Justaguy
Puritan Board Freshman
Hey,
Greetings from a new guy to to the boards.
The PCA church I belong to is establishing a Diaconate after many years of not having one, and I have been nominated as one of the candidates.
The Session has decided to have a mixed male and female diaconate. While reading the PCA BCO I realized this wasn’t really kosher. Since then I’ve read all the backlogs of discussions on here about Deacons (back to 2008).
When emailing and talking to the TE, most of the justification seemed to be copy and pasted from the Tim Keller article (Tenth Pres, RPCNA, ARP, Calvin, Warfield, Piper, ect). The Session is not ordaining because Deacon is an office of service not of rule, and since the BCO conceptualizes ordination with authority, and women can’t have authority over men, they will be commissioning the entire diaconate.
Using the (D)eacon & (d)eacon terminology, I looked into all these examples provided above and they either ordain their men as Deacons and commissioned the women as deaconess, or ordained both men and women as Deacons. None of them only commissioned the entire diaconate.
I don’t see much historical examples of “commissioning” in lieu of ordain for women besides recently in the PCA. The commissioning looks A LOT like ordination, vows and all, but is conceptualized without giving authority.
Feels like not ordaining is not being faithful to the office, and dilutes the diaconate to just (d)eacons. Even Tenth Pres said, ““we have sought to honor the teaching of Scripture and our adoption of the Book of Church Order by ordaining men only as deacons—a useful and dignified office.”
Working through this mentally, since I didn’t grow up Presbyterian, I’m not sure how much I should make of the session drifting from the BCO. Not sure (logically) if I can vow to uphold the principles of polity in the BCO, while filling a role that’s not really in there. Also, not even sure why there are vows if I’m not being ordained into the denomination.
My personal theology and understanding of the office of Deacon is in line with the BCO, so not really here to discuss that. But would like to know if there are other examples that have been practiced. Can anyone provide examples from church history of the entire diaconate being commissioned?
Greetings from a new guy to to the boards.
The PCA church I belong to is establishing a Diaconate after many years of not having one, and I have been nominated as one of the candidates.
The Session has decided to have a mixed male and female diaconate. While reading the PCA BCO I realized this wasn’t really kosher. Since then I’ve read all the backlogs of discussions on here about Deacons (back to 2008).
When emailing and talking to the TE, most of the justification seemed to be copy and pasted from the Tim Keller article (Tenth Pres, RPCNA, ARP, Calvin, Warfield, Piper, ect). The Session is not ordaining because Deacon is an office of service not of rule, and since the BCO conceptualizes ordination with authority, and women can’t have authority over men, they will be commissioning the entire diaconate.
Using the (D)eacon & (d)eacon terminology, I looked into all these examples provided above and they either ordain their men as Deacons and commissioned the women as deaconess, or ordained both men and women as Deacons. None of them only commissioned the entire diaconate.
I don’t see much historical examples of “commissioning” in lieu of ordain for women besides recently in the PCA. The commissioning looks A LOT like ordination, vows and all, but is conceptualized without giving authority.
Feels like not ordaining is not being faithful to the office, and dilutes the diaconate to just (d)eacons. Even Tenth Pres said, ““we have sought to honor the teaching of Scripture and our adoption of the Book of Church Order by ordaining men only as deacons—a useful and dignified office.”
Working through this mentally, since I didn’t grow up Presbyterian, I’m not sure how much I should make of the session drifting from the BCO. Not sure (logically) if I can vow to uphold the principles of polity in the BCO, while filling a role that’s not really in there. Also, not even sure why there are vows if I’m not being ordained into the denomination.
My personal theology and understanding of the office of Deacon is in line with the BCO, so not really here to discuss that. But would like to know if there are other examples that have been practiced. Can anyone provide examples from church history of the entire diaconate being commissioned?