Deaconess

[JSM17]

I just recently stumbled upon a web site for the church that had in their line up "Deaconesses" I asked them about it and this was their response:

Our brother Paul (the apostle) referred to Phoebe (sp) in Romans 16, the word he chose to refer to her is the female for of the same word as its male counter part. so it seems reasonable to scripture recognize that the female did have labors of service in the 1st century church. many churches have woman servants but choose to call them by some other title or name or worse have their husband elected to a position of service knowing full well that his wife is the one who is truly serving.

So I went and looked at the word in the greek writ and in the NA text it is the word:NT:1249
diakonos (dee-ak'-on-os); probably from an obsolete diako (to run on errands; compare NT:1377); an attendant, i.e. (genitive case) a waiter (at table or in other menial duties); specially, a Christian teacher and pastor (technically, a deacon or deaconess):

Is it scriptural, is loosed for us to position women for this title?

[grand_puba]

We have a little on the subject here:

http://www.insearchoftruth.org/articles ... rship.html

Please see the first "Question" in the above article.

We have another article about deacons in general here:

http://www.insearchoftruth.org/articles/deacons.html