English
English
Korean
Spanish
Bay Area Church is a large congregation located between Houston and Galveston in Southeast Texas. The church has a broad selection of ministries ranging from local benevolence and family ministries to church planting and missionary involvement in other countries, in addition to the usual selection of discipleship and fellowship opportunities for all ages.
Yet as church leaders considered ways to make their ministry more effective, they could see areas that needed shoring up. Their deacons were perhaps an underutilized resource as they focused on traditional roles such as widows ministry and serving the Lord’s Supper.
“[Those ministries] had been done in our church for a long time,” said John Eckeberger, a Bay Area deacon who also serves as the church’s pastor for missions and mobilization, “but there seemed to be a lot of gaps in service to our church that we’ve since asked the deacons to step into. It’s been a very positive thing.”
As he considered how the deacons might catch a revitalized vision for their service, Eckeberger thought of his friend, Jeff Lynn, who once pastored Yorktown Baptist Church down the road in Corpus Christi. Lynn moved from Yorktown to be senior strategist for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s Church Health and Leadership team, a ministry area that includes deacon ministry.
Lynn saw a need and began developing a training tool called Chosen to Serve.
“I did a deep dive into what the Word said about deacons,” Lynn said. “There’s not really a job description for deacons. We infer a lot from Acts 6. We selected the title Chosen to Serve from that passage.
“This kind of broadens the understanding of the possibilities for service as a deacon. I think it’s an awareness—that’s what this training is for—that this is an office that functions to serve the church, though not to lead the church.”
When Bay Area’s deacons met with Lynn, the resource was in the testing and final development phase and the training manual that is now used had not yet been published. The manual has since been completed and is used by SBTC staff to train deacons in churches across the state.
The application of the training will be specific to churches applying its principles. One way Bay Area Church broadened the service of its deacons was through ministry teams. One team helps with the church’s benevolence ministry, another does fix-it jobs such as repairing fences that blow over during coastal storms, still another focuses on outreach, and there are several others. A recently launched ministry of deacon teams provides a short course in financial management for families.
“We really have challenged them,” Eckeberger said. “‘Figure out where you fit in this equation. Everybody needs to serve on a team, so pick a team that works for you and get after it.’ The challenge came from our time with Jeff, reminding them that we’re called to serve the church, not only to help widows.”
As part of his time with the deacons of Bay Area Church, Lynn also provided each deacon with a copy of Praying for Your Pastor by Billy Taylor. Eckeberger said his fellow deacons still talk about that book and its impact eight months after receiving it. These are also crucial parts of being a deacon—supporting the pastor and being spiritual men.
“Why,” Lynn emphasizes, “if all these seven men did was serve food, why was there such a premium on their spiritual nature, as we see in Acts 6 and 1 Timothy 3? All the other elements flow from the deacons being spiritual. We really do spend a lot of time on this spiritual element.”
One of the challenges Bay Area’s deacons faced prior to gathering for training and prayer was the sense they didn’t know what they were supposed to be doing. It led to a drop off in meeting attendance and general discouragement within that ministry body. Using Chosen to Serve has made a difference. Partly because of the size of their church and partly because of this expanding of their channels of service, the church is adding 15 men so it has 40 active deacons.
“I think it’s really been an encouragement [to our deacons]. ... There’s a different attitude in the meetings.”
“I think it’s really been an encouragement to them,” Eckeberger said. “I mean, there’s a different attitude in the meetings. In fact, I was just going over our agenda this morning because we meet this Sunday, and three of the things on the agenda are service-oriented. And that’s changed from two years ago.”
“I don’t think most deacons are aware of the potency of their ministry,” Lynn added. “I think a training like this broadens their understanding of what they do to stabilize the church, to work as a team. We’ve trained hundreds of deacons already. Can you imagine the extrapolated effect of that across Texas? I mean, I think healthy churches are served by healthy deacons.”
Interested in Chosen to Serve training? Email jlynn@sbtexas.com.
