My Work as a Deacon

As a basic format for this document, you should include:

1.  a BRIEF explanation of how you define or understand what it means to be a deacon

2. Your current sense of what your work or vocation will include (don't get overly hung up on this, because vocations and work responsibilities naturally change of the course of one's ministry. Trust what you currently believe your call to be. No one is going to hold it against you later if God calls you in a new direction that you didn't anticipate!

3. A clear articulation of how your sense of vocation matches up with what it means to be a deacon, with particular attention to the deacon's role as a bridge between the church and the secular world (also described as a bridge between the work of worship in the church, and the worship of work in the world).

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Again, you don't need to have a crystal ball providing a clear understanding of the next 30+ years of your ministry. Instead, you need to offer a good-faith account of how you feel God calling you to serve/what you feel God calling you to do in the next few years. This should be a major focus of your conversations with your mentor. If your mentor isn't able to help you with this discernment, you can connect with a different mentor (assigned or informal) from within the Order.

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A few more things to keep in mind.

• Vocation may or may not match up with paid employment. Remember Paul, who continued his paid trade as a tent-maker throughout his ministry as an apostle (what we'd call a church planter today). Obviously, we all hope that we can make a living doing what God has called us to do, but the paycheck is immaterial as far as your ordination process goes. If you're doing one thing to pay the bills, and your sense of calling is to something different that may be an unpaid/volunteer ministry at the moment, focus on the vocation rather than the employment. Certainly acknowledge that you are doing whatever it is you're doing to pay your bills, but try to paint a picture of your (God's) vision for the role you will play in ministries of word, service, compassion and justice.

• Avoid getting hung up on areas of uncertainty or things you think may shift in the future. This written statement is in the present tense: it's about what you're doing or called to do now (after all, no one's future is certain).

• Keep the purpose of the paper in mind as you write. That purpose is to show that you understand and intend to live out the unique calling of a deacon.