Diaconate & Testimony in global society This document was originally published by the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken (Christian Reformed Churches), a church denomination in the Netherlands.
Church congregations regularly encounter a contradiction made between diaconal and missionary activities. The basis of this contradiction is often sought in the contradiction between "words" and "deeds".
1. The tension between testimony and service - a retrospective Concerning the relation between ‘words’ and ‘deeds’, the second half of the 20th century is mainly characterized by polarization. This polarization caused a tendency in our churches to characterize anything that just resembled activism for a tiny bit, as non-Biblical and suspicious. On the other hand, it was said that a lack of attention for our actions means that God’s word isn’t taken seriously. Some people proposed to quit our diaconal activities for about five years to create room to focus on the core business of the Church: preaching and understanding the Bible. For them, this means that the churches' efforts should mainly focus on evangelisation: to do everything possible to sustain groups of Bible readers within the congregations. According to them, diaconate hasn’t been effective, because it didn’t add even one soul to our congregations! ‘Diaconate, even with a touch of mission, isn’t the right way to become the face of the church in the world. On the other hand, there are voices that insist that if you put the diaconate on a second place, you lose meaning as a church. Objections could be made to both comments / extremes. But both may well be justified in their own context. Both positions resound something of the unity between word and deed. At the same time, you recognize something from the one-sidedness that characterized the discussion of the last century: the tendency towards an overvaluation of the word and, on the other hand, the tendency to overemphasize our deeds. Someone involved in the unique challenges of urban churches said: ‘It’s a good thing to donate blood, but a church that forgets that she’s more than a social movement, is bleeding out.’ And: ‘We cannot provide water, if we don’t have water sources. So, from the beginning onwards, care for the poor should be an integral part of every new congregation. For this is a core task too.’ Despite the fact that the relation between ‘word’ and ‘deed’ is still a compelling matter, we do agree that this relation should be one of equality and reciprocity. After all, one-sided emphasis on one or the other can only lead to a misunderstanding of what God's Word wants to teach us. This becomes immediately apparent when we raise the question what is most important: word or deed? In that debate, ‘word’ is often spelled with a capital letter (referring to God’s word), while ‘deeds’ is deliberately spelled with a lowercase letter (as if deeds are less holy). We believe that such a discussion is meaningless, because this pair of words (i.e. word-deed) doesn’t constitute a contradiction, but they are closely related to one-another in Biblical terms. Both word and deed refer to living by faith. Of course, this requires some explanation. Our very first premise is that God's Word comes first and stands above everything. However, God's Word never stands on itself, it doesn't come without His acts. He said