Over the past couple of months we have been thinking through how to develop some simple organizational structures within our network which lend themselves to our specific ecclesiology (a community of local believers, founded and motivated by the gospel, sent on mission for Gods glory). Obviously we think that missional communities are the driving engine for this ecclesiological aim. The following is a brief illustration of what we have come to. Ask me questions for clarification if you like.
The guiding principle behind almost everything we do is Gospel, community, and mission in the context of missional communities. Missional Communities are small groups of believers who have covenanted to be the church together. it is here that we see the actual stuff of church happening. Everything from mission, to repentance, to partying is done with your Missional Community. They are families of christians, living lives as missionaries, for the glory of God in the gospel. And as such, every problem, need, or issue is considered in the light of those things and filtered through that sieve. For example; mercy ministries are handled at the MC level by asking people who need aid to become part of a MC so they can be helped and aided financially by that body of believers as a family member, not as a beneficiary. Counseling is handled at an MC level by funneling all people who need it into a missional community so their issues and sin are dealt with in the context of a family who can speak the gospel into their lives, using professional counseling as a sort of last resort.
That being said, the deacon role in a church is classically defined by them getting things done which are conducive to the daily running of the church (i.e. production, org, leadership, gathering set up, etc.). However, if we see the MC as the fundamental building block of how we live life as Gods people, then we are forced ideologically to filter the role of deacon through a missional community lense. That is to say, how do deacons fit into the picture if we believe that the church is place where we serve one another as an MC? When we did this, we started to view the role of deacon in two senses. 1. As a conduit of service and 2. As a leader of servants. I willl break down those two distinctions.
1. A Conduit of Service: As we began to see how this would work, we realized that while Missional Communities could serve in the day to day of church functioning, there needed to be people who could organize and facilitate these day to day tasks. In a sense, we needed people who could act as administrative hubs to train, organize and locate specific areas of service that the community needs. This is where the role of deacon finds its sweet spot for us. Our deacons in training (we have none who are declared yet, but I am currently training them and allowing them to be the role of deacon so we can declare them in good conscience) write and create protocol for the missional community leaders who in turn train and implement the missional communities to do the job which is needed. They also organize all of the systems which allow the MC's to do there job (i.e. sign up sheets, MC rotations, etc). In this way, they operate as hubs for administration for the entire community, a central node through which all serving opportunities flow.
2. As a Leader of Servants: As the deacons develop and determine what plan of action they want to employ in order to create a act of service, they instantly become leaders. Our hope is not to simply make our Deacons another cog in the machine, but to rather create and replicate missional leaders who can implement tasks. In this way, we let them lead, fail, and succeed and see it as great training opportunity.
This system is very conducive to a fast moving church planting community as it is adaptable. It establishes a simple organizational principle which can be applied to a multiplicity of situations and can be applied to a brand new community of believers (i.e. a new church plant). In our context, we are a network of three church plants. We have a central admin (me) and book keeper. The central admin raises up, trains and establishes the deacons in each of the church plants. As we look forward to planting more churches in san diego, we look forward to applying this administrative model to all them. Attached is a diagram which portrays this idea.
