SPEAKER_01 0:00

I think there's a difference between the way you help a walk-in versus someone who's a member of the household of faith. Right? The member of the household of faith. That's what the diaphragm was initially created for, really. They were working within the body of believers. But as an extension from the Great Connection, the De Economic gets involved in this type of mercy ministry as well by witnessing to walk into the unchurch or the unbeliever.

David Nakhla 0:31

Welcome to the Reformed Deacon, a casual conversation with topics specifically designed to help local Reformed Deacons. There are nearly a thousand deacons in the OPC alone, so let's take this opportunity to learn from and encourage one another. We're so glad you could join us. Let's jump into our next episode. My name is David Knocklin, and today on the Reformed Deacon Podcast, I'm going to sit down with a few deacons to discuss case studies or situations that you as a deacon might find yourself having to address at your local church. I'll describe the situation to our panel of deacons and we'll listen as they discuss their responses to each case. These are fictitious situations, but I think you'll find them very realistic and feasible. I hope after listening, you'll come away with some suggestions for responding and following up when this or a situation like it should come up at your church. We have three deacons today on the podcast. Doug Voss coming to us from Oakland Hills Community OPC in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Thanks. John Voss from Covenant OPC in Orland Park, Illinois. Nice to see you. And Chris Sudlow from Bethel OPC in Wheaton, Illinois. Gentlemen, thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

Pleasure. Thanks for having us.

David Nakhla 1:51

So let's get started on our first case. Let's talk about Jill. Jill calls the church and speaks to the pastor briefly about her need for monetary help from the church. He tells her he will contact a deacon and pass on her information. He calls you one of the deacons of the church. You make an initial contact with Jill, and she talks about her homelessness, but that she anticipates a solution to that if she can get a specific amount of money. Jill consistently calls herself a Christian and claims to love the Lord and seems to be a good person. Where do you go from here?

SPEAKER_03 2:30

My first reaction would be to tell her that we have two deacons each Sunday after worship that will meet with her, that we invite her to church on Sunday, and that we will plan if she comes to spend time with her and meet with her, have a conversation. I think places where I've seen deacons get into not well, trouble might be a little strong, but off the track a little bit is by being a uh fireman that is ready to jump seven days a week to help with this with a need. And it's always presented as an emergency, but it never really is an emergency. So that that would be my first line on that. I agree 100% with you.

David Nakhla 3:20

One of the things I've always thought about is that these emergencies, and some some may be emergencies, that's let's grant that. They're oftentimes presented as emergencies. And one of the things I've reminded myself is that these quote unquote emergencies did not develop overnight. And yet it's presented to you like you are the, you know, you're the silver bullet, you need to solve this right now. And um and yet it, you know, this did this developed over most likely it developed over a long period of of time. Can you think of ways to validate the story? So she does so she does say, she says, Great, I'll come on Sunday when the two deacons are there, and you're one of those two deacons. How do you where do you go from there?

SPEAKER_01 4:09

So it says if she gets a specific amount of money, she's she won't be homeless anymore. I would assume then that that meant that she needed a deposit or she needed rent money of some sort, right? So you got to verify who the landlord is, find out where it is, talk to the landlord. Does she actually have a place lined up that if she has rent money? And then what is her plan to pay the rent? There's a limit on how much you're willing to even give on the front end of this. Maybe at a 50, 60 bucks or something for come on, was it the security deposit or something or towards that? But what is the long-term plan? Setting somebody up for one night is not a long-term plan. And at that point, that's when you can call sources for homeless shelters and the like.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

If you're looking for longer term, then you've got to find out what her plans are, but also the plans of the person that was going to be her long-term solution.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

Yeah. What I might do, so you know, a couple deacons sit down with with Jill and have a conversation with her. Let's say in this scenario, she makes it to church, she worships with you, and she sits down after church and you have a private conversation, two deacons with Jill. So typically we would have a policy that we would only give a small amount of money, 50, maybe, maybe $150, something. It's it's in our policy manual, and each church should determine you know what their policy is without having to talk to all the other deacons, right? So two deacons can make a decision and give some money, but in order to do more, we got it. All the deacons have to talk. So this typically how we make any decision to spend any of any larger amount of money is all the deacons need to decide. Okay. So now she's still saying she's homeless, she needs money, or she needs rent money. Um, what I would do sometimes is tell people, you know what? People in this church, we've helped people and paid all of their rent, but they're members at this church, right? Or they've had a broken down car and we've actually paid quite a bit of money to fix their car. We've had another person in our church living in the inner city of Detroit, and they wanted to get out of Detroit, and we helped them refurbish a home on the outskirts of Detroit. So we're willing to actually help people with cars and money and rent and refurbishing homes and all kinds of stuff. But these people actually talk to us every week. They come here and worship with us. So if you're, I mean, I'm saying you might get to this point if you're sensing resistance that they don't want to tell you anything about their family, they don't want to tell you anything about their situation, and say, Well, let me tell you a few stories. You know, we've helped people with a lot more money than a hundred bucks, you know, twelve hundred dollars, three thousand dollars. But these are people who we've known for a year or we've gotten to know them. They come and worship with us every Sunday and they wanted help, and their life was messed up, right? And they wanted help. And so we started helping them. Every week we would help them a little bit, and then we figured out how to help them even more. So, but do you want that kind of help? And sometimes they go, No, I don't want that kind of help. I don't want you in my business, you know, I don't want you to get to know me. But basically, it's you you gotta give a testimony of that. The church is very loving, the church gives away a lot of money to people, but it's people that are worshiping with us, they love Jesus, they want to repent of their sins, they want to get out of the difficult situation, maybe they want to go to a financial peace class, you know, sit through, watch some videos about getting out of financial trouble. Do you want your life to be better financially the rest of your life, or do you want to just kind of always have to have money problems the rest of your life? I mean, you just find out what they really want. And some people they don't want that kind of help. But if they do, then you can offer them a lot more help typically.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

So I think there's a difference between the way you help a walk-in versus someone who's a member of the household of faith, right? The member of the household of faith, that's what the diaconate was initially created for, really. Yeah, they were working within the body of believers, but as an extension from the Great Commission, the deaconate gets involved in this type of mercy ministry as well by witnessing to walk into the unchurched or the unbeliever. But then the approach that you use is a little bit different between the two as well. For the walk-in and the un and that um nominal believer or whatever, but the the person that's really not a member of a church, that's where you have to try to really build a relationship with them because the member of the household of faith, you already have somewhat of a relationship with them, and you can work with them from coming at it in the same direction in the same way. Whereas the walk-in is different. So if you're gonna help the walk-in, then the goal of helping the walk-in is if they continue to need help and they want that help, now we begin to really build a relationship with you as well. And at that point, then we get everybody, we would get everybody involved, not just not just the other a couple of other deacons of the DIC, full DIC in it, but now we start getting and assigning an elder as well in that in the in that and establishing that relationship. Because now we're gonna start talking about word and deed, and we're gonna have the word being administered just like the deeds being administered.

SPEAKER_03 10:03

Yeah, I would agree with uh all of that. Um in terms of um, I like the way Doug framed it. I usually frame it the other way, where you know, if you're if if the ask is that magnitude or or it's a big ask like that, and it's well beyond what we've laid out in our policies for a walk-in, I would let them, I would let Jill know that at the very, very beginning of the process, say, you know, we are not set up to provide that level of help for someone that is not a regular attender or member of the church. Um, we are able to do that. And I think you get to the same qualification that Doug described, but letting getting your parameters of what you can do and what you can't do, and you're still desiring to help up front, I think sets clarity to the process and gets you faster to either you know having this person not really wish to be involved with you or your church, or coming alongside you and your church and and building uh building that forward.

David Nakhla 11:15

I think it's fun on this call to even see the the plurality take shape as you as you hear one another and interact with, you know. I mean, that's that's the beauty of the plurality of the deacons is that you know we we look at things from different angles and so you know to to react and respond to to one another. Let's move to our final case study today, and that's on Henry. It's a deacon meeting night, and a couple of you are talking in the parking lot. Hopefully, not too not too late. A car pulls in, and it's a a guy and a girl, and the girl is young, young looking, she's crying. The guy rolls down his window and says, Are you a church that helps people? After you encourage him to share, and he says that he has gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and they can't tell their parents, and they don't know where to go for help. They're scared, she's not feeling well, but they don't have insurance or money. What do you do?

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Yes, we're a church that helps. Go home, call, talk to mom and dad, both moms and dads, because that's what parents are for, and we can't we're not gonna intervene in something like that. Maybe give some advice um information in our particular, I'm sure it's all over the place where there's a price, some sort of a pregnancy aid center um that you can give information to them for or about, but I would do everything within my power to tell them to go back home by mom and dad or moms and dads and talk with them because that's what they're there for.

David Nakhla 12:58

But my dad's gonna kick me out of the house if I tell him this. You don't know that. You don't know my dad, but you don't know my dad.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Um, but you'd be surprised at what your father does because he loves you.

David Nakhla 13:13

You don't know my dad, he's gonna kick me out, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Um yeah, it's interesting. Um we our church supports a couple local crisis pregnancy centers, um, you know, places where they can go get a um they can they can go get help counseling about about this unplanned pregnancy. So that would be one thing. I swear I might disagree with John a little bit. I mean, this is this is like you said, David, it's like um it's a bunch of deacons talking together, right? And uh you're talking in the parking lot, and deacons kind of bounce ideas off each other and try and figure out like what are you gonna do in this scenario? Because our church actually supports a brother that his full-time ministry is standing in front of Planned Parenthoods and stuff like that, and uh preaching the gospel. And he he stands around in front of abortion clinics here in Michigan and uh and preaches the gospel every day, four to eight hours a day. And so if the dad is not a loving dad and he's gonna, I'm bringing you down there tomorrow morning and you're gonna get an abortion. I don't I don't want to send him home to that dad. So that's see, John, if if we were two deacons parked talking in the parking lot, we'd be having a conversation like this, right? We'd be like, Hey, John, what do you think we should do? I think we should call triple A pregnancy center, or you know, I think we should do this, or I think we should do that. And we'd kind of talk it through and figure out what to do next, right? Um, so yeah, it's a difficult situation. And uh, you know, we'd probably want to ask some more questions. Well, like, where are your parents? You know, what's why are you afraid to tell them and find out what the answer to that is. So, but again, you know, I would call my buddy that preaches out in front of abortion clinics, and I would say, hey, we've got somebody here that needs your help. He's not a deacon, but he's kind of like an evangelist that our church supports. You know, I would say because he knows a lot more about resources for somebody if they're they need to stay stay at a place for a while because maybe they need to stay somewhere for 12 months while they're pregnant, you know, and when they first had the baby. And I don't know who to call, but I would call him, right? So again, you know, thinking through all these scenarios, it's good to have some answers ahead of time. Somebody you can call, right? And if you don't have those, then the deacon should talk, you know, spend 15 minutes at each deacon's meeting saying how are we going to handle a situation like this? I guess that's why we're doing this podcast, right? Is to try to figure out in the town that you live in, what would you do?

David Nakhla 16:03

There's also a thing called Google, isn't there? Yes. In our pocket. Yep. We've got resources at our fingertips.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

I would I would take a situation like that and say it's it's probably more appropriate for a pastoral response than a diaconal response. There's obviously deep spiritual things going on in that situation. Um, and it's almost a little above our pay grade, I think. I would I would try to, I mean, I'm not saying disagreeing with John or Doug at this point, but those two things. And then it's a third, I would I would want my pastoral staff to engage in that kind of a situation before I took a lot of steps forward.

David Nakhla 16:45

So in this scenario, they've they've just pulled up. What does that look like, Chris?

SPEAKER_03 16:50

I would say that you know, we can make an appointment to sit down with our pastor. Uh, he's not here tonight. We just finished our deacons meeting. We can reach out to him in the morning. We can set a time for you guys to come and meet with him if you'd like to have some at least brief counseling. I'd follow up with both Doug and John as well. You know, if there's let them know that there's that, those pregnancy crisis centers are there for a reason. They're very helpful. Um, we need to slow down with this process and and think slowly here.

David Nakhla 17:24

De-escalate. Isn't that what you said before? De-escalate.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

Try, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Yeah. So, I mean, looking at the scenario with Henry and his pregnant girlfriend, uh, they come, they come in the church parking lot and they say, Hey, my girlfriend's pregnant, they can't tell their parents, and they don't know where to go for help, right? So just by us slowing down a little bit and saying, Well, we know a couple of places where you can get help for situations like this. Because you're telling me you don't know where to go. Hey, we've seen this before. Don't worry. Hey, I'm a grandpa, I got I got 12 grandkids, I know what to do, you know. Don't worry about it. Excellent. So it's gonna be better in the morning. Let's let's let's pray together right now in the church parking lot. And then there you go. What Chris said, let's let's set you up. You can talk to the pastor. You've got some places you can go for help. So, yeah, it seems like a crisis tonight, but tomorrow morning it's gonna be better. Okay, God's mercies are new every morning.

David Nakhla 18:24

So you'd want to get their in contact info, right? Be sure to, as you said, put that in the hands of our pastor, maybe, and you give them yours too, and give them your contact info, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Well, you'd have to ask first of all. I mean, okay, the scenario will I'll let me follow through on your scenario. So she doesn't feel well. Why? You know, is it more is it morning sickness, or is it now we haven't eaten in two days? We and we're from we've come from New Jersey and we're in Chicago. Okay, if you you you'll have to start asking some of those questions as well. Where are you from? That kind of thing. Because yeah, maybe you're right, maybe there is an extension of immediate some sort of immediate mercy work because they're not from around the area. Maybe uh maybe use the term, I hate to say maybe they've overreacted and they took off and they ran and now they've caused an even bigger situation and a bigger problem. So, yeah, maybe you have to spend a little bit more time with them and and asking if they need anything else. But if you're just if it's just that uh it's spur of the moment and we don't know what to do, okay. Like like you said, slow it down, de-escalate. It's not gonna be bad in the morning, it's gonna get better. Yeah, it always does, and then gets some information to them and from them so that there can be follow-through.

David Nakhla 19:58

So, John, let's uh let's go with your your situation a little bit further. So, yes, it turns out they've they live actually in New Jersey, they've been driving from Chicago, they're running low on money. It's cold outside. Come back in the morning. What what are you what are you gonna do now?

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Now we start looking for help around within that within our church. Does somebody have you know, I'll I'll throw myself in there. Okay, so I'm I'm basically we're we're empty nesters. We got a couple of rooms. I need your mom and dad's phone number. Again, I'm gonna go back to parents, but I need your family's phone numbers, I need information to let so that you can let them know that you're okay and where you're at, and then maybe they're gonna come. Maybe I have to give them a place of respite. Um obviously they're not married. No, I'm not putting them in a hotel room together. So now I gotta figure something else out, and maybe that's the way that it ends up having to work. If there's people within your church, kind of like Doug said, you know, you got to have your resources, and uh maybe part of that is within your own church.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

I feel like we never have enough resources, but we're always trying to find more and we're trying to think ahead because you run into some situations, you're like, wow, what are we gonna do? But then you try and you remember those and you try and come up with a better answer next time. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:35

You know, this scenario is very sort of shocking and uh you know, kind of really putting you on the spot, right? You're just coming out of a deacon's meeting and this rolls into your parking lot. Um, I think all three of us have sort of responded with the assumption that they've given us accurate information. You know, it's almost like the more serious it is, the easier it is to forget to just say, wait a second, let's let's slow down here. Is this really happening? You know, right, that's right. Uh so it's you gotta sort of just I guess try to be ready for that. And I think some of that comes with time.

David Nakhla 22:19

Well, and I I think it goes back to what we talked about before that again, many situations are presented as urgent, urgent, urgent. And a diaconate having a plan and a procedure, a standard protocol helps to bring, you know, so let's de-escalation, let's slow down, let's go through our steps. And that's where you where you'll do exactly what you said, Chris. I mean, you'll all sudden realize that maybe this is all bogus and this is they actually live down the street and they're making all this up just to get some you know, quick cash out of these guys who stand in the stand in the parking lot or whatever. So well, thank you, John, Chris, Doug. It's been fun to interact and see you interact with one another. And I'm sure that the deacons listening to this will will be challenged and encouraged and uh resonate with the ideas discussed and hopefully be encouraged in that. And to our listeners, thanks for listening today as we discuss these cases. We hope you came away with some ideas of how you can serve within your local church. We hope to be able to bring you new case studies from time to time. So stay tuned for more and let us know. You like them by subscribing, sharing, and giving us feedback from your podcast player. If you have a case you'd like one of our panels to discuss, let us know by emailing diaconalministries at opc.org or by going to opccdm.org and hovering over the podcast in the menu and go to podcast feedback and topic suggestions. Thanks for joining us. Go to our website, thereformdeacon.org. There you will find all our episodes, program notes, and other helpful resources. And please make plans to join us again next month for another episode of the Reform Deacon Podcast.