What is a Deacon?

Introducing a new series of essays

At some point in the (Lord willing) near-ish future, I will be ordained a deacon in the Anglican branch of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

While much of my life will outwardly remain the same or similar to how it is now, a lot about my life will also change at that point, not least of which is going to be my work uniform. Not when I’m at my day job, of course, but much of the rest of the time: when I serve at my parish church, when I meet with parishioners or inquirers, probably when I go to the grocery store or to get Starbucks like the degenerate I am or pick my kids up from school or any number of other pedestrian activities. At those times, I will often be wearing the traditional black clericals or cassock characteristic of Christian clergy, with a Western-style white collar. I’ll look something like this:

Me in a cassock with my daughters on a Sunday morning after service.

It will be hard to miss.

And, if my intuition isn’t completely off, this visibility is going to come with many a “Hi, Father” and “are you a Catholic priest?” at which point I will likely have to let them down softly with an elevator-pitch-length explanation that 1) I am not Roman Catholic, I’m this other kind of Christian you’ve probably never heard of, and 2) I am not a priest, I’m this other kind of cleric you’ve probably never heard of. It’s going to be great.

Add to this that I am discerning God calling me to a long diaconate—let’s say a decade (maybe?) versus the usual eighteen to twenty-four months of transition from ordination as a deacon to being priested—and I can safely assume this is going to be a frequent occurrence over the ensuing years. The “Actually, I’m Anglican” part I’ve already got handled, more or less. But the deacon bit? Not so much. So, I figure it’s time for me to get my ducks in a row and begin the work of crafting my response to the second of that line of inquiry.

Just what is a deacon?

The series of essays that this dispatch introduces will seek to flesh out an answer to that question. Like a sculptor, I’m going to throw big hunks of clay and marble on the table, stare at it for a while, and then chisel and hammer and shape until I have something worth looking at. Many words are going to be spent in the effort. Many words. In the end, many of them will fall to the floor having been necessary to the creative process but unnecessary to the final product. That’s fine. And I’m sure that after actually being a deacon for some time, with a more fully developed sense of what the heck I’m doing and just what I have been ontologically changed into, I will look back on these essays and think, “That was cute.”

Thankfully, I am not required to embark on this journey alone and my starting point isn’t myself. I don’t have to make this up. Not only do I have the Holy Spirit of God and His Holy Scriptures, but I have His Holy Church: two millennia of Saints, Doctors, and Deacons who have left their examples of, ruminations on, and instructions for diaconal ministry. Some of these individuals are currently alive and I’ll be working through their texts. Many of them have reposed in the Lord and I will embrace them with awe and thanks in the resurrection. All of them are praying with and for me. Together with God, they will be my help and guides.

To be frank, this exercise is more for me than it is for anyone that subscribes to this newsletter. It would be presumptuous of me to think I could teach anyone about that which I have only the beginning of an idea. Anyone that receives these essays in their inbox or stumbles across them by some other means will witness the ferping and sputtering of a would-be apprentice studying the tools without having yet grasped them or put them to the work. In saying this, I hope to properly set expectations quite low.

Allow me to set them lower still. Among my many regular responsibilities, I am presently in seminary and so won’t have a consistent amount of time for study and writing. Consequently, the publishing schedule will be sporadic at best. This is something like a passion project that is going to be worked on when time allows which means, like all passion projects, I’m going to manipulate the time boundaries of other responsibilities when possible to focus a bit more on what I actually want to be doing.

Where to begin? Since I am an Anglican, I will take “The Form and Manner of Making Deacons” from the American 1928 Book of Common Prayer as my point of departure and we shall see where it leads from there.

— Nate