Congregational Church Government and Baptist Polity — Unit 8: The Deacon Family Ministry Plan

Key Verse

"I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own." (John 10:14, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Define the Deacon Family Ministry Plan and explain the problem it was meant to solve.

2. Name and explain the four marks of the Plan: total coverage, personal ministry, caring service and the pastor's leadership.

3. Describe the five practical questions a church must answer to organize the Plan.

4. Explain the deacon's ongoing ministries of visitation and prayer, and his work of discipleship and evangelism within his families.

5. State and answer the main objections to the Plan, and explain how a small or rural church may adapt it.

Where We Are in the Course

Units 6 and 7 described the deacon's office, his character and his duties. This unit shows one organized way of putting those duties to work among the families of a congregation. It condenses Units 4 to 7 of Dr. Wayne Cook's CTS course "Deacon Family Ministry Plan." That course is the recommended companion to this one, and students who plan to serve as deacons or to train deacons should take it in full. Here we give the main lines and ask what a polity course must ask: how does the Plan fit the offices of the church?

The Problem the Plan Answers

Every pastor knows the sorrow of the back door. A family that once came faithfully misses a Sunday, then two, then a month. No one calls, because in a busy church no one is sure whose place it is to call. By the time anyone notices, the family is gone. The cause is rarely cruelty. It is the slow neglect that comes when no one has been assigned to care.

Scripture knew this danger. God rebuked the shepherds of Israel who fed themselves but did not seek the lost. He said they had not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or brought back what was driven away, "So they were scattered because there was no shepherd" (Ezekiel 34:5). The Lord promised to do what the shepherds had not done: "I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick" (Ezekiel 34:16).

Paul says the body should work the same way: "that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it" (1 Corinthians 12:25-26). In a small church this happens naturally. In a larger church the pastor cannot visit every home, sit with every grieving family or notice every quiet need. Care must be organized, or the members most easily forgotten will be forgotten.

The solution given by Acts 6 was not to work the apostles harder but to multiply the ministry through faithful servants. The Deacon Family Ministry Plan applies that answer. It was developed and widely used among Southern Baptist churches, and promoted through the convention's Sunday School Board, now called Lifeway, as a way to call deacons back from the boardroom to the work of care. It applies Acts 6, Ezekiel 34 and John 10.

What the Plan Is

The Deacon Family Ministry Plan is a way of organizing the care of an entire congregation by assigning every family and individual to a deacon, who is responsible to know them, pray for them, keep in regular contact and minister to them in every time of need, all under the leadership of the pastor.

That definition has four marks.

Total coverage. Every family is assigned and no one is left out. Good intentions cover the people who speak up. The Plan covers everyone, including the shy, the shut-in and the drifting. This is the point of Acts 6, where the Seven were appointed so that not one widow would be overlooked.

Personal ministry. Each family is given not to a committee or a program but to a particular deacon, a man with a name and a face. This is why the numbers are kept small. A man cannot know two hundred households, but he can know a few. Many churches give each deacon about ten to fifteen families, though the number must fit the church.

Caring service. The deacon's task toward his families is care, not governance. He gets acquainted, prays by name, keeps in contact, visits in sickness and sorrow, helps with real needs and rejoices with them in their joys. When the deacons meet, the meeting is chiefly a report on souls. Their care is the towel, not the gavel.

Under the pastor. The Plan extends the pastor's shepherding and does not replace it. Paul told the Ephesian elders to "take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God" (Acts 20:28). The deacon is the pastor's helper. He brings deeper needs to the pastor, so that the pastor can give himself to prayer, the Word and the cases that require him. This guards against deacons taking the church from the pastor, and against the pastor carrying alone a load no man can bear.

How a Church Organizes the Plan

A vision is only a dream until someone does the practical work. Paul's rule applies: "Let all things be done decently and in order" (1 Corinthians 14:40). Order is the servant of love, not its enemy. A church must answer five questions.

1. Who is to be served? The unit is the family or household, so that a husband, wife and children are given whole to one deacon. The household is defined widely enough that the person living alone, the widow, the student away from home and the shut-in each belong to someone. Members who have moved far away are often kept on a separate list for contact by letter or message.

2. How many to each deacon? Divide the number of family units by the number of active deacons. If the number is too high for real ministry, the church has learned that it needs more deacons, men proven in character as in Unit 6. It should not pile more families on the willing. The pattern is old: Jethro advised the overloaded Moses to appoint able men over groups of manageable size (Exodus 18:21-22).

3. By what method? There is no single God-given method. Some churches assign alphabetically, which is simple and fair but ignores where people live. Many assign by neighborhood, which is practical for visiting. Others assign by class or friendship, and many blend methods. A church should begin with a simple, sensible division and adjust it, since lines can always be redrawn.

4. How is it recorded and kept current? The church office keeps a master list of every family and its deacon, and each deacon keeps his own list with names, addresses, contact information, family details and special needs. New members must be assigned promptly, before they drift. Someone, whether a head deacon, the pastor or the office, must be charged with keeping the list current. The one who keeps the list guards the Plan's promise that no one will be forgotten.

5. How are the families introduced? The pastor explains the Plan to the whole church. Each family is told who its deacon is, by letter, card or personal word. Then the deacon makes a first visit or call, not to solve a problem but to make friends. In this way the relationship is alive before the crisis.

Think of a mail carrier: every house on the street has a carrier, so none is skipped, even the one that never asks for mail.

The Deacon's Ongoing Care

An introduction is only a beginning. Care that arrives only in a crisis is too little and too late. The relationship must be kept alive between troubles so that when trouble comes, the deacon is a trusted friend and not a stranger.

Visitation

Visiting runs deep in Scripture. James makes it the heart of pure religion: "to visit orphans and widows in their trouble" (James 1:27). Paul taught "from house to house" (Acts 20:20). The deacon goes because his Lord came to us. To be present in the living room, at the hospital bed or in the funeral home shows the love of Christ in a way that a card cannot.

He visits all his families regularly, with special attention to the sick and shut-in, the bereaved, the absent and drifting, the newcomer and the lonely, and also in times of joy, since he is to "rejoice with those who rejoice" (Romans 12:15). The rhythm varies but must be steady. The ordinary visit, when nothing is wrong, is what makes the urgent visit welcome.

A visit is done well when the deacon comes as a servant and not an inspector. He listens more than he talks. He brings a word of Scripture and a short prayer. He guards confidences and knows when to leave. He avoids prying and gossip. And the visit does not end at the door: he carries the need away to pray over it, to mention it with care to the pastor, and to return with help.

CTS adds a plain word on prudence, which is our own advice and not part of the original course. Where possible, deacons should visit in pairs, or have a spouse or another trusted member accompany them, especially when visiting a person of the opposite sex who is alone. This protects families and the church's name.

Prayer

If visiting is his most visible work, prayer is his most powerful. The deacon prays for each family by name, which requires that he know their burdens. He prays with them in the visit, at the bedside and in the crisis. The apostles named prayer first among their own tasks (Acts 6:4), and Samuel counted it sin to stop praying for the people (1 Samuel 12:23).

Faithfulness

The danger to ongoing care is rarely a bad beginning. It is a slow fading. Paul's word is the cure: "Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart" (Galatians 6:9).

Discipleship and Evangelism within the Families

The deacon is not only a friendly visitor or a kind social worker. His deepest aim is spiritual. He longs to see believers in his families grow as disciples and the lost among them come to Christ. The CTS course draws three marks of a disciple from Matthew 10:

• Commitment. The disciple loves the Lord with all his heart, and his commitment is active, joyful and loyal to the gathered church. The deacon teaches this chiefly by his own example.

• Confession. The disciple owns Christ openly, by his life and by his lips (Matthew 10:32-33).

• Cost. The disciple is willing to bear the cost of following Jesus, which may touch his family, his worldly interests and even his life (Matthew 10:34-39). Honest teaching about the cost is itself an act of love.

The deacon also seeks the lost. "The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). Most people come to Christ through a friend, and the deacon, who has earned trust, is that friend. He prays for the unsaved by name, builds the relationship, speaks of Christ plainly and lovingly, and, like Andrew who brought his brother Simon to Jesus (John 1:41-42), brings them to the Savior. The work is patient; God saves, but He is pleased to use a faithful friend.

Objections and Answers

"The Plan turns care of souls into a mechanical program." The objection is fair, because any plan can become a system without love. The CTS course itself warns that if the heart is forgotten the Plan becomes machinery. But the answer is not to abandon order. The church that has no plan does not therefore care for everyone. It cares for the people it happens to notice. Order is the channel of love.

"Shepherding belongs to the pastor and elders alone, so deacons overstep." Acts 20:28 and 1 Peter 5:1-2 assign the shepherd's oversight to the elders. We agree, and that is why the Plan operates under the pastor. The deacon does not teach doctrine with authority, discipline members or counsel on deep spiritual crises. He gives the practical care and friendship that any member owes another (Galatians 6:2), organized and named, and he refers weightier matters to the pastor.

"Our church is too small, or too spread out, for such a plan." In a church of thirty, the pastor and two deacons can simply divide the families in an afternoon. Where members live far apart, assign by area and use the means that exist: a visit when possible, a message, a call, a note delivered by someone going that way. The principle is that every family has a named person who is responsible. The size of the church changes the method, not the principle.

"The Plan is not commanded in the Bible." True; the exact method arose in modern Baptist life. But the Bible commands the care the method serves. The Plan is a tool, changed when it does not help.

Pastoral Application

You pastor a church of about ninety members in a growing town. Five men serve as deacons, but they mostly meet to discuss the building. Last week you learned that a family stopped attending three months ago and that an elderly woman who lives alone was in the hospital for two days before you heard.

A wise pastor begins slowly. He does not announce a program. First he teaches the deacons from Acts 6 and Ezekiel 34, and he confesses that he too has missed people. Then he proposes a simple trial: the deacons divide the families by neighborhood, each taking his share, perhaps six to eight families, and the church office keeps one master list. He asks each deacon to make a friendly first contact in the next month. He asks them to meet monthly and, at each meeting, to begin by praying through their families by name before any business. He then explains the change to the whole church so that members know who their deacon is. After six months he asks the deacons honestly: which families have been reached, which have been missed, and who needs help? He expects mistakes and adjusts. The aim is not a better list but a church where no one is forgotten.

Summary

The Deacon Family Ministry Plan is a way of organizing the care of the whole congregation by assigning every family to a deacon under the pastor's leadership. It answers the problem of neglect in growing churches by applying Acts 6, Ezekiel 34 and John 10. Its four marks are total coverage, personal ministry, caring service and the pastor's leadership. A church organizes it by deciding who is to be served, how many families each deacon will carry, which method will divide them, how the records will be kept and how the families will be introduced. The deacon cares for his families through steady visiting and prayer, and works to make disciples marked by commitment, confession and cost, and to win the lost. The Plan answers fair objections: it is guarded against mere mechanism by love, it operates under the pastor's oversight, it can be adapted to small and scattered churches, and it is a tool, not a command. The full CTS deacon course, "Deacon Family Ministry Plan," is the recommended companion to this unit.

Further Reading

• Dr. Wayne Cook, "Deacon Family Ministry Plan" (CTS), Units 4 to 7 (the recommended companion course).

• R. B. C. Howell, The Deaconship (1846), in the CTS adaptation, especially the chapters on general duties and cooperation (required textbook for this course).

• Dr. Wayne Cook, "Deacon Family Ministry Plan" (CTS), Unit 3, for the history of the office in Southern Baptist life.

• J. M. Pendleton, Church Manual (1867), a Baptist primary source.

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