diaconate to such a man was the fact that it was a dormant ancient institution rather than a new one. The latitudinarian Arnold, the Anglo-Catholic Chepmell and the old-fashioned high churchman Hale were all in favour of deacons: indeed, the only voice in the Church of England not speaking out for revival was that of the evangelicals." Kindle location 2395

"objections were threefold. In the first place, there were grave doubts about the possibility of being able to pay the new deacons; secondly, there was a concern that the reputation of the clergy could be endangered by admitting men without a university education to holy orders; and thirdly, there was concern that ‘permanent’ deacons would look on their fellow ‘transitional’ deacons with jealousy and question why they were unable to proceed to the priesthood." Kindle location 2414 

[Sound like nothing has changed!]

"The Convocation of Canterbury’s misgivings about full-time deacons are understandable, given the difficulties of paying existing clergy. Allowing men in secular employment to be deacons would have required the repeal of the 1838 Pluralities Act, and Convocation was reluctant to involve itself in a lengthy tussle with Parliament." Kindle location 2448

"In 1864, the issue of deacons came up once more at the Convocation of Canterbury, coupled with a request for the more general licensing of readers.57 Accordingly, on Ascension Day, 1866, the bishops reached an agreement that Readers could be licensed in all dioceses to lead prayers and preach in the absence of a clergyman,58 although scripture readers had already been operating in some areas for decades. The 1866 decision removed the ambiguity of Readers’ canonical status and established them as a para-clerical ‘order of ministry’." Kindle location 2508

"Before the late nineteenth century, deacons were virtually invisible in the liturgy. Deacons wore exactly the same choir dress as priests: a surplice and black preaching scarf." Kindle location 2668

"The Victorian Church of England’s inactivity against the odds in response to the ongoing demand for distinctive deacons from both the clergy and laity might be seen as one of the great missed opportunities of Anglican history, like the church’s failure to accommodate the Methodist movement or William Booth’s Salvation Army. The nineteenth-century Anglican literature on the diaconate is very extensive, speculative and repetitive; many authors do not seem to have been aware that they were not the first person to have the brilliant idea of reviving deacons." Kindle location 2710

"The indirect effect of Vatican II on the Church of England, combined with a growing recognition that the ministry of women should develop beyond lay roles, led some to suggest that the diaconate could be a catch-all ministry used to subsume existing lay ministries – deaconesses, lay workers, Church Army officers and so on." Kindle location 2732

"less than ten years after the momentous decision to admit women to deacon’s orders, the distinctive diaconate was brought to the brink of extinction as the majority of women deacons sought ordination as priests." Kindle location 2735

"The Lambeth Conference of 1958 commissioned a report, The Order of Deacon, to explore whether the experience of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA), which had a thriving distinctive diaconate, could and should be applied to the Anglican Communion as a whole. As a result, the Conference passed Resolution 88, ‘The Office of Deacon’, which recommended that ‘Each Province of the Anglican Communion shall consider whether the office of deacon shall be restored to its primitive place as a distinctive order in the Church, instead of being regarded as a probationary period for the priesthood’." Kindle location 2836 

[Interesting, though other books refer to the movement to reassess the diaconate, they don't mention that it was how the deacons were strengthening in the US that was the root cause of this reassesment.]

 

"When non-stipendiary ministers finally became a part of the life of the Church of England, following the Welsby Report in 1968, they would all go on to be priests. The idea of voluntary clergy had by this time been debated on and off for 130 years, making the twenty-first century Church of England’s debate concerning the consecration of women to the episcopate seem rushed by comparison." Kindle location 2856

"When asked about the revival of the diaconate in 1957, Pope Pius XII declared that ‘the time was not yet ripe’ for such a move, but he instructed theologians to examine the issue more closely.14 Before the opening session of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, no less than ninety proposals were received by the Vatican, many of them signed by bishops, for the restoration of the diaconate. The Council voted to revive the order as a lifelong ministry in September 1964, opening it to married men over the age of thirty-five.15 Pope Paul VI implemented the decision of the Council by the decree Sacrum Diaconatus Ordinem in 1967." Kindle location 2870

"In 1974, a report prepared for General Synod by the Advisory Committee for the Church’s Ministry (ACCM) entitled Deacons and the Church argued that the diaconate should be abolished altogether, largely on the grounds that ‘we have . . . others who, between them, can do anything in worship that a deacon can’.18 The report argued in favour of direct ordination to the priesthood. The report’s conclusions were rejected by General Synod in 1977, which opted to keep the diaconate and took note of a different report that set out three options for the future of the diaconate: its continuation as a short intermediate stage on the way to priesthood, its discontinuation in the Church of England or its expansion to include lay workers, deaconesses and others.19 This latter option was not really the same as subsequent proposals to introduce a ‘permanent’ diaconate, since it was primarily a proposal to give sacramental recognition to existing ministries by diaconal ordination, a ‘re-labelling’ of ministries." Kindle location 2900

"For John N. Collins, the Church of England’s drift towards the abolition of the diaconate was an inevitable consequence of the flawed definition of diakonia exclusively in terms of service.21 As a ‘closely allied tradition’ to Roman Catholicism, which had nevertheless come under significant influence from the German Evangelical Lutheran deacon movement through Elizabeth Ferard, Anglicanism was burdened with the same misconceptions as those traditions." Kindle location 2915

"Deacons are ordained as a focus of diaconal ministry, which is the call of God to serve the Church in Christ’s name. Perhaps the most essential vision, therefore, is to see the deacon as a community servant. Diaconal ministry should not be so tied conceptually to the parochial context as is true generally of the presbyterate. . . . The deacon as community servant needs to be operating firmly within the context of the witness of the whole church, and one Christian community in particular." Kindle location 3012

"In the view of Leslie Francis and Mandy Robbins, by adopting the Portsmouth Report, ‘The church had created a permanent diaconate with very little thought as to how it would integrate it into the church’.43 The theological thought behind the revival of the diaconate was retrospective at best, and superficial at worst. The diaconate was primarily a vehicle for meeting the demand for women to be admitted to ministry without outraging conservative opinion, and women’s diaconal ministry was defined negatively: women deacons were clerks in holy orders who were deacons because they could not be priests.44 Much of the official literature on the diaconate produced up to 1994 has the feel of having been hastily assembled, and many writers were much more interested in the future development of the ministry of women than they were in the diaconate for its own sake." Kindle location 3072

"Little attention was being paid, however, to ‘those men and women who are actually called to be deacons’. The issue of deacons needed to be ‘disentangled’ from the different issue of the ordination of women to which it had become attached." Kindle location 3091

"White and Williams suggested two images useful for forming a theological understanding of the diaconate: the deacon as servant and the deacon as bridge." Kindle location 3100

"The renewal of the diaconate is not an attempt to muscle in on the proper ministry of the laity and take it over. The deacon’s role is not so much to do the serving as to work alongside God’s people and encourage and facilitate their implementing ‘the mandate from Jesus Christ’ to be servants." Kindle location 3109 Quoting from Vatican II

"The apostolic college is essentially incomplete without the presence of deacons whose particular role it is to signify that the Kingdom is not of this world. It is open to serious question whether such a role is adequately fulfilled by deacons whose main ambition is to become priests or by deacons who are also priests and in some cases bishops as well." Kindle location 3131

"Hannaford concluded that ‘the contemporary diaconate is ill-suited to its task as a sacramental focus of the diaconal ministry of Christ in Church and Kingdom’, and noted that ‘real recognition must be given to its distinctive and unambiguous place in the apostolic college’." Kindle location 3136

"What bishops may have envisaged as a minority ministry rapidly became a major section of the clergy, and by November 1990 there were 999 women deacons in the Church of England, of whom 511 were stipendiary and 256 were non-stipendiary parish deacons. Only 56 were non-stipendiary deacons in secular employment," Kindle location 3201

[There are stipendary deacons in the UK??]

"The authors of Deacons Now found no evidence that the ordination of women as deacons was having a negative impact on Licensed Lay Ministry, which chimed with the experience of ECUSA, where a thriving diaconate exists alongside licensed lay readers.66 The report found instead that the number of women offering themselves for non-ordained ministry in the church had increased, and suggested that this might have been a consequence of laywomen being inspired to serve by seeing other women in more prominent and public ministry roles." Kindle location 3210

"‘Suggestions for Extended Communion’ submitted by the Diocese of Southwell were attached as an appendix to the report.71 The distribution of consecrated elements outside of the celebration of the eucharist was to be permitted only by the bishop, for periods of a year or less. Licences were likely to be granted to: 71. Ibid. pp. 89-91.   1. Churches in a team ministry wanting to celebrate a central eucharist 2. Parish churches whose minister-in-charge was a deacon, participating by extension in the eucharist of a neighbouring church 3. Churches where a second congregation met later on the same day as a eucharist celebrated earlier.   There was to be no distribution in one kind at these services of ‘Extended Communion’, which were not to be called ‘Holy Communion’, so as not to confuse congregations. They were not to take place unless preceded by a service of the word, and had to always be linked to a specific eucharist taking place on the same day, preferably explicitly in the notice advertising the service. In this respect, the Church of England laid down stricter guidelines than the Roman Catholic Church, which in the absence of a priest permits deacons to lead eucharistic services at any time, using consecrated wafers. Services of Holy Communion led by deacons are an ancient feature of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, in the form of the ‘Liturgy of the Pre-sanctified Gifts’ which regularly replaces weekday celebrations of the Divine Liturgy during the Great Lent." Kindle location 3236

"Treasure highlighted the level of insecurity experienced by deacons, who felt that their ‘jobs were in the balance’ each time there was a new incumbent.77 This was because most deacons were licensed as curates, and therefore the nature of their ministry (and even their ability to have a ministry at all) depended on the incumbent’s good grace." Kindle location 3276

"Through the addition of a deacon, ‘the President is freed from a confusing multiplicity of roles and functions’. The deacon will be available to the congregation as they arrive, will learn their needs and will know their concerns well enough to incorporate them in the intercessions; he or she will prepare the people for worship, supervise the preparation of the sacred vessels and give out notices. The deacon will bring in the book of the Gospels and will be responsible for ‘enabling touches’ in the course of the service, such as announcing pages and hymns, inviting the people to confess their sins and helping them to welcome the children. Burnham noted that liturgical directions for the role of the deacon are more fully developed in the Roman Catholic Church, and in the Prayer Books of Anglican churches in the USA, Canada and South Africa than they are in England, and these might provide sources for further development of the deacon’s liturgical involvement." Kindle location 3376

"The churches in the Anglican Communion where the distinctive diaconate has flourished are generally those in which it was established at an early date, usually in the mid-nineteenth century. The Episcopal Church in the United States of America and the Anglican churches in Jamaica and Brazil are cases in point." Kindle location 3430

"Sykes anticipated future controversy by warning that ‘the issue of whether or not there is a distinctive work for life-long deacons . . . ought not to become a moment for raising general anxieties about the devaluing of lay vocation or the so-called clericalization of lay people’. He endorsed Noble’s vision of deacons as ‘the go-between or agent of the church, ministering in a pro-active, practical way as educator/envisioner/facilitator with an instrumental role in building missionary congregations’, and set out a blueprint for the nature of the ministry of future deacons:   Many new-style deacons would pursue a normal career with the object of applying their theological training and insight to their main occupation. In this way they will build the experience that will enable them to teach, lead, encourage and support the members of their home church and enable them in turn to go out into the world and live their faith as confident, visible Christians. Thus in the gathered churches these new style deacons would have the real capability to equip the members to be missionary congregations.   Barry Rogerson, Bishop of Bristol, insisted that ‘a renewed diaconate would fit into developing patterns of collaborative ministry’" Kindle location 3508

"Like previous reports on the diaconate, For Such a Time as This strove to balance innovation with tradition, insisting that there existed ‘sufficient theological resources in the current ordinal to support the thrust of the present report’. The diaconate was ‘a fundamental expression of apostolic ministry’, and the ‘go-between character’ of deacons allowed interface between the world and the church but also between the laity, clergy and bishops:   The calling of deacons is to focus, to encourage and to help coordinate the diakonia (the divine commission of the whole church within the mission of God in the world and to do this in three ways: through the liturgy, through pastoral outreach and through catechetical work. . . . Deacons can help the church to connect." Kindle location 3547

"As far as the deacon’s involvement in the liturgy was concerned, the report suggested that the deacon could   [minister] at the celebration of the Eucharist in ways that are appropriate to the life of the community and without excluding the ministry of lay people: reading the Gospel, leading the prayers of penitence, the intercessions and the acclamations of the people, inviting the exchange of the peace, serving at the altar, administering Holy Communion, and sending out the people with the liturgical dismissal.21 21. Ibid. p. 55.   The deacon could also lead the daily offices, baptise with the parish priest’s permission and order the church for liturgical worship, especially the altar and font, giving guidance to the sacristan or verger. The deacon might also administer house and hospital communions and officiate at services of the word with Holy Communion (‘extended communion’), and he or she might assist or officiate (except in the first year after ordination) at marriages, funeral services and burials, as well as ministering to the sick and dying with prayers.22 22. Ibid. p. 56. The deacon’s catechetical ministry might include coordinating and monitoring faith development courses, preparing adult candidates for baptism, preaching, conducting confirmation preparation and preparing couples for marriage. Deacons might also train lay people for catechesis, support lay involvement in children’s activities, offer specialist counselling or train volunteers to befriend families in need. The deacon should also represent the church’s priorities on behalf of the bishop in areas of community action." Kindle location 3566

In the debate that followed the publication of For Such a Time as This in 2001, the accusation that a revived diaconate risked clericalising the laity came to the fore. The Central Readers’ Council, concerned that distinctive deacons would detract from longstanding patterns of lay ministry, opposed the adoption of the report as a blueprint for the future encouragement of distinctive deacons. This was on the grounds that the best way to energise lay ministry in the church was for lay people to continue to minister as laity, rather than to encourage individuals engaged in lay ministry to enter holy orders. The motion to endorse the report foundered in the House of Laity, therefore, and in the end General Synod ‘took note of’ the report’s recommendations, meaning that it had no official status, but might nevertheless be drawn upon by individual dioceses. For Such a Time as This was ‘referred back for further work, seeking to relate ordained and lay forms of ministry to each other’, and the following motion was passed:   That this Synod, disappointed that the report . . . has not taken the opportunity to examine thoroughly the offices of Reader, Pastoral Assistant and Church Army Officer, request that the report is referred to the Ministry Division for further consideration.25 25. MMWC, p. xi." Kindle location 3591

"The Chichester Report noted that priests could still act as deacons, ‘but there is something about the flexibility of a distinctive and permanent diaconate, accountable directly to the bishop but working collaboratively with the presbyter in a local situation, which has a different feel’.27 The report abandoned the idea of ‘defining’ diaconal ministry and instead recommended a more intuitive discernment of whether a candidate for ministry was a ‘deacon-shaped’ rather than a ‘priest-shaped’ person,28 providing seven discernment criteria for diaconal candidates. 27. Deacons in the Church: Report of a Diocesan Working Party (Diocese of Chichester, 2003), p. 6." Kindle location 3611

[Makes sense!]

"According to the report, ‘The service of a deacon, conceived as envoy and spokesperson entrusted with important tidings, as an ambassador and mediator with authority and as a person who performs tasks on behalf of another, is the Church’s service sacramentalised’." Kindle location  3623

"Chichester envisaged the appointment of stipendiary deacons, instead of curates in some cases, and recognised that parishes would need to be educated about the difference between a curate and a deacon. Indeed, the report goes so far as to suggest that non-stipendiary deacons ‘should not be considered the norm’." Kindle location 3628

"The authors of For Such a Time as This noted that the Bishop Otter Centre for Theology and Ministry within University College, Chichester was the only Anglican institution in Britain offering formation for distinctive deacons, although it was not accredited to do so by the House of Bishops. The only other way to receive formation specific to the diaconate was to attend an ecumenical course designed to train Methodist deacons at Queen’s College, Birmingham." Kindle location 3644

"On the other hand, there have been positive reactions from the laity to the idea of a revived distinctive diaconate. The lay theologian Margaret Selby has argued that the revival of the diaconate is a welcome reflection of the ‘mutuality’ of lay and clerical ministry in the church:   Traditionally, the deacon is the one who links the people to the priest at the altar, who symbolizes the bringing of the world by the congregation to lay it before God and his transforming love. Many of the traditional tasks of the deacon are now shared by the laity, but it is the servant task of the whole Church, symbolized by the deacon, to carry in the Gospel and to read it – to be the bearer of the Good News to the people of God, to intercede for the world as its servant, to call the people to peace with one another, to send them out into the world as its servants. This allows the laity to see themselves mirrored not only in the priestly ministry, but also in that of the deacon. Christ is both Priest and Servant in his Church, and this must be reflected both in the priestly intercession of the whole people of God and also in their diaconal service in the world.37 37. Selby, M., ‘A Word from one of the Laos’, in Guiver, G." Kindle location 3656

"two theologians, Paul Avis and Rosalind Brown. Avis argued that a purely ‘quantitative’ analysis of what a deacon does can never get to the heart of what a deacon is. A deacon is not significantly different from a Reader in what he or she can do, but he or she is ‘qualitatively’ different insofar as he or she is marked by a sacramental character." Kindle location   3674

"Avis does not believe that the revival of the diaconate necessitates the resurrection of a distinctive diaconate, although this might be one aspect of revival. What matters is that ordinands recover the significance of the diaconate by spending at least two years (preferably three) in deacon’s orders alone." Kindle location 3698

"Avis has acknowledged the Church of England’s paradoxical position with regard to deacons: ‘On the one hand it knows that it cannot be right to see deacons merely as probationary priests, but on the other hand, the Church of England on the whole is not geared up to take advantage of the ministry of distinctive deacons’. Furthermore, Avis points to a more fundamental problem with defining the function of the diaconate: the difficulty of interpreting the sources for it:   In interpreting the diaconate, reason, tradition and Scripture have a contribution to make. It would seem sensible to try to respond to the needs of the Church and the needs of the world within which it ministers. But these are impossibly diverse. It would also be responsible to be guided as far as possible by the Church’s tradition. But this too is extremely varied: the diaconate has meant many things in the past two thousand years. Above all, therefore, it is necessary to be guided by the New Testament. But this too is far from straightforward.44 44. Avis, P., ‘Wrestling with the Diaconate’, Ecclesiology 5 (2009), pp. 3-6, at p. 4." Kindle location 3712

"In his most recent writings on the diaconate in the Church of England, Avis has described the diaconate as ‘the most problematic but, at the same time, the most promising of all the ministries of the Church’.46 However, Avis expresses concern that the Church of England might be ‘imposing its anxiety about outreach and evangelisation on to deacons’,47 as if the existence of a small band of deacons exonerates the rest of the church from prioritising these concerns. According to Avis, 46. Avis, P., ‘The Diaconate: a flagship ministry’, Theology and Ministry 2 (2013), pp. 1-14, at p. 1. " Kindle location 3732

"Rosalind Brown’s book Being a Deacon Today (2004), which was stimulated by her work on a report on the distinctive diaconate for the Diocese of Salisbury, is currently the only book in print on the subject of the diaconate from a British Anglican perspective that is not an official report." Kindle location  3748

"Brown acknowledged that deacons and Readers might find themselves reduplicating each other’s ministry, ‘but this can be seen as an expression of the perichoretic dance of the Trinity, in which we are caught up and at times find ourselves with our various callings dancing the same steps together for a while, before continuing the dance in different ways’. Deacons are ‘enablers of the ministry of the bishop and the Church’, like ‘old retainer’ servants who ‘take the initiative and keep [the church] running smoothly’." Kindle location 3759

"the Bishop did not want to clericalise all church services. What message would it give the laity if public worship was led only by priests and deacons? Readers were ‘a natural sign to lay people of what their ministry can be’." Kindle location 3788

"‘If diakonia (ministry) is understood as referring to the whole Church, what then is the distinctive role of a deacon? Attempts to define the diaconate can all too easily appear to be attempts to remove legitimate ministries from the whole people of God’.60 The report’s authors argued that accepting Collins’s expanded definition of the diaconate did not require the church to abandon the idea that the diaconate was concerned with humble service, but rather to emphasise that humble service is required of all Christians, in imitation of Christ." Kindle location 3829

"A major recommendation of The Mission and Ministry of the Whole Church was the call for greater weight to be given to the ‘transitional’ diaconate, which is ‘an opportunity for the ordained minister to discover and live out in practice what it means to be conformed to the Deacon Jesus Christ, to partake of his apostolic calling and to be entrusted with the stewardship of the mystery of the gospel’. The report noted that one reason why people were calling for the restoration of the distinctive diaconate was the neglect of the ‘transitional’ diaconate, yet ‘If the diaconate is indeed fundamental, nothing is more important and time spent discovering what it means in practice is time well spent." Kindle location 3859

"The report advised that individuals called to the distinctive diaconate itself should have ‘a calling and aptitude for a life-long ministry that is inextricably related to the word, the sacraments and pastoral care, but is suited more to an assisting than to a presiding role in relation to both the sacraments and the leadership of the community’." Kindle location 3868

"‘As long as confusion continues over what constitutes a diaconal ministry, it would be as well to appoint people to particular tasks, and to leave ordination out of it. Until there is a greater enthusiasm for a distinctive diakonia, there is little point in reviving the term, even if only to relabel existing branches of ministry’.73 73. ‘Leader: Deacons, not doormats’, The Church Times, 29 August 2007. "Kindle location 3933

"Deacons are called to work with the Bishop and the priests with whom they serve as heralds of Christ’s kingdom. They are to proclaim the gospel in word and deed, as agents of God’s purposes of love. They are to serve the community in which they are set, bringing to the Church the needs and hopes of all the people. They are to work with their fellow members in searching out the poor and weak, the sick and lonely and those who are oppressed and powerless, reaching into the forgotten corners of the world, that the love of God may be made visible. Deacons share in the pastoral ministry of the Church and in leading God’s people in worship. They preach the word and bring the needs of the world before the Church in intercession. They accompany those searching for faith and bring them to baptism. They assist in administering the sacraments; they distribute communion and minister to the sick and housebound. Deacons are to seek nourishment from the Scriptures; they are to study them with God’s people, that the whole Church may be equipped to live out the gospel in the world. They are to be faithful in prayer, expectant and watchful for the signs of God’s presence, as he reveals his kingdom among us.77 77. This and subsequent quotations from the Ordinal of Common Worship are taken from the online version of the text, ‘Common Worship: Ordination Services’, The Church of England, accessed on 30 July 2013: http://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts/ordinal.aspx" Kindle location 3973

"According to guidelines issued jointly by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and appended to the canons, the ordinary minister of marriage should be a priest or bishop. However, ‘A deacon may officiate at a marriage only if the consent of the incumbent and/or minister is first given’. Even if the officiating minister is a deacon, ‘The authorized services should be used without variation’, including the blessing of the congregation. If a priest or bishop is present, he or she should perform the blessing. Furthermore, ‘In the first year following ordination as deacon . . . a deacon should rarely, if ever, solemnize a marriage and should only do so for exceptional reasons’, since training for the solemnisation of marriages usually takes place in the year after ordination." Kindle location 4019

"Even for a church that is renowned for its indecisiveness, for the Church of England to have vacillated on the question of deacons for 175 years is a remarkable, if dubious, achievement. Only a tiny number of the laity who regularly attend church are aware of the existence of distinctive deacons, and those that are may be largely confined to churches that experience the ministry of a deacon directly." Kindle location 4041

"The contemporary debate on the diaconate in the Church of England is not about whether the diaconate should exist or not, but about the form in which it should exist." Kindle location 4054

"To expect individuals to remain in deacon’s orders for their entire lives is unrealistic in the contemporary Church of England. In the same way that many vocations to the priesthood come from amongst former Readers, so it is not possible for an individual to be certain that a vocation to the diaconate will not evolve into a vocation to the priesthood." Kindle location 4060

"The historical evidence for long-term deacons presented in this book makes the mechanical one-year interval now expected of clergy seem inappropriate. It seems odd that curates in the supposedly decadent eighteenth century spent far longer in deacon’s orders than deacons in the ‘mission-shaped’ twenty-first century." Kindle location 4068

"In addition to transitional and distinctive deacons, the other group of deacons in the church are clergy who are also ordained priest (and in some cases bishop) whose ongoing diaconal character has been emphasised in recent church documents. The institution of distinctive deacons detracts from attempts to foster the diaconal ministry of priests who are also deacons," Kindle location 4075

"The argument that there must be distinctive deacons to ‘represent’ the diaconate, or to provide a ‘focus’ for diaconal ministry, denigrates the diaconal ministry and diaconal character of other ordained ministers." Kindle location 4078

"If ordination really is cumulative, and diaconal ministry is the foundation for all ministry, there is no reason in theory why a priest might not choose to define him or herself primarily as a deacon, and revert to priestly ministry if the need for it should arise. Retired bishops cease to exercise their episcopal ministry and often take on priestly roles, such as chaplain and assistant curate; therefore there is no reason why some priests should not cease to exercise their priestly ministry and become full-time deacons. Such an arrangement would proclaim the equality of priestly and diaconal ministry far more effectively than the ordination of distinctive deacons." Kindle location 4084

"Whilst a greater emphasis on the significance of the transitional diaconate is only right, encouraging individuals to discern vocations to the distinctive diaconate is inappropriate. The very existence of a distinctive diaconate undermines the status of transitional deacons – who make up the vast majority of members of the order of deacons at any one time – as ‘real’ deacons. The institution of lifelong deacons is a relic of a church divided by class and gender that is best forgotten, and although deacons existed in the Church of England before the 1990s, they existed only for negative reasons. Men remained in deacon’s orders because they were considered insufficiently well-educated to proceed to priest’s orders, or because they were of a lower social status" Kindle location 4089

"Whatever its significance in the early church, the diaconate in the Church of England has only ever been a form of ‘second-class’ ministry in a status-obsessed church. The diaconate’s relegation to a form of probation for priesthood is to be welcomed in a church that ought to strive to be more egalitarian. The revival of the distinctive diaconate has never taken hold in the Church of England, in spite of many attempts at revival, and the church should attend to that failure. Distinctive deacons represent a failed experiment in ministry, and their tiny numbers and minimal growth rate testify to that fact. The existence of distinctive deacons only serves to handicap the diaconal ministry of others, whether bishops, priests or lay people, by attempting to make an aspect of the church that belongs equally to all its members the particular domain of one category of ministers." Kindle location 4095

"The revival of the diaconate comes primarily from the clergy themselves, and stems from a combination of mimicry of the Roman Catholic Church and a sense that the diaconate is ‘fashionable’ and ‘ecumenical’. However, the Church of England has evolved non-priestly ministries of its own, and it is impossible to impose a new level of clericalisation on the church without detracting from lay ministries, particularly that of Readers, but also the ministry of lay workers and youth workers. Time and time again, experience has demonstrated that a clear definition of the ministerial role of Reader is impossible, and in parishes throughout the country, Readers frequently take on roles that go far beyond their original preaching and teaching ministry. Readers and other lay people are often the glue that keeps local churches together, especially in rural areas where ministers are few and far between. The renewal of the diaconate would be a retrograde step, an inappropriate clericalisation and an affront to the work carried out by Readers." Kindle location 4102

"church insiders often find it hard to appreciate the sheer depth of the laity’s indifference to official church documents, many of whom do not know or care what the General Synod is, quite apart from being familiar with the reports prepared for it." Kindle location 4113

[Haa haa haa!] 

"An honest advocate of deacons in the Church of England must acknowledge that any ministry that could be done by deacons is currently undertaken by priests and lay people, often extremely effectively. Arguing for the distinctive diaconate in the Church of England is difficult, because most people in the church have never experienced it; it is almost like trying to explain the usefulness of money to a society that has only ever experienced a barter economy. The Church of England has adapted itself to a deaconless existence. Of course it seems that deacons are not needed – because the church has evolved so as not to need them. Deacons can therefore appear like an ecclesiological luxury" Kindle location 4118

"The Church of England proclaims a threefold order of ministry, and the fact that deacons have no permanent, independent existence in the church will therefore always raise questions about the Church of England’s faithfulness to its own formularies and the tradition of the universal church." Kindle location 4127

"In a church that claims to be Catholic and reformed, logic surely dictates that vestigial remnants of earlier practices should either be discarded in their entirety, or revived in a form appropriate for the present time." Kindle location 4130

[AMEN]

"The distinction between a deacon and Reader is all but invisible in churches that are liturgically minimalist and do not lay much stress on the theology of orders. It is no accident that the two English dioceses in which distinctive deacons are most numerous, Chichester and London, are renowned for their Anglo-Catholic tradition." Kindle location 4136

"The late twentieth-century’s anxiety about status-specific language led the phrase ‘this inferior office’ to be removed from the ASB Ordinal, but the word ‘inferior’ does not necessarily imply ‘despised’. ‘Inferior’ may mean ‘under authority’ or ‘under obedience’,"Kindle location 4153

"The church should not have the characteristics of a ‘supply and demand’ economy, but all too often the allocation of stipendiary clergy in deanery pastoral plans is determined by congregational demands for a priest to celebrate Holy Communion as often as possible. This preoccupation with the weekly eucharist is a very recent innovation and not part of historic Anglican tradition, and therefore the church should not be brow-beaten into allocating all resources to the employment of ordained priests." Kindle location  4168

"A feature of church life in the twenty-first century is the increasingly ‘episcopal’ ministry undertaken by incumbents, in the sense that most incumbents now have oversight of a number of parishes and are obliged to delegate the everyday running of local churches to lay leaders, such as Readers and churchwardens. At the same time, priests are often expected to be the focus of everything. Without distinctive deacons, priests are forced to take on an unmanageable range of tasks and ministries, and laypeople are forced to take on roles of spiritual leadership that they execute admirably, but may never have signed up for." Kindle location 4173

"The twentieth century saw an ever increasing emphasis on the parish service of Holy Communion on a Sunday as the centre and focus of church life, and this contributed to the sense that deacons were redundant. However, this focus implies that ‘the church’ is co-extensive with ‘the congregation’, an outdated ecclesiological assumption that is increasingly being questioned. As the worshipping community dwindles as a percentage of the parish community in many places, the church risks losing its credibility and its role in the life of the community if it defines itself primarily as a ‘chaplaincy to churchgoers’." Kindle location  4181

"The future of the church lies in serving the entire community and not just in serving the spiritual needs of congregations, those who happen to turn up to church. In this environment, deacons are more keenly needed than they have ever been. It is by no means necessary that the church’s outreach into the world should be put in the hands of ordained ministers, but if the church were to do this, it would send a message that such outreach is not merely a bolt-on to Sunday worship, but something for which the church exists." Kindle location 4188