Deacons

Facilitating Brotherly Care within the Mount Calvary Family

If you become aware of a personal or material need for someone in our church, the following process is what the leadership has recommended and attempted to follow for many years. 

  1. Since the Lord made you aware of the individual’s need, first see if you are able personally to meet the need or whether you know of someone who can help (family member, friend, etc.).
  2. If you or others cannot personally meet the need, please share the need with your elder/deacon (SS class leadership).  Please do not assume that calling a need to the attention of a church leader or staff member will automatically resolve the need. It simply helps to set the leadership responsibilities in motion toward discerning how best to care for others. 
  3. Wherever appropriate, the class leadership will attempt to involve other members of the Sunday school class who have indicated a willingness and availability to be of help.
  4. If one class alone is unable to meet the need, class leadership is free to seek help from other classes.
  5. If the need is of a financial nature, please share the need with the person’s elder/deacon. The leadership will investigate the need together and attempt to discern a wise course of action.  If the need is something the elder/deacon feels the church should formally help with, they will make a recommendation to the elders.  If approved, the elder/deacon will personally distribute the finances to the person in need.
  6. The church leadership often wrestles with how best to help in the variety of situations that arise within our church family, balancing the variety of spiritual factors in our decisions and recommendations: 
    • We want to encourage individual members of the body to minister to other members of the body (Galatians 6:10; I John. 3:16-18).
    • We want the church as a whole to fulfill our family obligations to each other (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).
    • We want to display appropriate brotherly concern and sympathy for believers in need (1 Peter 1:22; 3:8-9a).
    • We want to be good stewards of the corporate resources over which we have oversight (Acts 20:28; I Timothy 5).
    • We want to handle material and financial situations in a way that will be for the spiritual good of the recipient (Hebrews 13:17).