The word for deacon is diakonos in the original language. W.E. Vine says deacon “primarily denotes a “servant,” whether as doing servile work, or as an attendant rendering free service, without particular reference to its character. The word is probably connected with the verb dioko, “to hasten after, pursue” (perhaps originally said of a runner).

Deacons are basically servants. They are viewed as servants in reference to their tasks and as slaves in reference to their master. The common designation of one who carried out the orders of a king was “deacon.” Our English word “deacon” is a transliteration of the original word, diakonos. The kind of service rendered by the seven who were selected to serve tables of the widows is indicative of the kind of work they are assigned to do (Acts 6:1-7).

The situation in Acts 6 was remedied by an apostolic decree for the church to choose seven men from their number who were “of good report, full of the Spirit and of wisdom” (verse 3). The apostles set these selected men over the task of providing daily necessities of widows, which had become a source of unrest in the early church. The qualifications given by Paul to Timothy (1 Tim. 3:8-13) reflect the general qualifications in Acts 6:3, though in more detail to Timothy.

The late brother H.E. Phillips makes this comment: “The word deacon has a very ordinary meaning in the New Testament. The Greek term from which this English word comes is used some 30 times in the New Testament, but only five times is it translated Deacon. There are two different senses in which the Greek term is used, and translated by different English words. It is first used in a general or common sense and translated by the English Servant or Minister. In the second sense it is used in a special or official meaning and translated by the term Deacon. In the general use of the word means nothing more than ‘a waiter, attendant, servant, minister’.” (Scriptural Elders and Deacons, page 256).

Ethelbert W. Bullinger defined diakonos, “a servant, attendant, waiter at table. (Derivation uncertain, but probably from deh’ew, to run to serve.) The main thought in the word is service rendered to another, the servant of him whom the labour benefits.” A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament, page 205). On the expression, “use the office of” he comments, “to serve, render service, to wait upon; in its narrowest sense, to wait at table, but generally to do any one a service, to care for one’s need.”

It is a mistake to think of Deacons as “overseers” of anything in the local church. They are under the same oversight as a preacher, evangelist, teacher, or any member of the local church.