Church Staff Belong in Two Buckets: Elder-Qualified or Deacon-Qualified

I appreciate a lot of stuff from 9 Marks, but this take is simply wrong.

Dr. Leeman is correct on there being two offices and is correct that if you call someone the "Pastor of X" (Youth, Outreach, etc.) that they should be individuals who fit the qualifications of being a Pastor, but the jump from there to the church secretary must be qualified to be a deacon is an incredible leap away from Biblical instruction and into unBiblical and unrealistic expectations.

Surely no one can find a verse (or even a Biblical principle properly applied) that indicates that a church receptionist, a "communications director" or a building manager must be eligible for deacon. Since the Biblical qualification for deacon includes "the husband of one wife", this would eliminate all female church secretaries. Further, I am not sure how you can eliminate a man who is great with building maintenance from serving as your building manager because he has had a divorce in his past. It would seem that Jonathon is either advocating lessening the Biblical qualifications for deacon or lives in a world where there are so many men in his church who are qualified to be deacon that they are just sitting around waiting for a job to do.

One problem of this is that it confuses offices in the church with roles in the church. There are two offices, but there are many roles. While the early church did not have the type of structure that many churches have today. We do see people involved in various ways of service who were not necessary deacons. For example, there were people who wrote Paul's letters (kind of sounds like something a secretary would do today) and there were people who served the widows (before the deacons started, there was a daily ministration of food for the widows - of course, it did not work perfectly and thus the need for the deacons).

While it is true that you don't want your secretary to be "double-tongued", I don't believe you have to impose the qualifications of deaconship upon a person to clarify that this is necessary for that role. Ultimately all believers are given instruction and warning about the tongue and told to "speak the truth in love" and not to be back-biters, etc., indicating that honest speech is not just something for deacons, but for all believers.

Most normal churches (the average church in America is under 100 people) do not have multiple deacon-eligible men willing and able to give up their job by which they provide for their family to take on a role as a church receptionist. Expecting all those who serve to be thus qualified creates an unnecessary (and unBiblical) barrier on service in the church.

It sort of relates to the old ‘regulative principle’ debate. Do we look at passages that tell this or that is required in church life and conclude that all else is forbidden? Well, churches that hold to ‘regulative principle,’ usually only apply it to worship, but Leeman’s argument here seems to sort of extend it to all manner of serving in the local church.

But does it fit the spirit of 1 Cor 12:4ff? There is really no clear line in the NT between “staff and non staff volunteers.” We have instruction to compensate elders for their work in the Word. If we’re going to go regulative with that, should there simply be no other ‘staff’?

It seems best not to read restrictions and requirements into Scripture if they aren’t there—and retain flexibility on these matters.