December 1, 2025 • 55 mins
In this episode, David Nakhla welcomes Pastor Mark Winder of Wolf River OPC in Collierville, TN, for a compelling conversation about the vital role of deacons in the life of the church.
It's not uncommon for church plants to go several years without deacons, often due to the challenges of identifying, training, and overseeing qualified men during the early stages of organization. Pastor Mark shares how installing deacons brought transformative change to his congregation—and why this often-overlooked office is essential to a healthy church.
Reflecting on the biblical call to service, Pastor Mark reminds us: “The church is not a theology club. We are a church that serves.”
We hope you find this to be an encouraging and insightful discussion on the ministry of mercy, and discover why the work of deacons is central to the mission and fellowship of the church.
Referenced in this episode:
Training Videos (from the NDS IV 2022 National Diaconal Summit)
"Diaconal Leadership Today" Bill Shishko
“The Deacon and his Congregation” Craig Troxel
"Mercy Ministry in a Social Justice World" Eric Watkins
"Ministry to the Spiritually Immature" Seth Long
"Doing Business as Deacons” by Chris Sudlow
Sample Deacon Meeting Agenda (Wolf River OPC)
Diaconal Training Syllabus (Wolf River OPC)
Scripture
· Ephesians 4:7, 11-13, 16
· Hebrews 6:10
· Acts 2:42
· Acts 6:1-6
· Acts 8:5-8
· I Peter 4:10
· Hebrews 10:24
You can find all of our episodes at thereformeddeacon.org. Make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast player, so you don't miss an episode. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for giveaways and more information. Find other resources on OPCCDM.org. Make sure to send us some feedback on your podcast player or ask a diaconal question by going to OPCCDM.org.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
David Nakhla (00:00):
Since launching The Reformed Deacon podcast four
years ago, one of our favoritethings has been hearing from
you, our listeners, about howthe podcast has encouraged and
helped you.
Here are a couple of commentsfrom our listeners.
Thank you for providing arealistic and encouraging plan
for those of us who want to dosomething but haven't known
where to start.
What a wonderful, helpful, andinformative podcast.
(00:20):
And here's another one.
Thank you for your podcast.
It has been a valuable resourcefor training materials,
ministry ideas, and generalencouragement.
Friends, we'd love to hear fromyou too.
Tell us how the podcast or aspecific episode has helped or
encouraged you, or share a topicyou think we should cover next.
If you'll email us your storyor suggestion to mail M-A-I-L at
(00:43):
thereformdeacon.org.
We're going to send you areformed deacon teacher, the
nicest teacher you'll own.
And we're excited to keepproducing episodes that help you
grow as a deacon and serve as afaithful testimony to the Lord
in the season ahead.
Mark Winder (01:01):
The congregation, in some sense, I think, has come
alive.
If you will, people know who togo to to get things done.
David Nakhla (01:08):
Welcome to the Reformed Deacon, a casual
conversation with topicsspecifically designed to help
local Reform Deacons.
There are nearly a thousanddeacons in the OPC alone.
So let's take this opportunityto learn from and encourage one
another.
We're so glad you could joinus.
Let's jump into our nextepisode.
Hi, my name is David Knockla.
(01:30):
I'm the administrator of theOPC Committee on Diaconal
Ministries.
And today we have the privilegeof having Mark Winder join us.
Mark is the pastor of WolfRiver OPC in Collierville,
Tennessee.
This is a congregation that wasplanted a number of years ago,
but since has particularized.
(01:50):
And Mark also hosts a podcastcalled Proclaiming Christ, which
is one of the Reform Forum'ssuite of podcasts.
Mark is a member of the OPC'sDenominational Committee on Home
Missions and Church Extension.
He has also served on hisPresbytery's Home Missions
Committee for nearly 20 years.
So Mark has a lot ofconnections with church planting
(02:13):
and church plants.
Mark, you and I recentlyconnected at a home missions
conference for church plants.
In our casual conversationaround the fire pit, I remember
you excitingly telling me thatafter 14 years your church had
finally installed your first twodeacons.
You said something like, Thishas revolutionized our church.
(02:36):
You went on to express yourregret and not pursuing deacons
sooner.
And you told me that you nowencourage pastors, get your
deacons sooner rather thanlater.
So we need to really finishthat conversation.
And even at that moment, that Iwas like, okay, we got to have
you on the podcast.
We got to talk about this more.
Very intrigued to hear moreabout what you have to say.
(02:58):
And so thank you for joining ustoday, Mark.
Mark Winder (03:01):
Thank you for having me.
It was a good conversation, andI'm happy that we might be able
to continue it today.
Super.
David Nakhla (03:08):
Before I go further, let me uh give a little
background on Mark.
He and his wife, Michelle, havebeen married for 36 years.
They have three adult children.
He worked for a number of yearsin the corporate world before
pursuing the ministry in hisearly 30s, and he was ordained
as an OPC minister in 2003.
So 22 years ago.
(03:28):
First serving Louisiana, thenAlabama.
Yep.
Before the Lord led him tobegin the work of planting Wolf
River OPC in Tennessee in 2010.
That's now 15 years ago.
Mark Winder (03:41):
Hard to believe.
David Nakhla (03:43):
Yeah.
So, Mark, you started thischurch plant in 2010, of course,
without deacons.
I mean, as most church plantsbegin, it's not uncommon.
And then you went for a numberof years without deacons.
And maybe you could talk aboutthat and talk about the
challenge to establish officersin a church plant and maybe even
(04:03):
the challenge of deacons.
Let's begin there.
Mark Winder (04:07):
Sure.
You know, our Book of ChurchOrder requires that a group of
believers that are meeting forworship regularly comes under
the jurisdiction of a session orof a presbytery.
So it doesn't require deaconsbecause the service of deacons,
as the book says elsewhere, isdistinct from that of rule in
(04:28):
the church.
So technically, you know, youhave to have elders, you have to
have an overseeing session.
Every mission work isimmediately given an overseeing
session, but it's not anabsolute requirement that you
have deacons.
And that overseeing session,along with the church planter,
when he arrives, should early onbe seeking to identify, you
(04:51):
know, qualified individuals inthe congregation who can be
trained to serve as elders anddeacons when the church
organizes.
And sometimes that takes yearsand years to develop, but you're
looking for those who have thegifts of ordained offices.
And sometimes mission workshave someone or maybe a few
(05:11):
people who have been previouslyordained as an elder or a
deacon, or and without beingpresumptuous, you know, quite
frequently they can go on and beinstalled as elders and deacons
when the church organizes.
But sometimes there are nopreviously ordained elders or
deacons.
And there are no people whoimmediately stand out as office
(05:34):
bears.
You might have new converts,you might have people who are
new to the Reformed faith, orpeople that are immature in
their faith, perhaps immature intheir personal growth, young
families that are perhaps verybusy and for whom it takes
perhaps some time for them tograsp the priority of church
(05:54):
work.
And you know, each church plantis unique.
Some of them start off withlarge groups of families from a
mother congregation that mightbe as well sending elders and
deacons along, which iswonderful when we can do that.
And that congregation, thatmission may mature quite
quickly.
And others, though, they startfrom scratch and sometimes
(06:18):
starting with people whosometimes have a particular idea
of what they are looking for ina church.
And they're going to establishthat here in that mission.
And sometimes things need someundoing before you start doing
some things.
And in the case of Wolf River,we were growing, and then a
number of families moved away.
(06:38):
And about four years into it,we essentially had to start
over.
And then it took some time todevelop those gifts and folks to
develop that desire because theoffices of ruling elder and
deacon are offices of sacrifice.
You're volunteering your timeand your talents and your
(06:59):
energies to engage in the workof the church in depth way.
You know, elders and deaconsfrequently have to take time off
work to go to Presbytery attimes.
You need to take vacation daysto do that.
When we were talking at thechurch planters conference up in
Wisconsin, I was there withanother member of the Home
(07:19):
Missions Committee just to be apart of that experience and to
see what they're doing there inthat church planters conference
and hopefully be anencouragement to some of the
young church planters who arethere.
And, you know, the other guywith me who is part of the
committee is a ruling elder.
He took a week off of work,vacation week, to spend his
vacation up there and encouragethose church planters.
(07:43):
And so that's a sacrifice.
And for young familiesparticularly, that can be a
difficult sacrifice.
So I think that can play intowhy it's a challenge to
establish those officers in achurch plant when some are
fairly new to the reform faith.
But the session needs to beintentional about developing
(08:04):
that.
David Nakhla (08:05):
Great.
Thank you.
Did you at some point realizeyour church maybe had gone
beyond the what's the normalsituation for a church plant
with regards to your lack ofdeacons?
And if so, you know, what madeyou realize that?
What brought you to the pointof ordaining them?
Mark Winder (08:21):
Yeah, that's a great question.
And if I could maybe start by atext that had kind of been on
my mind for a number of years,and really it's one of my
favorite verses on the task of aminister.
And I'm sure, you know, you'vetouched on this and as you've
spoken with deacons and withchurches, and that's Ephesians
4.12.
(08:41):
Talks about the fact that God'sgiving presence to his church,
he's giving gifts to his church,and he gave the apostles and
the prophets, and they they'velaid the groundwork for the
church.
And as the task of the churchcontinues, he continues to give
gifts to the church, right?
And their elders andevangelists and shepherds and
teachers.
And why does he do that?
Well, he does that, he'sEphesians 4.12, to equip the
(09:05):
saints for the work of ministryto the building up of the body
of Christ.
So foundational to the work ofevery church is equipping the
saints for the work of ministry.
And that work of ministry isdiaconius.
It's the word service.
So it's it's a very commonword, and it functions in a
(09:25):
variety of ways in the NewTestament.
The AIV puts it ministry, butthe NIV, the New American
Standard, I think, translate itcorrectly as the work of
service.
And as you probably know, somefollow the King James and they
put a comma after the wordsaints, so that the shepherds
and teachers are supposed toperfect the saints and then do
the work of ministry.
And that's a whole differentdiscussion that goes beyond the
(09:47):
question you just asked me.
But I think there are some verygood exegetical reasons why
that comma shouldn't be there,as it isn't in most
translations.
They eliminate that comma.
And I think the task of servingis incumbent on all believers.
And you get a sense of that inother texts, right?
There's a bunch of other textsthat address that.
(10:08):
Hebrews 6.10, where the writersays, God won't overlook your
work and the love that you showfor his name in serving the
saints, as you still do, theword there, the verb form,
diacneo.
So I sometimes refer to thecommunion of saints as the
fourth means of grace.
And I think I say that probablyquite frequently to our
(10:29):
congregation.
It's a fourth means of grace.
In Acts 242, they devotedthemselves to the apostles'
teaching and the fellowship, thekoinonia to the breaking of
bread and prayers.
And vital communion isn't justa fraternal feeling, right?
Vital communion is a covenantreality.
(10:49):
So we're united to Christ whocovenant with us, and I covenant
with you, and I work for yourspiritual welfare.
And we speak of God's steadfastlove, his covenant loyalty, his
covenant faithfulness.
And the people of God are to bedevoted to a covenant loyalty
to his people.
So in each church that Iplanted, it became clearer to me
(11:12):
that worship is vital, ofcourse, it's essential to the
church, right?
And fellowship vital.
Activities, church picnics,outings, so important to a
church.
But that kind of supernaturalfellowship and fraternity that
builds the church, that bindsthe church together is the
(11:35):
fellowship of service.
And again, Ephesians 4.
We grow up into Christ, thehead, from whom the whole body
joined and held together byevery joint with which it's
equipped, each part workingproperly makes the body grow.
So it builds itself up in love.
So to get back to yourquestion, because that was a uh
(11:57):
there's a concept that'sfascinated me over the years to
watch that developing in thechurch.
I became a little concernedabout, okay, in our mission
work, where is the mechanismthat provides for this kind of
vital communion?
And he'd seen it in otherchurches that uh I'd planted
church where I had traineddeacons in a previous church
(12:21):
that I was church planter in.
And, you know, we had sent agroup down during Hurricane
Katrina for OPC disasterresponse and the kind of
communion that came about as aresult of that, that serving
together.
I don't know if you rememberthe name Gary Smalley.
He was a Christian counselorsome years back.
But he tells a story of, youknow, if you, and I'm sure he
(12:45):
said this a lot better than I'mabout to say it, but he said, if
you want your family to becomeclose, really close, he said, go
camping.
And you're thinking, camping?
Oh, that's terrible.
That's like the worst thing youcan do for a family is to make
them go camping.
And he said, you know, butthat's the point, is because
that's when disaster strikes.
You know, it's inevitable thatit's going to rain and your tarp
(13:08):
is going to fall and yourtent's going to flood and your
air mattress is going to deflateand it's just going to be
awful.
And what do you do though?
You pull together.
And what do you talk about fiveyears later?
You're talking about thatcamping trip.
You know, you hardly mentionedDisney World.
No, you're talking about thecamping trip that you went on
and the work that you didtogether to pull together.
And there's a sense in whichthat's what deacons do, and
(13:30):
that's what service does.
And I could try to provide forthat to the best of my ability
in our church, even after itorganized.
We organized initially withoutdeacons.
We have some families in ourchurch who are wonderfully
hospitable, wonderful group ofladies.
They're always active, lookingfor each other's needs.
(13:51):
There's a lot of good organicactivity.
But where's the glue that holdsthat together?
That makes sure that everybodyis being involved, that this
kind of fellowship toucheseveryone in the church.
It's the deacons.
And we're rolling along, doingokay.
But as the church grows and aswe realize that this kind of
(14:14):
vital fellowship is a littlediscombobulated, we need
deacons.
We need those whose name isservice.
And that's our Book of ChurchOrder puts it, right?
Those who minister in mercy andservice, they are called
deacons.
And to them, specifically, thatministry of service belongs.
And so we said, we needdeacons.
We need those who can bringthis together and bring it to
(14:38):
its full potential.
David Nakhla (14:39):
It's beautiful, Mark.
I don't think I've ever heardthat articulated in that way.
That's wow.
I'd love to see that flushedout even more.
That's that's really great.
Mark Winder (14:48):
It's a great passage of scripture.
I explored it in depth with ourcongregation that Ephesians
4.12, the implications of whatit means to equip saints for the
work of Deakoneo, for the workof deaconing, the work of
serving.
And then God gives the officesto facilitate that work as
unfolds, of course, as you know,in the book of Acts.
David Nakhla (15:11):
It's one of the differences from the church
being a country club.
Country club, you go there tobe served, everything's set out
for you.
And it's yeah, the sense ofsacrificially serving one
another is really in a lot ofways makes the church the
church.
Mark Winder (15:25):
Yeah, and we got to that point here.
We are not a theology club,right?
The church is not a theologyclub that gets together every
Sunday morning and you know, wewant a deep, you know, rich
sermon, and you know, we want tostudy systematic theology and
mercy ministry.
What what's that?
No, that the church isn't atheology club.
We are a church that serves anddeacons facilitate that.
(15:47):
So that's where we said, no,that's a need that it comes to
for us.
David Nakhla (15:52):
Do you think that was a development in your
thinking?
Mark Winder (15:54):
Well, it certainly was.
Again, the church that Ipreviously planted, we had
trained some deacons, and thenthe way that they served, they
served so well.
One of them in that church isstill a deacon, still very
active, uh goes on mission tripsand things of that nature.
And then in our church, again,people were very active in
(16:14):
serving and very anxious toserve, but so it was maybe a
gradual realization that thishas to be intentional.
It can't just be sort of adhoc.
We need to be deliberate aboutthis.
And my thinking through thatEphesians passage as well as
other passages, and then seeingas well people who did serve in
our congregation, seeing thedifference that they made.
(16:35):
We had a couple of men in thecongregation who went up to
North Carolina a couple of yearsago during that initial
hurricane hit, and they wentwith a group from another church
and came back and they uhshared in Sunday school about
you know what they did and youknow, showed the slides and
things of that nature.
And again, a development in mythinking, yeah, that's a good
(16:57):
way to put it, that we need tomake this something intentional.
David Nakhla (17:02):
So on a previous podcast, we had John Shaw on
there, the previous generalsecretary of home missions, and
similarly talking about theserious need for deacons,
especially in a church plant,especially with the diaconal
cases that can arise in a churchplant, as you're out there
sowing the seed, bringing in thelost, lots of baggage that
(17:23):
comes in with that, and justsignificant diagonal situations
that can arise in church plants.
That's something I've thought abit about in recent years as
well, is the higher percentageof probably serious diaconal
situations in our church plants,more than full-grown
established congregations.
And he talked about it, evenhis own personal experience as a
(17:44):
church planner at Mission OPCin the Twin Cities.
I was wondering if you couldshare with us how your session
went about handling thepractical and diaconal needs
during those years.
What did that look like?
Did you have to establishcreative ways to wait on tables
without letting it hinder theministry of the word and prayer?
Mark Winder (18:03):
Yeah, well, even though we didn't have deacons,
you know, again, we did havepeople who love to serve, and
people are very active and theycare for one another.
And so if you ask somebody todo something, you would very
rarely get a no, I can't.
In our situation, because of avariety of circumstances, we
were in mission work for 10years, which is unusually long.
(18:24):
And there were, you know, anumber of circumstances that led
to that.
But during that time, with aborrowed session from other
states and even from anotherpresbytery, you know, the
diaconal work, to be frank, itfell on me.
And I can't say that I was veryeffective.
But, you know, I at least Ithink I'm fairly good at
delegation, of being able tohand out different tasks and
(18:47):
trying to organize those tasks.
And when you have people whoenjoy serving, it's a lot
easier.
So I had a section in ourbulletin called How Can I Serve?
Just a little title, How Can IServe?
And then underneath a list ofthings.
As new needs came up, I wouldadd those needs to the list and
(19:09):
people would volunteer forthose.
And eventually the listdisappeared.
And service took on a life ofits own.
You know, no sooner does astorm blow up and people lose
electricity for three days whenthere are four or five
generators being offered on achat group.
(19:29):
You know, is everybody okay?
Who needs help?
And the church would cometogether and do that.
And when people catch thesacrifice of service, the
satisfaction of that sacrificeof service, the joy of it, then
it's contagious.
And being able to see progressbeing made, there's a saying
that I hear frequently from agroup that I'm part of, and the
(19:51):
director quite frequently saysthat hard work is fun when
progress is evident.
And you could see that in thechurch.
But I'd say a lot of thingswould fall between the cracks.
I can't say that I wasn't themost effective in being able to
organize those things, but wealways prioritized needs in the
(20:13):
congregation, and those needs Ithink were met.
We had family, particularly acouple families at times that
fell in serious financial need.
And we were able to be therefor them.
We were able to provide, wewere able to help pay bills so
they didn't lose their car orlose their house.
The head of the home was in thehospital for a week due to an
(20:34):
accident, and people were thereevery day visiting.
So it got done, but it wassometimes not in the most
organized fashion.
And I can't say that outsidethe church we had any sort of
effective diaconal ministry.
David Nakhla (20:48):
So the situation you just described is oftentimes
what we do think of as some ofthe primary work of the deacons
is seeking to address thosesituations of significant acute
need.
Our form of government, in thechapter on deacons, chapter
chapter nine, I believe it is,it says, in a church in which
there are no deacons, the dutiesof the office shall devolve
(21:10):
upon the session.
And that word devolve, I thinkthat's the only time it appears
in our book of church order.
We talked about that at thefire pit.
What did you say?
Mark Winder (21:20):
I sometimes joke that when we had no deacons, the
duties of their officedissolved upon the session.
I mean, we have two of the bestelders in the world in our
church.
We really do.
One of them works full-time andmore.
The other is retired, and hedevotes himself to the church in
so many ways.
(21:40):
They work very hard and we takeour time at session meetings,
but I still think things fellthrough the cracks.
And not necessarily, again, incare for the saints.
We always tried to be on top ofthat.
And again, we have a wonderfulladies group.
They're in constant contactwith each other.
We've had a lot of babies bornover the past few years.
So I think there's a perpetualmeal train going in our church.
(22:04):
And at one point, I don't knowif they still do this, but you
know, they would just have mealsin the freezer at the church
because it's everybody alwaysneeded one.
But some things, again, I thinkstill fell through the cracks,
developing policies, programs topromote fellowship in the
church.
We're in a rented facility andit has perpetual problems.
And we needed a DAC in itbecause, yeah, some of those
(22:28):
things I think were justdissolving on the session.
David Nakhla (22:32):
I mean, it's kind of an Act Six thing, isn't it?
The division of labor, becauseit's hard to do both well.
And so dividing the labor andhaving both offices focus
separately on the differentareas or one will suffer.
That's I don't think it's a newproblem.
No, no.
Mark Winder (22:50):
When we were training the deacons, they've
been ordained now for one year,I think last month.
It was one their one-yearanniversary.
And as we were going throughtraining, we were going through
the gospel of Luke.
And so I thought, well, what amI going to do next?
And I thought, well, let's doLuke part two.
So we went on to the gospel orthe book of Acts, and you know,
(23:13):
we get through that early churchstage, and you think about the
fact that the church is growingby thousands upon thousands.
And you have 12 disciples who,you know, they're probably being
called for some home visitsbecause there's a lot of broken
homes and a lot of spouses whoaren't thrilled that their
spouse just became a convert tothis weird religion.
(23:35):
And you know, how are theseguys supposed to handle all of
this?
And then, of course, you get toActs 6 and you have the
foundation of what becomes thedeaconate.
So we've really enjoyedspending some time because the
deacons have been freshlyordained, you know, going into
what are these guys doing?
And of course, the example thatyou have in somebody like
Philip, you know, when you getto chapter eight, the impact
(23:58):
that they have that's justincalculable.
So yeah, we we enjoyed watchingthat develop as well as we were
going through the book of Acts.
David Nakhla (24:07):
So eventually the Lord provided deacons for your
church.
Can you talk about, again,putting yourself in the minds of
other church planters?
What are the events that led tothat?
And then how have would you saythey revolutionized the life of
the congregation?
And maybe if you have somespecific stories, that'd be fun
to be.
Mark Winder (24:25):
Sure, yeah.
At the time we organized, whichwas five years ago, I don't
think there were deaconcandidates ready to be trained
formally.
There were very young families,young children, just
establishing their careers,their homes.
You know, if you get out one ofthose stress point charts, you
know, they would probably allscore really high at stress
(24:46):
points at that point in theirlife.
But a couple of years go by andthey're a little more settled
now in their careers, time opensup for them a little bit more.
But most importantly, I think,in terms of events leading up to
that moment, being able toidentify in the congregation
people who are alreadydeaconing, people who are
(25:08):
already serving in thatcapacity.
I mean, not formally, ofcourse, but it came naturally.
And you could see these areservants.
So in a way, they begin toidentify themselves.
You know, 1 Peter 4, right, aseach has received a gift, use it
to serve one another.
And you begin to see people inthe congregation who are doing
(25:29):
that, or after the manner ofHebrews 10, right, stirring up
to love one another and stirringup others to good works.
And as the church grew, wecould see the ones who are
engaged in that.
And as the needs become moreacute as the church grows and as
the opportunities become moreplentiful.
And the session said, you know,now's the time.
(25:51):
This has grown beyond us.
I know the church isn't abusiness in a corporate sense,
but it's kind of a somebody hasa small business and you get to
the point where you say, youknow, I can handle this myself,
I can handle this myself.
And eventually you get to thepoint you say, I can't handle
this myself and still do a goodjob.
I need to hire somebody.
I need help.
And that's the point that wegot to.
(26:12):
So we took nominations, andthere were 11 nominations, uh,
which was very encouraging.
And we went through deacontraining.
It took about six months.
And I'd trained deaconspreviously in a church that I
planted before, but I kind ofreinvented the training program
because in that time, so thatwas probably 20 years ago or so,
(26:35):
maybe around there.
Since then, the resources that,and I'm sure your your
listeners are pointed to thisall the time, right?
OPCCDM.org, the resources thatare on the diaconal website are
just phenomenal.
And we were able to utilize alot of that, a lot of the videos
that are on there, readingresources, books that are
(26:58):
listed.
Those things didn't exist asfar as I can remember 20 years
ago.
And you know, I trained deaconsbefore.
So we totally revamped thedeacon training program.
And in the end, there were twooutstanding men who were
ordained as deacons.
They're very busy men, but theygave up their time.
(27:18):
And as I've often told ourdeacons, and I still tell them
because I meet, you know, asoften as I can when the deacons
meet, I meet with them.
You don't have to doeverything.
You just have to make sureeverything gets done.
So teaching them, encouragingthem, identify servants, uh,
develop gifts in other people,you know, anticipate, develop
(27:43):
the next deacons who will comeand join you.
Delegation is a good word.
Use it, do it.
And then having them installedso that I think your next
question is how they changed thelife of the congregation.
I don't think it's anoverstatement when I said it
revolutionized the life of ourcongregation.
The congregation, in somesense, I think, has come alive,
(28:03):
if you will.
People know who to go to to getthings done.
You know, as a minister withoutdeacons, and before when we
were mission work for a decade,you know, people might come up
to me after the service and say,Pastor, we need this.
You know, if I don't write thatdown immediately, off it goes.
I'm not going to remember that.
But now they know who to go toto get things done.
And because we're in a borrowedfacility, they take care of all
(28:26):
the facility needs, thecleaning schedule, setting up
chairs, interfacing with thelandlord, which is quite a job,
checking into and securinginsurance.
The last Sunday of every month,they give a deacon's update to
the congregation.
They call it the Deacon'sDispatch.
They came up with that name.
I couldn't figure out what tocall it.
Originally I called it Deacon'sMinute, and I didn't think that
(28:48):
sounded very important.
So I said, let's call itsomething else.
And they came up with Deacon'sDispatch during the announcement
time.
They update the congregation onpolicies and on needs.
And sometimes, just to befrank, I sit in amazement
listening to the things thatthey're doing, many of which I
don't even know about.
They're doing them and then howwell organized they are.
(29:10):
And I'm thinking to myself,this is way beyond anything that
I had dreamed.
These guys, it took on a lifeof its own.
And many, they've just taken iton.
So I truly spend my Sundaymorning in prayer and
preparation because I knoweverything will be ready.
I can devote myself to theministry of the word and to
prayer.
(29:31):
So some of the specific thingsabout the way they've impacted
our church, there's severalthings I think they've done in
identifying needs and puttingprograms in place where I think
the session, as the session, weweren't fully aware that there
might be needs that were there.
I'll give you just a fewexamples.
They developed a nursery policyfor a nursery.
And again, being in a borrowedfacility, resources are kind of
(29:53):
limited and space that we canuse.
So creating a designated spacefor nursing moms, providing
activities.
Activities and supervision forthe kids, for children after the
service.
We have dozens of children.
And what are they going to do?
We don't have a playground.
We're in this, again, borrowedspace.
So they've arranged for gamesin the back parking lot or
(30:13):
activities in the fellowshiphall.
Well.
They created a security policydesignating, you know,
individuals who can be a part ofthat, making sure the doors are
locked after the service startsthat the back door is locked.
They created a background checkpolicy for those who work
directly with children.
We're desperately looking for anew meeting place.
And so they're organizing aspreadsheet of contacts for a
(30:36):
building search.
They're organizing a rotationof families that can practice
hospitality and provide aninvitation, you know, for
visitors.
One gentleman in ourcongregation, very much loved
guy, lost his wife a year ago tocancer.
And, you know, this year, thedeacons, without any suggestion
(30:57):
from us, they took that on andwanted to make sure that
somebody visited him on theanniversary of his wife's death.
And I had already planned to dothat, so you know, that was
taken care of.
But they took the next step andasked folks in the congregation
to sign a card for him so thatwhen I met him for dinner, I
could give it to him.
(31:18):
The work on the budget, youknow, obviously so helpful.
At our mid-year congregationalmeeting, the deacons just took
it over, handled all of that.
It's so much better to hearthat from a deacon than even an
elder or a minister.
They're in charge of the men'sfellowship and the men's study
group, and they had a meeting ofthe men just recently, took
(31:40):
them into different groups andasked, you know, what kind of
fellowship or activity would orstudy would be most useful.
They conducted an online poll,you know, to find out the best
times.
They're in charge of work daysand maintenance issues.
And again, we have a newlandlord, and the deacons have
handled everything with him withprofessionalism, with courtesy,
with patience.
(32:01):
Amazes me.
They put together a library.
And again, we have just a verysmall space, but found somebody
to be the librarian and organizeit.
The kids love that.
And I think they've taken overthe fellowship meal.
I haven't asked, but it seemslike they have.
Because when I show up for thefellowship meal, they open it up
(32:21):
in prayer.
They just do that.
And if I never show up, andthis is the beauty of it, if I
never show, if I just drop deadtomorrow, everything would just
run the way it's supposed torun.
Everything would be the way itshould be.
They have set up greeters atthe front door of the church to
hand out bulletins and to greetvisitors.
So in short, the church isfunctioning the way it should
(32:43):
function.
And again, in large part, Imean, this is because the
deacons have taken this on in away that really exceeds what I
thought they'd be able to do.
So in fact, sometimes in thedeacons' meeting, I just say,
hey, you don't have to doeverything.
I mean, they're so they'reyoung, they're energetic, and
all that, which is justwonderful.
(33:04):
But I don't see in them burnouteither.
Sometimes people tackle thingswith enthusiasm and then they
get sick of it, and so they burnout after a year.
I don't see that in themeither.
I think they're wise, they'vepaced themselves, and they've
been very effective.
They've accomplished a lot inone year as deacons.
They just had their firstanniversary.
David Nakhla (33:25):
Wow.
They've kind of set the barpretty high.
Yeah, that's really great.
Whoa, beautiful.
And also it's very interestingto think about how I think a lot
of times deacons are kind ofworking, you know, behind the
scenes, a lot of it in veryappropriately visible ways,
leading the congregationservice.
I love that.
(33:45):
And demonstrating that andencouraging others to serve.
Wow.
Look forward to hearing moreabout that developing story over
the years.
Yeah, it's exciting to see themat work.
Mark Winder (33:56):
And the congregation really gets it.
They love it.
We're teaching through the Bookof Church Order on Wednesday
nights.
And so as we are going throughthe book, they see the need for
and the advantage of order inthe church and the structure
that the Lord has laid out inhaving deacons.
And let me tell you a bigcompliment I got a few weeks
(34:18):
ago.
Somebody in the congregationasked me a question about when
such and such was going on inthe church, and I didn't know.
So I'm not sure when you knowthey're doing that.
And then they asked me anotherquestion, and maybe I sound like
I'm out of touch, but I said,I'm not sure when we're doing
that either.
And and they said to me, You'renot really a micromanager, are
(34:41):
you?
And I said, Well, no, I'm not.
I don't have to be anymore.
Again, I hope it doesn't soundlike I'm kind of out of touch,
but it's one of those thingsthat they've taken on these
things so that truly I can beconcerned about the ministry of
the word and prayer andshepherding the flock and loving
God's people, but I don't haveto be in everything because
(35:04):
they've done that so well.
So I I consider that lack ofmicromanagement to be a
compliment.
Because I that's not alwaysbeen the case.
David Nakhla (35:13):
Yeah.
Has your wife noticed thedifference in the workload that
you have?
Mark Winder (35:17):
I think so.
I guess we haven't technicallytalked about it, but maybe just
I'm a little more relaxed, alittle less worried about
everything getting done becauseI know that there are people who
are doing it.
Yeah.
And there are times whensomebody will be in the
hospital, I won't even knowuntil after they're home.
And it's not because they don'twant to tell me, it's because
(35:39):
they know who they can tell.
And of course, we also have ashepherding list and elders who
shepherd families and things ofthat nature.
So that helps.
So it's much more organizedthan it used to be.
David Nakhla (35:48):
Yeah, that's really, really encouraging.
I remember when you wereputting together your training
material, it was encouraging tosee that you were, as you even
mentioned, you were using someof the podcasts as part of your
training material.
Can you remember any of thoseepisodes and share some of those
episodes that maybe that cometo mind as part of your training
material?
Mark Winder (36:08):
Yeah, I did have several required videos on the
syllabus.
There were five videos that Irequired for deacon training.
Watch these and we'll discussthem.
The Achnal Leadership Todaywith Bill Shishko, The Deacon in
His Congregation with CraigTroxel, Mercy Ministry in a
Social Justice World, EricWatkins, Ministry to the
(36:29):
Spiritually Immature, NathanTrice, and Doing Business as
Deacons, Chris Sudlow.
And I'm assuming those arestill all available on the
website.
But those were the five videosthat I required.
And then we had a couple othersthat we went through.
And there was also scenarios orreal-world cases.
Yeah, yeah, the right.
(36:50):
And we went through some of thecase studies and how would you
handle the situation and and soon.
And of course, I gave them thelink for all of the diaconal
ministry training videos thatare there.
I uh so many rich resources andso many of the articles that
are there as well that theyfound very helpful.
(37:10):
And they were great discussionpoints.
The way that I like to teach,whether it's profession of faith
classes or training elders ortraining deacons, is you know, I
don't mind talking a littlebit, but I really prefer
answering questions and layingout in front of somebody a
discussion or an article or avideo and saying, let's watch
this and let's discuss thisthing.
What questions do you haveabout that?
(37:31):
Because then I'm reallyfocusing my teaching on their
need.
And of course, there's timeswhere I'll just deliver a
lecture, you know, kind of athing.
But those training videos areextremely helpful.
David Nakhla (37:41):
Yeah, good, good, good.
Yeah, those are all thosevideos that Mark was mentioning
are from our previous NationalDiaconal Summit in 2022.
We'll put it in here a littleplug for our next one is June 25
to 27, 2026.
And be sure to have yourdeacons there.
We'll have another great slateof speakers.
(38:02):
But all those talks from ourprevious summits and even this,
especially this last summit, areall available on our on our
website, opccdm.org.
And and we're glad to see themused.
And also, even Mark, your kindof your syllabus that you put
together.
I think we have that eitherposted somewhere on our website
or we can make that available.
(38:23):
If you want to plagiarizeMark's training, I'm sure he'd
be happy to have you do that.
Mark Winder (38:29):
Please do if it's helpful.
David Nakhla (38:30):
Yeah.
So, Mark, this is a little bitof a tangential, but I gotta
bring it up because you'rethinking about lots of things in
that conversation around thefire pit.
I wanted to hear again when wetalked, you explained you began
something you called the fivecommittees and the four P's.
What are those again?
And sure.
(38:51):
How did those shift?
Mark Winder (38:52):
Well, a little bit of background, if you don't
mind.
One of the things that got myattention when you were
speaking, when you were talkingto the church planters there at
the training conference, is thefact that this really kind of
struck me.
We give mission worksoverseeing sessions, but we
don't give them overseeingdeacons.
So how do we compensate forthat?
You know, as I mentionedearlier, if the communion of
(39:15):
saints is enhanced, or even ifit's effected by people serving,
how do you facilitate that in acongregation?
And one of the sections of thebook, Planning an Orthodox
Presbyterian Church, which youcan find on the Chemkey website,
one of the sections of thatbook is entitled Develop
Ministries of Mercy and Concern.
(39:36):
And that section notes the factthat a mission work has a
tremendous opportunity todemonstrate Christ's compassion,
right?
We identify needs in thecommunity, everything from
homelessness to taking care ofthe elderly, but how do you do
that?
And organizing that effortwould be an overseeing session
who is often at a distance,along with an organizing pastor
(40:00):
who is in some cases, this maybe his first call.
I mean, he's got ironseverywhere in the fire.
And quite a bit can fallbetween the cracks.
So I really wrestled with howdo you facilitate this?
And early on in our churchplant here, I proposed that we
appoint what I called actingdeacons, people who would act
(40:21):
the part, right?
Take on some of theresponsibilities, kind of like a
committee.
And the session didn't want todesignate that.
Understandably, you know, theythought the word acting deacons
would be confusing to people.
So we just let the matter drop,which I think is unfortunate.
And I should have worked maybea little harder to come up with
another way to get to it.
(40:43):
And in church plants that Iwork with, and frankly, in other
churches that I planted, Ireally wrestled with that
question how do you facilitatethis?
Ministries of mercies andconcern.
So in another comment that youmade, you referred to, and maybe
you just did this in passing,but it was like a giant neon
(41:05):
flashing sign in my brain.
You referred to a mercycommittee.
And don't ask me why, after twodecades, I didn't come up with
something that is frankly justthat simple, but that well,
brilliant.
It's a mercy committee.
And maybe it's only a matter ofsemantics, but call it a mercy
(41:27):
committee then.
Identify some folks in thecongregation who are willing to
serve, and then put together acommittee who can facilitate
that.
And in doing that, you areidentifying individuals who
eventually, when the churchorganized, may be fully and
formally trained and stand forelection as deacons.
(41:50):
That can be part of theirtraining.
As you know, when you have adeacon board already in place,
one of the best ways to bringalong other deacons is to have
basically deacon internships,right?
Um come join us and be adeacon, small D, you know, for a
while and come along.
And so the Mercy Committee,yeah, no kidding.
And it's like, well, it was oneof those no dumb moments.
(42:13):
And it's like, that's what weneed to do.
So specifically the fivecommittees, you know, that's
something that we put in placein a church that our church is
planting.
So we're planting a daughterchurch about an hour and 15
minutes north of us.
In fact, if I can plug it justa minute, if you're listening to
us and you're looking for agood church in the Jackson,
Tennessee area, ProvidencePresbyterian Church is a mission
(42:37):
work there.
And we're also, by the way,looking for an evangelist to go
there too.
So anyway, consider that.
But we put in place there inProvidence and Jackson four
committees.
And this is something that Iplan to develop more fully,
though I'm just, this issomething we've begun with, but
I want to develop these furtherfor perhaps other church plants.
(42:57):
And each of these committeeswill change over time a little
bit.
And when a church planterarrives, it will take on a
different form.
We have what's called a pulpitsupply committee that will
probably go away, you know, whena church planter comes.
But these committees will stillcontinue to perform a function
and that makes it easier for theevangelist because there's a
(43:18):
structure in place.
It also helps him not to haveto micromanage every detail, and
also it gives people a place toserve and be part of the
congregation.
When somebody has ownership inthe congregation in the service
of the congregation, they becomea vital part of it.
And they're also, by the way,more likely to stay.
But the four committees we putin place were a building
(43:40):
committee, a finance committee,pulpit supply committee, and an
outreach committee.
And the building committee doesjust what it sounds like.
They had defined a building,they're in charge of who cleans,
who sets up chairs, hymnals,you know, all that kind of
stuff.
Finance committee was in chargeof everything from, you know,
the initial, you know, bylaws,incorporating, setting a budget,
(44:01):
or at least, you know, having arecommended budget.
Of course, the overseeingsession is overseeing all this.
The procedures for countingmoney, making deposits, opening
bank accounts, all that goodstuff.
Pulpit supply committee.
This is before you have anorganizing pastor, and this is
finding folks who do pulpitsupply.
And the session obviouslyapproves those who are going to
be doing the pulpit supply, butthey would keep the schedule of
(44:22):
that.
I would probably call it ascheduling committee in the
future rather than pulpit supplycommittee.
And then an outreach committee,which should be fairly obvious,
right?
The church needs to be engagedin reaching out into the
community even before a churchplanner arrives.
So ordering materials, the OPC,we have tons of great little
tracks that you can order,wonderful brochures, going out
of the neighborhoods, promotingthe church, ordering signage,
(44:43):
things like that.
And those four committees thenreport to a liaison that meets
with the overseeing sessionbecause, again, there's no
organizing pastor yet.
And in this case, of course,it's the session of Wolf River
Presbyterian Church.
And we can see the work inprogress then of each of those
four committees.
So just about anything thatneeds to be done in the church
can be designated to one ofthose four committees.
(45:06):
And again, I'm I'm working ondeveloping that more fully.
And so far it's working verywell.
Our overseeing session isn'tovertaxed because needs are
assigned, tasks are assigned toone of those committees.
But at our last sessionmeeting, I asked the liaison
about forming a mercy committee.
That's the one element that wasmissing is the mercy committee.
(45:27):
None of those other committeesreally would address that.
Building finance schedule andoutreach.
Outreach maybe, but where's themercy committee?
So I hope to see that as wellin the mission work.
David Nakhla (45:38):
Just to give credit where credit's due, the
mercy committee was now my, Idid not dub that.
I first heard that used in ourKaramoja station of our Uganda
mission before having ordaineddeacons, which they're still
hoping and praying about, butthey did have significant need
to carry out mercy.
And so they actually hadestablished a mercy committee as
(46:01):
a stopgap measure till suchtime as the Lord would raise up
deacons in their midst.
So that's great.
And then you said somethingabout the four P's.
What are the four P's?
Mark Winder (46:10):
Yeah, and that's something that came out of
originally something I gave toour diaconate to these two new
deacons when, you know, thefirst meeting of the deacons,
you know, I gave them theiroriginal agenda.
You know, here's an agenda fora deacon's meeting.
Take it and run with us.
You know, do whatever you wantwith it.
It needs to be changed, buthere's a template you can start
with.
(46:30):
And they've kept the basicoutline.
And so I broke down their workinto four categories: people,
programs, policies, and place.
And again, maybe somewhatobvious.
Uh, first of all, people,right?
The needs of the people in thecongregation and even outside of
the congregation.
Specific people, what are theirneeds?
(46:50):
And so they still have thislist on their agenda: people who
are named and how are wemeeting their needs?
Are there expectant mothers inthe congregation?
Are there those who areundergoing hardship or whatever?
Those who are sick, are theybeing visited, and things of
that nature?
And so that's people programs.
You know, what programs wouldfacilitate fellowship and
activity in our church?
(47:11):
The men's study, the ladies'study, fellowship activities,
things of that nature, you know,activities for the kids.
And then policies, you know, Imentioned a little bit earlier,
the nursery, you know, policiesfor the nursery, policies for
security, you know, who's incharge of doing this, locking
doors, you know, cleaning up andthings like that.
And then place.
And of course, place isanything that's building
(47:32):
related.
Um, work days, connecting withthe landlord, fixing things.
And so they go through each ofthese categories, and pretty
much anything will fit intopeople, programs, policies, or
place.
And they've kept that outlinein their agenda and they've
changed the agenda, made itbetter because they're the ones
doing the work.
But those basic fourcategories, I think, have been
(47:53):
helpful.
David Nakhla (47:55):
Mark, we need a little write-up from you on the
four piece.
We need that on our website.
I love that.
I think that would resonatewell with any deacon to help
them organize their slate.
That's awesome.
Mark Winder (48:08):
Well, I will get in conjunction with the deacons.
Yeah, good.
And they may end up writing it.
David Nakhla (48:13):
Yeah, sure.
Any thoughts on how we as adenomination, or maybe
Presbytery for that matter,might highlight the value and
importance of the role ofdeacons in the health of the
church, even as you reflect onit?
It sounds like almost anepiphany in the last couple of
years, having many years inchurch planting, and it sounds
like your church was veryhealthy, B D before deacons, uh,
(48:37):
but now AD after deacons, itsounds like a light's gone on.
And do you have thoughts on howyou know we could continue to
highlight that, what you've evenexperienced?
Mark Winder (48:47):
Yeah, you know, there are so many resources now
compared to what there were 15or 20 years ago on the OPC
website, on the diaconalwebsite.
And as I was thinking aboutwhat I was going to talk about
as we were doing this, I wasthinking how helpful it would be
if there was a verystraightforward, easy way to get
(49:08):
information about signing upfor short-term missions and
disaster response.
And then as I was thinkingabout that, I got an email with
the disaster response video onHurricane Helene.
And there it is, right in myface.
So I would encourage any ofyour listeners, search for that
email in your inbox if youhaven't saved it.
It's from September 25th.
(49:29):
Download the video to show inyour Sunday school, follow the
links to the discussion guide,use that in your churches.
We're planning to do that hereat Wolf River on the 26th of
October.
And it's the information thatneeds to be put in front of
people.
I mean, we live in the world ofTikTok and YouTube, and there's
so much information in one eyeand out the other nowadays, just
(49:53):
so fast that presenting this,putting this in front of the
congregations, and you providethose things with regular
short-term missions, disasterresponse updates.
And now we have a good video toshow.
I don't know how in the worldyou do all the things you do,
but your communication has beenexcellent.
You readily send out emails,produce bulletin inserts.
We had one in our bulletin justthis past week of the
(50:15):
short-term missions bulletininsert.
If folks haven't downloaded,they're really well done
bulletin inserts.
The way that you have them isthey're printed two to a page,
front and back, so you can justprint them off and stick them in
the bulletins.
And you also have a sheet thatyou handed to our church
planters at the trainingconference entitled OPC Diaconal
(50:38):
Resources for Church Planters.
And it's not just for churchplanters.
Any listeners here, I mean, askfor this sheet.
I'm sure you wouldn't mindsending it.
It's on one sheet of paper.
All of the, maybe not even allof them, but many of the
resources for church planters.
Utilize those things.
You even have QR codes onthere.
(50:58):
You can point your phone and beconnected.
And then several ways that yourchurch can be connected.
And I'll be using that as wellto connect our church in a more
meaningful way.
So look for those things, findthose things.
David Nakhla (51:11):
They're there.
Well, thank you for that.
So glad that Trish is lurkingin the background is our
producer, our communicationscoordinator who really makes all
these communication vehicleshappen.
She does such a great job.
And so we're thankful for herservice.
And I'm sure it's encouragingfor her to hear that these are
appreciated and are being used.
(51:31):
Thanks for that plug for thatemail.
Many of you will not havereceived that email because it
actually went to ministers andelders.
And so you can ask your pastoror one of your elders if they
received it and if that'ssomething that could be used in
your church.
You can know that that's outthere.
That's something we we don't dothat often with regards to
making, it's almostcurriculumized, I guess you
(51:52):
could say.
But that was a uniqueopportunity.
And thank you for that plug,Mark.
Anything more you'd like to addon this important topic while
we have the attention of ourlisteners?
Mark Winder (52:02):
Well, just to say this, you don't need to wait to
have deacons in order to serve,or even in order to begin
training people to serve.
Go back to that passage inEphesians.
Ephesians is emphasizing as awhole Christ's riches being
received by all the saints.
And verse 7 of chapter 4 says,Each member was given grace.
(52:27):
And then in verse 16, Paulsays, Each one does his part.
So in verse 12, the pastorevangelists, they're training
each one to do that part ofservice.
So the task of specialministers, you know, that are
mentioned in Ephesians 4.11, isto be servants in that ministry
which is entrusted to the wholechurch.
(52:50):
So you don't need to wait tohave deacons to serve or begin
training people to serve.
And if you have deacons in thechurch, if you are deacons,
develop other deacons, otherservants.
And if you have deacons, lookto them for ways to serve.
And don't wait to do it.
I remember back in, I think itwas 2020, you had sent, I don't
(53:14):
remember the details of this, aprogram or something where you
encouraged folks to have abreakfast, kind of host a
breakfast, show this video kindof thing, get people involved.
And then COVID hit.
We had scheduled a date to dothat, and we ended up canceling
that planned breakfast.
But this is something that youdon't have to have a program to
do.
There's enough resources outthere that you can begin to be
(53:34):
involved.
So thank you for this and alsofor being willing to listen to
my enthusiasm about it as wewere gathered around the fire
pit and sitting at that lunchtable.
I appreciate your ministry, thework that you've been doing,
making so many resourcesavailable to our churches.
David Nakhla (53:50):
Well, thank you, Mark.
It's a great way to end.
If you enjoyed listening toMark's insights and hearing his
clear thinking on these andother matters, again, you can
listen to him more at theProclaiming Christ podcast.
Find that through the ReformForum's website.
And so thank you, Mark.
Thank you.
And just really beenencouraging to hear how the
(54:12):
Lord's been faithful in raisingup officers, his time for Wolf
River OPC.
Deacons, we hope this episodeis helpful to you and your
ministry to your local church.
As always, reach out if youhave any questions or
suggestions.
We actually have an email forthis podcast where we'd love to
hear your questions, yourinteractions with the things
(54:32):
that we bring to you.
That email is mail, M-A-I-L atthereformdeacon.org.
Mail at thereformdeacon.org.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Special word of thanks to ourproducer, Trish Dugan, who works
faithfully behind the scenes tobring this podcast to you.
Be sure to visit our website,thereformdeacon.org, where
(54:53):
you'll find all our episodes,program notes, and other helpful
resources.
And we hope you'll join usagain soon for another episode
of the Reform Deacon Podcast.
Since launching The Reformed Deacon podcast four
years ago, one of our favoritethings has been hearing from
you, our listeners, about howthe podcast has encouraged and
helped you.
Here are a couple of commentsfrom our listeners.
Thank you for providing arealistic and encouraging plan
for those of us who want to dosomething but haven't known
where to start.
What a wonderful, helpful, andinformative podcast.
(00:20):
And here's another one.
Thank you for your podcast.
It has been a valuable resourcefor training materials,
ministry ideas, and generalencouragement.
Friends, we'd love to hear fromyou too.
Tell us how the podcast or aspecific episode has helped or
encouraged you, or share a topicyou think we should cover next.
If you'll email us your storyor suggestion to mail M-A-I-L at
(00:43):
thereformdeacon.org.
We're going to send you areformed deacon teacher, the
nicest teacher you'll own.
And we're excited to keepproducing episodes that help you
grow as a deacon and serve as afaithful testimony to the Lord
in the season ahead.
Mark Winder (01:01):
The congregation, in some sense, I think, has come
alive.
If you will, people know who togo to to get things done.
David Nakhla (01:08):
Welcome to the Reformed Deacon, a casual
conversation with topicsspecifically designed to help
local Reform Deacons.
There are nearly a thousanddeacons in the OPC alone.
So let's take this opportunityto learn from and encourage one
another.
We're so glad you could joinus.
Let's jump into our nextepisode.
Hi, my name is David Knockla.
(01:30):
I'm the administrator of theOPC Committee on Diaconal
Ministries.
And today we have the privilegeof having Mark Winder join us.
Mark is the pastor of WolfRiver OPC in Collierville,
Tennessee.
This is a congregation that wasplanted a number of years ago,
but since has particularized.
(01:50):
And Mark also hosts a podcastcalled Proclaiming Christ, which
is one of the Reform Forum'ssuite of podcasts.
Mark is a member of the OPC'sDenominational Committee on Home
Missions and Church Extension.
He has also served on hisPresbytery's Home Missions
Committee for nearly 20 years.
So Mark has a lot ofconnections with church planting
(02:13):
and church plants.
Mark, you and I recentlyconnected at a home missions
conference for church plants.
In our casual conversationaround the fire pit, I remember
you excitingly telling me thatafter 14 years your church had
finally installed your first twodeacons.
You said something like, Thishas revolutionized our church.
(02:36):
You went on to express yourregret and not pursuing deacons
sooner.
And you told me that you nowencourage pastors, get your
deacons sooner rather thanlater.
So we need to really finishthat conversation.
And even at that moment, that Iwas like, okay, we got to have
you on the podcast.
We got to talk about this more.
Very intrigued to hear moreabout what you have to say.
(02:58):
And so thank you for joining ustoday, Mark.
Mark Winder (03:01):
Thank you for having me.
It was a good conversation, andI'm happy that we might be able
to continue it today.
Super.
David Nakhla (03:08):
Before I go further, let me uh give a little
background on Mark.
He and his wife, Michelle, havebeen married for 36 years.
They have three adult children.
He worked for a number of yearsin the corporate world before
pursuing the ministry in hisearly 30s, and he was ordained
as an OPC minister in 2003.
So 22 years ago.
(03:28):
First serving Louisiana, thenAlabama.
Yep.
Before the Lord led him tobegin the work of planting Wolf
River OPC in Tennessee in 2010.
That's now 15 years ago.
Mark Winder (03:41):
Hard to believe.
David Nakhla (03:43):
Yeah.
So, Mark, you started thischurch plant in 2010, of course,
without deacons.
I mean, as most church plantsbegin, it's not uncommon.
And then you went for a numberof years without deacons.
And maybe you could talk aboutthat and talk about the
challenge to establish officersin a church plant and maybe even
(04:03):
the challenge of deacons.
Let's begin there.
Mark Winder (04:07):
Sure.
You know, our Book of ChurchOrder requires that a group of
believers that are meeting forworship regularly comes under
the jurisdiction of a session orof a presbytery.
So it doesn't require deaconsbecause the service of deacons,
as the book says elsewhere, isdistinct from that of rule in
(04:28):
the church.
So technically, you know, youhave to have elders, you have to
have an overseeing session.
Every mission work isimmediately given an overseeing
session, but it's not anabsolute requirement that you
have deacons.
And that overseeing session,along with the church planter,
when he arrives, should early onbe seeking to identify, you
(04:51):
know, qualified individuals inthe congregation who can be
trained to serve as elders anddeacons when the church
organizes.
And sometimes that takes yearsand years to develop, but you're
looking for those who have thegifts of ordained offices.
And sometimes mission workshave someone or maybe a few
(05:11):
people who have been previouslyordained as an elder or a
deacon, or and without beingpresumptuous, you know, quite
frequently they can go on and beinstalled as elders and deacons
when the church organizes.
But sometimes there are nopreviously ordained elders or
deacons.
And there are no people whoimmediately stand out as office
(05:34):
bears.
You might have new converts,you might have people who are
new to the Reformed faith, orpeople that are immature in
their faith, perhaps immature intheir personal growth, young
families that are perhaps verybusy and for whom it takes
perhaps some time for them tograsp the priority of church
(05:54):
work.
And you know, each church plantis unique.
Some of them start off withlarge groups of families from a
mother congregation that mightbe as well sending elders and
deacons along, which iswonderful when we can do that.
And that congregation, thatmission may mature quite
quickly.
And others, though, they startfrom scratch and sometimes
(06:18):
starting with people whosometimes have a particular idea
of what they are looking for ina church.
And they're going to establishthat here in that mission.
And sometimes things need someundoing before you start doing
some things.
And in the case of Wolf River,we were growing, and then a
number of families moved away.
(06:38):
And about four years into it,we essentially had to start
over.
And then it took some time todevelop those gifts and folks to
develop that desire because theoffices of ruling elder and
deacon are offices of sacrifice.
You're volunteering your timeand your talents and your
(06:59):
energies to engage in the workof the church in depth way.
You know, elders and deaconsfrequently have to take time off
work to go to Presbytery attimes.
You need to take vacation daysto do that.
When we were talking at thechurch planters conference up in
Wisconsin, I was there withanother member of the Home
(07:19):
Missions Committee just to be apart of that experience and to
see what they're doing there inthat church planters conference
and hopefully be anencouragement to some of the
young church planters who arethere.
And, you know, the other guywith me who is part of the
committee is a ruling elder.
He took a week off of work,vacation week, to spend his
vacation up there and encouragethose church planters.
(07:43):
And so that's a sacrifice.
And for young familiesparticularly, that can be a
difficult sacrifice.
So I think that can play intowhy it's a challenge to
establish those officers in achurch plant when some are
fairly new to the reform faith.
But the session needs to beintentional about developing
(08:04):
that.
David Nakhla (08:05):
Great.
Thank you.
Did you at some point realizeyour church maybe had gone
beyond the what's the normalsituation for a church plant
with regards to your lack ofdeacons?
And if so, you know, what madeyou realize that?
What brought you to the pointof ordaining them?
Mark Winder (08:21):
Yeah, that's a great question.
And if I could maybe start by atext that had kind of been on
my mind for a number of years,and really it's one of my
favorite verses on the task of aminister.
And I'm sure, you know, you'vetouched on this and as you've
spoken with deacons and withchurches, and that's Ephesians
4.12.
(08:41):
Talks about the fact that God'sgiving presence to his church,
he's giving gifts to his church,and he gave the apostles and
the prophets, and they they'velaid the groundwork for the
church.
And as the task of the churchcontinues, he continues to give
gifts to the church, right?
And their elders andevangelists and shepherds and
teachers.
And why does he do that?
Well, he does that, he'sEphesians 4.12, to equip the
(09:05):
saints for the work of ministryto the building up of the body
of Christ.
So foundational to the work ofevery church is equipping the
saints for the work of ministry.
And that work of ministry isdiaconius.
It's the word service.
So it's it's a very commonword, and it functions in a
(09:25):
variety of ways in the NewTestament.
The AIV puts it ministry, butthe NIV, the New American
Standard, I think, translate itcorrectly as the work of
service.
And as you probably know, somefollow the King James and they
put a comma after the wordsaints, so that the shepherds
and teachers are supposed toperfect the saints and then do
the work of ministry.
And that's a whole differentdiscussion that goes beyond the
(09:47):
question you just asked me.
But I think there are some verygood exegetical reasons why
that comma shouldn't be there,as it isn't in most
translations.
They eliminate that comma.
And I think the task of servingis incumbent on all believers.
And you get a sense of that inother texts, right?
There's a bunch of other textsthat address that.
(10:08):
Hebrews 6.10, where the writersays, God won't overlook your
work and the love that you showfor his name in serving the
saints, as you still do, theword there, the verb form,
diacneo.
So I sometimes refer to thecommunion of saints as the
fourth means of grace.
And I think I say that probablyquite frequently to our
(10:29):
congregation.
It's a fourth means of grace.
In Acts 242, they devotedthemselves to the apostles'
teaching and the fellowship, thekoinonia to the breaking of
bread and prayers.
And vital communion isn't justa fraternal feeling, right?
Vital communion is a covenantreality.
(10:49):
So we're united to Christ whocovenant with us, and I covenant
with you, and I work for yourspiritual welfare.
And we speak of God's steadfastlove, his covenant loyalty, his
covenant faithfulness.
And the people of God are to bedevoted to a covenant loyalty
to his people.
So in each church that Iplanted, it became clearer to me
(11:12):
that worship is vital, ofcourse, it's essential to the
church, right?
And fellowship vital.
Activities, church picnics,outings, so important to a
church.
But that kind of supernaturalfellowship and fraternity that
builds the church, that bindsthe church together is the
(11:35):
fellowship of service.
And again, Ephesians 4.
We grow up into Christ, thehead, from whom the whole body
joined and held together byevery joint with which it's
equipped, each part workingproperly makes the body grow.
So it builds itself up in love.
So to get back to yourquestion, because that was a uh
(11:57):
there's a concept that'sfascinated me over the years to
watch that developing in thechurch.
I became a little concernedabout, okay, in our mission
work, where is the mechanismthat provides for this kind of
vital communion?
And he'd seen it in otherchurches that uh I'd planted
church where I had traineddeacons in a previous church
(12:21):
that I was church planter in.
And, you know, we had sent agroup down during Hurricane
Katrina for OPC disasterresponse and the kind of
communion that came about as aresult of that, that serving
together.
I don't know if you rememberthe name Gary Smalley.
He was a Christian counselorsome years back.
But he tells a story of, youknow, if you, and I'm sure he
(12:45):
said this a lot better than I'mabout to say it, but he said, if
you want your family to becomeclose, really close, he said, go
camping.
And you're thinking, camping?
Oh, that's terrible.
That's like the worst thing youcan do for a family is to make
them go camping.
And he said, you know, butthat's the point, is because
that's when disaster strikes.
You know, it's inevitable thatit's going to rain and your tarp
(13:08):
is going to fall and yourtent's going to flood and your
air mattress is going to deflateand it's just going to be
awful.
And what do you do though?
You pull together.
And what do you talk about fiveyears later?
You're talking about thatcamping trip.
You know, you hardly mentionedDisney World.
No, you're talking about thecamping trip that you went on
and the work that you didtogether to pull together.
And there's a sense in whichthat's what deacons do, and
(13:30):
that's what service does.
And I could try to provide forthat to the best of my ability
in our church, even after itorganized.
We organized initially withoutdeacons.
We have some families in ourchurch who are wonderfully
hospitable, wonderful group ofladies.
They're always active, lookingfor each other's needs.
(13:51):
There's a lot of good organicactivity.
But where's the glue that holdsthat together?
That makes sure that everybodyis being involved, that this
kind of fellowship toucheseveryone in the church.
It's the deacons.
And we're rolling along, doingokay.
But as the church grows and aswe realize that this kind of
(14:14):
vital fellowship is a littlediscombobulated, we need
deacons.
We need those whose name isservice.
And that's our Book of ChurchOrder puts it, right?
Those who minister in mercy andservice, they are called
deacons.
And to them, specifically, thatministry of service belongs.
And so we said, we needdeacons.
We need those who can bringthis together and bring it to
(14:38):
its full potential.
David Nakhla (14:39):
It's beautiful, Mark.
I don't think I've ever heardthat articulated in that way.
That's wow.
I'd love to see that flushedout even more.
That's that's really great.
Mark Winder (14:48):
It's a great passage of scripture.
I explored it in depth with ourcongregation that Ephesians
4.12, the implications of whatit means to equip saints for the
work of Deakoneo, for the workof deaconing, the work of
serving.
And then God gives the officesto facilitate that work as
unfolds, of course, as you know,in the book of Acts.
David Nakhla (15:11):
It's one of the differences from the church
being a country club.
Country club, you go there tobe served, everything's set out
for you.
And it's yeah, the sense ofsacrificially serving one
another is really in a lot ofways makes the church the
church.
Mark Winder (15:25):
Yeah, and we got to that point here.
We are not a theology club,right?
The church is not a theologyclub that gets together every
Sunday morning and you know, wewant a deep, you know, rich
sermon, and you know, we want tostudy systematic theology and
mercy ministry.
What what's that?
No, that the church isn't atheology club.
We are a church that serves anddeacons facilitate that.
(15:47):
So that's where we said, no,that's a need that it comes to
for us.
David Nakhla (15:52):
Do you think that was a development in your
thinking?
Mark Winder (15:54):
Well, it certainly was.
Again, the church that Ipreviously planted, we had
trained some deacons, and thenthe way that they served, they
served so well.
One of them in that church isstill a deacon, still very
active, uh goes on mission tripsand things of that nature.
And then in our church, again,people were very active in
(16:14):
serving and very anxious toserve, but so it was maybe a
gradual realization that thishas to be intentional.
It can't just be sort of adhoc.
We need to be deliberate aboutthis.
And my thinking through thatEphesians passage as well as
other passages, and then seeingas well people who did serve in
our congregation, seeing thedifference that they made.
(16:35):
We had a couple of men in thecongregation who went up to
North Carolina a couple of yearsago during that initial
hurricane hit, and they wentwith a group from another church
and came back and they uhshared in Sunday school about
you know what they did and youknow, showed the slides and
things of that nature.
And again, a development in mythinking, yeah, that's a good
(16:57):
way to put it, that we need tomake this something intentional.
David Nakhla (17:02):
So on a previous podcast, we had John Shaw on
there, the previous generalsecretary of home missions, and
similarly talking about theserious need for deacons,
especially in a church plant,especially with the diaconal
cases that can arise in a churchplant, as you're out there
sowing the seed, bringing in thelost, lots of baggage that
(17:23):
comes in with that, and justsignificant diagonal situations
that can arise in church plants.
That's something I've thought abit about in recent years as
well, is the higher percentageof probably serious diaconal
situations in our church plants,more than full-grown
established congregations.
And he talked about it, evenhis own personal experience as a
(17:44):
church planner at Mission OPCin the Twin Cities.
I was wondering if you couldshare with us how your session
went about handling thepractical and diaconal needs
during those years.
What did that look like?
Did you have to establishcreative ways to wait on tables
without letting it hinder theministry of the word and prayer?
Mark Winder (18:03):
Yeah, well, even though we didn't have deacons,
you know, again, we did havepeople who love to serve, and
people are very active and theycare for one another.
And so if you ask somebody todo something, you would very
rarely get a no, I can't.
In our situation, because of avariety of circumstances, we
were in mission work for 10years, which is unusually long.
(18:24):
And there were, you know, anumber of circumstances that led
to that.
But during that time, with aborrowed session from other
states and even from anotherpresbytery, you know, the
diaconal work, to be frank, itfell on me.
And I can't say that I was veryeffective.
But, you know, I at least Ithink I'm fairly good at
delegation, of being able tohand out different tasks and
(18:47):
trying to organize those tasks.
And when you have people whoenjoy serving, it's a lot
easier.
So I had a section in ourbulletin called How Can I Serve?
Just a little title, How Can IServe?
And then underneath a list ofthings.
As new needs came up, I wouldadd those needs to the list and
(19:09):
people would volunteer forthose.
And eventually the listdisappeared.
And service took on a life ofits own.
You know, no sooner does astorm blow up and people lose
electricity for three days whenthere are four or five
generators being offered on achat group.
(19:29):
You know, is everybody okay?
Who needs help?
And the church would cometogether and do that.
And when people catch thesacrifice of service, the
satisfaction of that sacrificeof service, the joy of it, then
it's contagious.
And being able to see progressbeing made, there's a saying
that I hear frequently from agroup that I'm part of, and the
(19:51):
director quite frequently saysthat hard work is fun when
progress is evident.
And you could see that in thechurch.
But I'd say a lot of thingswould fall between the cracks.
I can't say that I wasn't themost effective in being able to
organize those things, but wealways prioritized needs in the
(20:13):
congregation, and those needs Ithink were met.
We had family, particularly acouple families at times that
fell in serious financial need.
And we were able to be therefor them.
We were able to provide, wewere able to help pay bills so
they didn't lose their car orlose their house.
The head of the home was in thehospital for a week due to an
(20:34):
accident, and people were thereevery day visiting.
So it got done, but it wassometimes not in the most
organized fashion.
And I can't say that outsidethe church we had any sort of
effective diaconal ministry.
David Nakhla (20:48):
So the situation you just described is oftentimes
what we do think of as some ofthe primary work of the deacons
is seeking to address thosesituations of significant acute
need.
Our form of government, in thechapter on deacons, chapter
chapter nine, I believe it is,it says, in a church in which
there are no deacons, the dutiesof the office shall devolve
(21:10):
upon the session.
And that word devolve, I thinkthat's the only time it appears
in our book of church order.
We talked about that at thefire pit.
What did you say?
Mark Winder (21:20):
I sometimes joke that when we had no deacons, the
duties of their officedissolved upon the session.
I mean, we have two of the bestelders in the world in our
church.
We really do.
One of them works full-time andmore.
The other is retired, and hedevotes himself to the church in
so many ways.
(21:40):
They work very hard and we takeour time at session meetings,
but I still think things fellthrough the cracks.
And not necessarily, again, incare for the saints.
We always tried to be on top ofthat.
And again, we have a wonderfulladies group.
They're in constant contactwith each other.
We've had a lot of babies bornover the past few years.
So I think there's a perpetualmeal train going in our church.
(22:04):
And at one point, I don't knowif they still do this, but you
know, they would just have mealsin the freezer at the church
because it's everybody alwaysneeded one.
But some things, again, I thinkstill fell through the cracks,
developing policies, programs topromote fellowship in the
church.
We're in a rented facility andit has perpetual problems.
And we needed a DAC in itbecause, yeah, some of those
(22:28):
things I think were justdissolving on the session.
David Nakhla (22:32):
I mean, it's kind of an Act Six thing, isn't it?
The division of labor, becauseit's hard to do both well.
And so dividing the labor andhaving both offices focus
separately on the differentareas or one will suffer.
That's I don't think it's a newproblem.
No, no.
Mark Winder (22:50):
When we were training the deacons, they've
been ordained now for one year,I think last month.
It was one their one-yearanniversary.
And as we were going throughtraining, we were going through
the gospel of Luke.
And so I thought, well, what amI going to do next?
And I thought, well, let's doLuke part two.
So we went on to the gospel orthe book of Acts, and you know,
(23:13):
we get through that early churchstage, and you think about the
fact that the church is growingby thousands upon thousands.
And you have 12 disciples who,you know, they're probably being
called for some home visitsbecause there's a lot of broken
homes and a lot of spouses whoaren't thrilled that their
spouse just became a convert tothis weird religion.
(23:35):
And you know, how are theseguys supposed to handle all of
this?
And then, of course, you get toActs 6 and you have the
foundation of what becomes thedeaconate.
So we've really enjoyedspending some time because the
deacons have been freshlyordained, you know, going into
what are these guys doing?
And of course, the example thatyou have in somebody like
Philip, you know, when you getto chapter eight, the impact
(23:58):
that they have that's justincalculable.
So yeah, we we enjoyed watchingthat develop as well as we were
going through the book of Acts.
David Nakhla (24:07):
So eventually the Lord provided deacons for your
church.
Can you talk about, again,putting yourself in the minds of
other church planters?
What are the events that led tothat?
And then how have would you saythey revolutionized the life of
the congregation?
And maybe if you have somespecific stories, that'd be fun
to be.
Mark Winder (24:25):
Sure, yeah.
At the time we organized, whichwas five years ago, I don't
think there were deaconcandidates ready to be trained
formally.
There were very young families,young children, just
establishing their careers,their homes.
You know, if you get out one ofthose stress point charts, you
know, they would probably allscore really high at stress
(24:46):
points at that point in theirlife.
But a couple of years go by andthey're a little more settled
now in their careers, time opensup for them a little bit more.
But most importantly, I think,in terms of events leading up to
that moment, being able toidentify in the congregation
people who are alreadydeaconing, people who are
(25:08):
already serving in thatcapacity.
I mean, not formally, ofcourse, but it came naturally.
And you could see these areservants.
So in a way, they begin toidentify themselves.
You know, 1 Peter 4, right, aseach has received a gift, use it
to serve one another.
And you begin to see people inthe congregation who are doing
(25:29):
that, or after the manner ofHebrews 10, right, stirring up
to love one another and stirringup others to good works.
And as the church grew, wecould see the ones who are
engaged in that.
And as the needs become moreacute as the church grows and as
the opportunities become moreplentiful.
And the session said, you know,now's the time.
(25:51):
This has grown beyond us.
I know the church isn't abusiness in a corporate sense,
but it's kind of a somebody hasa small business and you get to
the point where you say, youknow, I can handle this myself,
I can handle this myself.
And eventually you get to thepoint you say, I can't handle
this myself and still do a goodjob.
I need to hire somebody.
I need help.
And that's the point that wegot to.
(26:12):
So we took nominations, andthere were 11 nominations, uh,
which was very encouraging.
And we went through deacontraining.
It took about six months.
And I'd trained deaconspreviously in a church that I
planted before, but I kind ofreinvented the training program
because in that time, so thatwas probably 20 years ago or so,
(26:35):
maybe around there.
Since then, the resources that,and I'm sure your your
listeners are pointed to thisall the time, right?
OPCCDM.org, the resources thatare on the diaconal website are
just phenomenal.
And we were able to utilize alot of that, a lot of the videos
that are on there, readingresources, books that are
(26:58):
listed.
Those things didn't exist asfar as I can remember 20 years
ago.
And you know, I trained deaconsbefore.
So we totally revamped thedeacon training program.
And in the end, there were twooutstanding men who were
ordained as deacons.
They're very busy men, but theygave up their time.
(27:18):
And as I've often told ourdeacons, and I still tell them
because I meet, you know, asoften as I can when the deacons
meet, I meet with them.
You don't have to doeverything.
You just have to make sureeverything gets done.
So teaching them, encouragingthem, identify servants, uh,
develop gifts in other people,you know, anticipate, develop
(27:43):
the next deacons who will comeand join you.
Delegation is a good word.
Use it, do it.
And then having them installedso that I think your next
question is how they changed thelife of the congregation.
I don't think it's anoverstatement when I said it
revolutionized the life of ourcongregation.
The congregation, in somesense, I think, has come alive,
(28:03):
if you will.
People know who to go to to getthings done.
You know, as a minister withoutdeacons, and before when we
were mission work for a decade,you know, people might come up
to me after the service and say,Pastor, we need this.
You know, if I don't write thatdown immediately, off it goes.
I'm not going to remember that.
But now they know who to go toto get things done.
And because we're in a borrowedfacility, they take care of all
(28:26):
the facility needs, thecleaning schedule, setting up
chairs, interfacing with thelandlord, which is quite a job,
checking into and securinginsurance.
The last Sunday of every month,they give a deacon's update to
the congregation.
They call it the Deacon'sDispatch.
They came up with that name.
I couldn't figure out what tocall it.
Originally I called it Deacon'sMinute, and I didn't think that
(28:48):
sounded very important.
So I said, let's call itsomething else.
And they came up with Deacon'sDispatch during the announcement
time.
They update the congregation onpolicies and on needs.
And sometimes, just to befrank, I sit in amazement
listening to the things thatthey're doing, many of which I
don't even know about.
They're doing them and then howwell organized they are.
(29:10):
And I'm thinking to myself,this is way beyond anything that
I had dreamed.
These guys, it took on a lifeof its own.
And many, they've just taken iton.
So I truly spend my Sundaymorning in prayer and
preparation because I knoweverything will be ready.
I can devote myself to theministry of the word and to
prayer.
(29:31):
So some of the specific thingsabout the way they've impacted
our church, there's severalthings I think they've done in
identifying needs and puttingprograms in place where I think
the session, as the session, weweren't fully aware that there
might be needs that were there.
I'll give you just a fewexamples.
They developed a nursery policyfor a nursery.
And again, being in a borrowedfacility, resources are kind of
(29:53):
limited and space that we canuse.
So creating a designated spacefor nursing moms, providing
activities.
Activities and supervision forthe kids, for children after the
service.
We have dozens of children.
And what are they going to do?
We don't have a playground.
We're in this, again, borrowedspace.
So they've arranged for gamesin the back parking lot or
(30:13):
activities in the fellowshiphall.
Well.
They created a security policydesignating, you know,
individuals who can be a part ofthat, making sure the doors are
locked after the service startsthat the back door is locked.
They created a background checkpolicy for those who work
directly with children.
We're desperately looking for anew meeting place.
And so they're organizing aspreadsheet of contacts for a
(30:36):
building search.
They're organizing a rotationof families that can practice
hospitality and provide aninvitation, you know, for
visitors.
One gentleman in ourcongregation, very much loved
guy, lost his wife a year ago tocancer.
And, you know, this year, thedeacons, without any suggestion
(30:57):
from us, they took that on andwanted to make sure that
somebody visited him on theanniversary of his wife's death.
And I had already planned to dothat, so you know, that was
taken care of.
But they took the next step andasked folks in the congregation
to sign a card for him so thatwhen I met him for dinner, I
could give it to him.
(31:18):
The work on the budget, youknow, obviously so helpful.
At our mid-year congregationalmeeting, the deacons just took
it over, handled all of that.
It's so much better to hearthat from a deacon than even an
elder or a minister.
They're in charge of the men'sfellowship and the men's study
group, and they had a meeting ofthe men just recently, took
(31:40):
them into different groups andasked, you know, what kind of
fellowship or activity would orstudy would be most useful.
They conducted an online poll,you know, to find out the best
times.
They're in charge of work daysand maintenance issues.
And again, we have a newlandlord, and the deacons have
handled everything with him withprofessionalism, with courtesy,
with patience.
(32:01):
Amazes me.
They put together a library.
And again, we have just a verysmall space, but found somebody
to be the librarian and organizeit.
The kids love that.
And I think they've taken overthe fellowship meal.
I haven't asked, but it seemslike they have.
Because when I show up for thefellowship meal, they open it up
(32:21):
in prayer.
They just do that.
And if I never show up, andthis is the beauty of it, if I
never show, if I just drop deadtomorrow, everything would just
run the way it's supposed torun.
Everything would be the way itshould be.
They have set up greeters atthe front door of the church to
hand out bulletins and to greetvisitors.
So in short, the church isfunctioning the way it should
(32:43):
function.
And again, in large part, Imean, this is because the
deacons have taken this on in away that really exceeds what I
thought they'd be able to do.
So in fact, sometimes in thedeacons' meeting, I just say,
hey, you don't have to doeverything.
I mean, they're so they'reyoung, they're energetic, and
all that, which is justwonderful.
(33:04):
But I don't see in them burnouteither.
Sometimes people tackle thingswith enthusiasm and then they
get sick of it, and so they burnout after a year.
I don't see that in themeither.
I think they're wise, they'vepaced themselves, and they've
been very effective.
They've accomplished a lot inone year as deacons.
They just had their firstanniversary.
David Nakhla (33:25):
Wow.
They've kind of set the barpretty high.
Yeah, that's really great.
Whoa, beautiful.
And also it's very interestingto think about how I think a lot
of times deacons are kind ofworking, you know, behind the
scenes, a lot of it in veryappropriately visible ways,
leading the congregationservice.
I love that.
(33:45):
And demonstrating that andencouraging others to serve.
Wow.
Look forward to hearing moreabout that developing story over
the years.
Yeah, it's exciting to see themat work.
Mark Winder (33:56):
And the congregation really gets it.
They love it.
We're teaching through the Bookof Church Order on Wednesday
nights.
And so as we are going throughthe book, they see the need for
and the advantage of order inthe church and the structure
that the Lord has laid out inhaving deacons.
And let me tell you a bigcompliment I got a few weeks
(34:18):
ago.
Somebody in the congregationasked me a question about when
such and such was going on inthe church, and I didn't know.
So I'm not sure when you knowthey're doing that.
And then they asked me anotherquestion, and maybe I sound like
I'm out of touch, but I said,I'm not sure when we're doing
that either.
And and they said to me, You'renot really a micromanager, are
(34:41):
you?
And I said, Well, no, I'm not.
I don't have to be anymore.
Again, I hope it doesn't soundlike I'm kind of out of touch,
but it's one of those thingsthat they've taken on these
things so that truly I can beconcerned about the ministry of
the word and prayer andshepherding the flock and loving
God's people, but I don't haveto be in everything because
(35:04):
they've done that so well.
So I I consider that lack ofmicromanagement to be a
compliment.
Because I that's not alwaysbeen the case.
David Nakhla (35:13):
Yeah.
Has your wife noticed thedifference in the workload that
you have?
Mark Winder (35:17):
I think so.
I guess we haven't technicallytalked about it, but maybe just
I'm a little more relaxed, alittle less worried about
everything getting done becauseI know that there are people who
are doing it.
Yeah.
And there are times whensomebody will be in the
hospital, I won't even knowuntil after they're home.
And it's not because they don'twant to tell me, it's because
(35:39):
they know who they can tell.
And of course, we also have ashepherding list and elders who
shepherd families and things ofthat nature.
So that helps.
So it's much more organizedthan it used to be.
David Nakhla (35:48):
Yeah, that's really, really encouraging.
I remember when you wereputting together your training
material, it was encouraging tosee that you were, as you even
mentioned, you were using someof the podcasts as part of your
training material.
Can you remember any of thoseepisodes and share some of those
episodes that maybe that cometo mind as part of your training
material?
Mark Winder (36:08):
Yeah, I did have several required videos on the
syllabus.
There were five videos that Irequired for deacon training.
Watch these and we'll discussthem.
The Achnal Leadership Todaywith Bill Shishko, The Deacon in
His Congregation with CraigTroxel, Mercy Ministry in a
Social Justice World, EricWatkins, Ministry to the
(36:29):
Spiritually Immature, NathanTrice, and Doing Business as
Deacons, Chris Sudlow.
And I'm assuming those arestill all available on the
website.
But those were the five videosthat I required.
And then we had a couple othersthat we went through.
And there was also scenarios orreal-world cases.
Yeah, yeah, the right.
(36:50):
And we went through some of thecase studies and how would you
handle the situation and and soon.
And of course, I gave them thelink for all of the diaconal
ministry training videos thatare there.
I uh so many rich resources andso many of the articles that
are there as well that theyfound very helpful.
(37:10):
And they were great discussionpoints.
The way that I like to teach,whether it's profession of faith
classes or training elders ortraining deacons, is you know, I
don't mind talking a littlebit, but I really prefer
answering questions and layingout in front of somebody a
discussion or an article or avideo and saying, let's watch
this and let's discuss thisthing.
What questions do you haveabout that?
(37:31):
Because then I'm reallyfocusing my teaching on their
need.
And of course, there's timeswhere I'll just deliver a
lecture, you know, kind of athing.
But those training videos areextremely helpful.
David Nakhla (37:41):
Yeah, good, good, good.
Yeah, those are all thosevideos that Mark was mentioning
are from our previous NationalDiaconal Summit in 2022.
We'll put it in here a littleplug for our next one is June 25
to 27, 2026.
And be sure to have yourdeacons there.
We'll have another great slateof speakers.
(38:02):
But all those talks from ourprevious summits and even this,
especially this last summit, areall available on our on our
website, opccdm.org.
And and we're glad to see themused.
And also, even Mark, your kindof your syllabus that you put
together.
I think we have that eitherposted somewhere on our website
or we can make that available.
(38:23):
If you want to plagiarizeMark's training, I'm sure he'd
be happy to have you do that.
Mark Winder (38:29):
Please do if it's helpful.
David Nakhla (38:30):
Yeah.
So, Mark, this is a little bitof a tangential, but I gotta
bring it up because you'rethinking about lots of things in
that conversation around thefire pit.
I wanted to hear again when wetalked, you explained you began
something you called the fivecommittees and the four P's.
What are those again?
And sure.
(38:51):
How did those shift?
Mark Winder (38:52):
Well, a little bit of background, if you don't
mind.
One of the things that got myattention when you were
speaking, when you were talkingto the church planters there at
the training conference, is thefact that this really kind of
struck me.
We give mission worksoverseeing sessions, but we
don't give them overseeingdeacons.
So how do we compensate forthat?
You know, as I mentionedearlier, if the communion of
(39:15):
saints is enhanced, or even ifit's effected by people serving,
how do you facilitate that in acongregation?
And one of the sections of thebook, Planning an Orthodox
Presbyterian Church, which youcan find on the Chemkey website,
one of the sections of thatbook is entitled Develop
Ministries of Mercy and Concern.
(39:36):
And that section notes the factthat a mission work has a
tremendous opportunity todemonstrate Christ's compassion,
right?
We identify needs in thecommunity, everything from
homelessness to taking care ofthe elderly, but how do you do
that?
And organizing that effortwould be an overseeing session
who is often at a distance,along with an organizing pastor
(40:00):
who is in some cases, this maybe his first call.
I mean, he's got ironseverywhere in the fire.
And quite a bit can fallbetween the cracks.
So I really wrestled with howdo you facilitate this?
And early on in our churchplant here, I proposed that we
appoint what I called actingdeacons, people who would act
(40:21):
the part, right?
Take on some of theresponsibilities, kind of like a
committee.
And the session didn't want todesignate that.
Understandably, you know, theythought the word acting deacons
would be confusing to people.
So we just let the matter drop,which I think is unfortunate.
And I should have worked maybea little harder to come up with
another way to get to it.
(40:43):
And in church plants that Iwork with, and frankly, in other
churches that I planted, Ireally wrestled with that
question how do you facilitatethis?
Ministries of mercies andconcern.
So in another comment that youmade, you referred to, and maybe
you just did this in passing,but it was like a giant neon
(41:05):
flashing sign in my brain.
You referred to a mercycommittee.
And don't ask me why, after twodecades, I didn't come up with
something that is frankly justthat simple, but that well,
brilliant.
It's a mercy committee.
And maybe it's only a matter ofsemantics, but call it a mercy
(41:27):
committee then.
Identify some folks in thecongregation who are willing to
serve, and then put together acommittee who can facilitate
that.
And in doing that, you areidentifying individuals who
eventually, when the churchorganized, may be fully and
formally trained and stand forelection as deacons.
(41:50):
That can be part of theirtraining.
As you know, when you have adeacon board already in place,
one of the best ways to bringalong other deacons is to have
basically deacon internships,right?
Um come join us and be adeacon, small D, you know, for a
while and come along.
And so the Mercy Committee,yeah, no kidding.
And it's like, well, it was oneof those no dumb moments.
(42:13):
And it's like, that's what weneed to do.
So specifically the fivecommittees, you know, that's
something that we put in placein a church that our church is
planting.
So we're planting a daughterchurch about an hour and 15
minutes north of us.
In fact, if I can plug it justa minute, if you're listening to
us and you're looking for agood church in the Jackson,
Tennessee area, ProvidencePresbyterian Church is a mission
(42:37):
work there.
And we're also, by the way,looking for an evangelist to go
there too.
So anyway, consider that.
But we put in place there inProvidence and Jackson four
committees.
And this is something that Iplan to develop more fully,
though I'm just, this issomething we've begun with, but
I want to develop these furtherfor perhaps other church plants.
(42:57):
And each of these committeeswill change over time a little
bit.
And when a church planterarrives, it will take on a
different form.
We have what's called a pulpitsupply committee that will
probably go away, you know, whena church planter comes.
But these committees will stillcontinue to perform a function
and that makes it easier for theevangelist because there's a
(43:18):
structure in place.
It also helps him not to haveto micromanage every detail, and
also it gives people a place toserve and be part of the
congregation.
When somebody has ownership inthe congregation in the service
of the congregation, they becomea vital part of it.
And they're also, by the way,more likely to stay.
But the four committees we putin place were a building
(43:40):
committee, a finance committee,pulpit supply committee, and an
outreach committee.
And the building committee doesjust what it sounds like.
They had defined a building,they're in charge of who cleans,
who sets up chairs, hymnals,you know, all that kind of
stuff.
Finance committee was in chargeof everything from, you know,
the initial, you know, bylaws,incorporating, setting a budget,
(44:01):
or at least, you know, having arecommended budget.
Of course, the overseeingsession is overseeing all this.
The procedures for countingmoney, making deposits, opening
bank accounts, all that goodstuff.
Pulpit supply committee.
This is before you have anorganizing pastor, and this is
finding folks who do pulpitsupply.
And the session obviouslyapproves those who are going to
be doing the pulpit supply, butthey would keep the schedule of
(44:22):
that.
I would probably call it ascheduling committee in the
future rather than pulpit supplycommittee.
And then an outreach committee,which should be fairly obvious,
right?
The church needs to be engagedin reaching out into the
community even before a churchplanner arrives.
So ordering materials, the OPC,we have tons of great little
tracks that you can order,wonderful brochures, going out
of the neighborhoods, promotingthe church, ordering signage,
(44:43):
things like that.
And those four committees thenreport to a liaison that meets
with the overseeing sessionbecause, again, there's no
organizing pastor yet.
And in this case, of course,it's the session of Wolf River
Presbyterian Church.
And we can see the work inprogress then of each of those
four committees.
So just about anything thatneeds to be done in the church
can be designated to one ofthose four committees.
(45:06):
And again, I'm I'm working ondeveloping that more fully.
And so far it's working verywell.
Our overseeing session isn'tovertaxed because needs are
assigned, tasks are assigned toone of those committees.
But at our last sessionmeeting, I asked the liaison
about forming a mercy committee.
That's the one element that wasmissing is the mercy committee.
(45:27):
None of those other committeesreally would address that.
Building finance schedule andoutreach.
Outreach maybe, but where's themercy committee?
So I hope to see that as wellin the mission work.
David Nakhla (45:38):
Just to give credit where credit's due, the
mercy committee was now my, Idid not dub that.
I first heard that used in ourKaramoja station of our Uganda
mission before having ordaineddeacons, which they're still
hoping and praying about, butthey did have significant need
to carry out mercy.
And so they actually hadestablished a mercy committee as
(46:01):
a stopgap measure till suchtime as the Lord would raise up
deacons in their midst.
So that's great.
And then you said somethingabout the four P's.
What are the four P's?
Mark Winder (46:10):
Yeah, and that's something that came out of
originally something I gave toour diaconate to these two new
deacons when, you know, thefirst meeting of the deacons,
you know, I gave them theiroriginal agenda.
You know, here's an agenda fora deacon's meeting.
Take it and run with us.
You know, do whatever you wantwith it.
It needs to be changed, buthere's a template you can start
with.
(46:30):
And they've kept the basicoutline.
And so I broke down their workinto four categories: people,
programs, policies, and place.
And again, maybe somewhatobvious.
Uh, first of all, people,right?
The needs of the people in thecongregation and even outside of
the congregation.
Specific people, what are theirneeds?
(46:50):
And so they still have thislist on their agenda: people who
are named and how are wemeeting their needs?
Are there expectant mothers inthe congregation?
Are there those who areundergoing hardship or whatever?
Those who are sick, are theybeing visited, and things of
that nature?
And so that's people programs.
You know, what programs wouldfacilitate fellowship and
activity in our church?
(47:11):
The men's study, the ladies'study, fellowship activities,
things of that nature, you know,activities for the kids.
And then policies, you know, Imentioned a little bit earlier,
the nursery, you know, policiesfor the nursery, policies for
security, you know, who's incharge of doing this, locking
doors, you know, cleaning up andthings like that.
And then place.
And of course, place isanything that's building
(47:32):
related.
Um, work days, connecting withthe landlord, fixing things.
And so they go through each ofthese categories, and pretty
much anything will fit intopeople, programs, policies, or
place.
And they've kept that outlinein their agenda and they've
changed the agenda, made itbetter because they're the ones
doing the work.
But those basic fourcategories, I think, have been
(47:53):
helpful.
David Nakhla (47:55):
Mark, we need a little write-up from you on the
four piece.
We need that on our website.
I love that.
I think that would resonatewell with any deacon to help
them organize their slate.
That's awesome.
Mark Winder (48:08):
Well, I will get in conjunction with the deacons.
Yeah, good.
And they may end up writing it.
David Nakhla (48:13):
Yeah, sure.
Any thoughts on how we as adenomination, or maybe
Presbytery for that matter,might highlight the value and
importance of the role ofdeacons in the health of the
church, even as you reflect onit?
It sounds like almost anepiphany in the last couple of
years, having many years inchurch planting, and it sounds
like your church was veryhealthy, B D before deacons, uh,
(48:37):
but now AD after deacons, itsounds like a light's gone on.
And do you have thoughts on howyou know we could continue to
highlight that, what you've evenexperienced?
Mark Winder (48:47):
Yeah, you know, there are so many resources now
compared to what there were 15or 20 years ago on the OPC
website, on the diaconalwebsite.
And as I was thinking aboutwhat I was going to talk about
as we were doing this, I wasthinking how helpful it would be
if there was a verystraightforward, easy way to get
(49:08):
information about signing upfor short-term missions and
disaster response.
And then as I was thinkingabout that, I got an email with
the disaster response video onHurricane Helene.
And there it is, right in myface.
So I would encourage any ofyour listeners, search for that
email in your inbox if youhaven't saved it.
It's from September 25th.
(49:29):
Download the video to show inyour Sunday school, follow the
links to the discussion guide,use that in your churches.
We're planning to do that hereat Wolf River on the 26th of
October.
And it's the information thatneeds to be put in front of
people.
I mean, we live in the world ofTikTok and YouTube, and there's
so much information in one eyeand out the other nowadays, just
(49:53):
so fast that presenting this,putting this in front of the
congregations, and you providethose things with regular
short-term missions, disasterresponse updates.
And now we have a good video toshow.
I don't know how in the worldyou do all the things you do,
but your communication has beenexcellent.
You readily send out emails,produce bulletin inserts.
We had one in our bulletin justthis past week of the
(50:15):
short-term missions bulletininsert.
If folks haven't downloaded,they're really well done
bulletin inserts.
The way that you have them isthey're printed two to a page,
front and back, so you can justprint them off and stick them in
the bulletins.
And you also have a sheet thatyou handed to our church
planters at the trainingconference entitled OPC Diaconal
(50:38):
Resources for Church Planters.
And it's not just for churchplanters.
Any listeners here, I mean, askfor this sheet.
I'm sure you wouldn't mindsending it.
It's on one sheet of paper.
All of the, maybe not even allof them, but many of the
resources for church planters.
Utilize those things.
You even have QR codes onthere.
(50:58):
You can point your phone and beconnected.
And then several ways that yourchurch can be connected.
And I'll be using that as wellto connect our church in a more
meaningful way.
So look for those things, findthose things.
David Nakhla (51:11):
They're there.
Well, thank you for that.
So glad that Trish is lurkingin the background is our
producer, our communicationscoordinator who really makes all
these communication vehicleshappen.
She does such a great job.
And so we're thankful for herservice.
And I'm sure it's encouragingfor her to hear that these are
appreciated and are being used.
(51:31):
Thanks for that plug for thatemail.
Many of you will not havereceived that email because it
actually went to ministers andelders.
And so you can ask your pastoror one of your elders if they
received it and if that'ssomething that could be used in
your church.
You can know that that's outthere.
That's something we we don't dothat often with regards to
making, it's almostcurriculumized, I guess you
(51:52):
could say.
But that was a uniqueopportunity.
And thank you for that plug,Mark.
Anything more you'd like to addon this important topic while
we have the attention of ourlisteners?
Mark Winder (52:02):
Well, just to say this, you don't need to wait to
have deacons in order to serve,or even in order to begin
training people to serve.
Go back to that passage inEphesians.
Ephesians is emphasizing as awhole Christ's riches being
received by all the saints.
And verse 7 of chapter 4 says,Each member was given grace.
(52:27):
And then in verse 16, Paulsays, Each one does his part.
So in verse 12, the pastorevangelists, they're training
each one to do that part ofservice.
So the task of specialministers, you know, that are
mentioned in Ephesians 4.11, isto be servants in that ministry
which is entrusted to the wholechurch.
(52:50):
So you don't need to wait tohave deacons to serve or begin
training people to serve.
And if you have deacons in thechurch, if you are deacons,
develop other deacons, otherservants.
And if you have deacons, lookto them for ways to serve.
And don't wait to do it.
I remember back in, I think itwas 2020, you had sent, I don't
(53:14):
remember the details of this, aprogram or something where you
encouraged folks to have abreakfast, kind of host a
breakfast, show this video kindof thing, get people involved.
And then COVID hit.
We had scheduled a date to dothat, and we ended up canceling
that planned breakfast.
But this is something that youdon't have to have a program to
do.
There's enough resources outthere that you can begin to be
(53:34):
involved.
So thank you for this and alsofor being willing to listen to
my enthusiasm about it as wewere gathered around the fire
pit and sitting at that lunchtable.
I appreciate your ministry, thework that you've been doing,
making so many resourcesavailable to our churches.
David Nakhla (53:50):
Well, thank you, Mark.
It's a great way to end.
If you enjoyed listening toMark's insights and hearing his
clear thinking on these andother matters, again, you can
listen to him more at theProclaiming Christ podcast.
Find that through the ReformForum's website.
And so thank you, Mark.
Thank you.
And just really beenencouraging to hear how the
(54:12):
Lord's been faithful in raisingup officers, his time for Wolf
River OPC.
Deacons, we hope this episodeis helpful to you and your
ministry to your local church.
As always, reach out if youhave any questions or
suggestions.
We actually have an email forthis podcast where we'd love to
hear your questions, yourinteractions with the things
(54:32):
that we bring to you.
That email is mail, M-A-I-L atthereformdeacon.org.
Mail at thereformdeacon.org.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Special word of thanks to ourproducer, Trish Dugan, who works
faithfully behind the scenes tobring this podcast to you.
Be sure to visit our website,thereformdeacon.org, where
(54:53):
you'll find all our episodes,program notes, and other helpful
resources.
And we hope you'll join usagain soon for another episode
of the Reform Deacon Podcast.
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