A safe course here would be to spend all our energies pursuing the multi-faceted question “Can a divorced person be a deacon?” and at the end, choose the safest and most reasonable exit without coming down on a firm position.  But where’s the fun in that?

“Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well” (I Timothy 3:11).

There it is. One simple sentence that has divided and perplexed and frustrated the Lord’s faithful people for eons.

Let’s state our position up front so there can be no doubt. As a general rule, divorce disqualifies a man from service as either a pastor or deacon. However, there are exceptions.

And by “exceptions,” I most definitely do not mean we must convene an investigating committee to search out the reasons for the man’s divorce and establish a) that he was sinned against or b) that he was unsaved at the time and has since come to the Lord. This kind of scrutiny over a person’s ancient history is outside the capability of any preacher on the planet.  All we have to do is look at the Roman Catholic Church’s annulment processes to see a) how complex this can get and b) how hypocritical it all appears to the outside world.  We will grant that their intent is good, but the product is a disaster.

The exception–that is, the divorced men who can be considered as deacons–applies when the divorce occurred decades ago and the man has lived an exemplary and godly life since.

That’s where I am at the moment. Good people will agree and disagree, and I’m fine by that. We each have to come to our own conclusion as to the Lord’s will.

This is an emotional, volatile subject.

Yesterday, I posted this question on Facebook: “Can a divorced person be a deacon?” An hour later, we had over 40 responses. This morning, the number is approaching 150. And, as one might expect, the answers were all over the map.

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Writings about deacons tend to fall into two groups: the mind-numbingly boring and the scripture-exceeding authoritative.

The dull writings are well-intentioned, we will grant. The writers tended to be denominational servants assigned to this strata of church leadership. I imagine that someone above them felt that a book on this subject would be in order, would do some good, and would sell.  They proceeded to write the book which hundreds and thousands of churches bought and then taught to their people for generations. What such books refused to do, however, was to deal with practical questions, issues which bug us to this day. (For some of those questions, keep reading.)

The overly authoritative writings regarding deacons may be reactions against the boring publications, but more likely are responses of the writers to misguided deacon groups they have come up against.  In trying to correct the errors, the imbalance, or the tangents these deacons have veered upon, the writers cancel out all interpretations but their own.

Let’s try to avoid both those ditches and stay in the road here.

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