What is a Deacon?

The Methodist Church has two orders of ministry:  presbyteral and diaconal. The two orders are equal in status yet with certain differences in focus, style and character.

In the Methodist Church, deacons are ordained:

  • to assist God’s people in worship and prayer
  • to hold before them the needs and concerns of the world
  • to minister Christ’s love and compassion
  • to visit and support the sick and the suffering
  • to seek out the lost and the lonely
  • to help those served to offer their lives to God.

Service
Taking as their model the way that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, deacons help people to understand the nature of God’s love and healing through acts of loving kindness. They encourage people to realise that by serving others in His name they also encounter and are served by God.

Free from responsibility for pastoral charge of churches, deacons are able  to work at grassroots, alongside people within and beyond the Church community and to offer a prophetic voice from the margins.

Witness
Deacons seek to connect faith with life in today’s world in such a way that people are encouraged to articulate their experience and deal with the practical problems they encounter. They draw attention to and help interpret God’s activity in the world and daily life.

There is a distinctive quality to the ministry of witness when it is not primarily linked to formal preaching, but maintains a vital link to the experience of the people who are being served.

Taken from the Methodist Diaconal Order Website