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The
Diaconate in the Diocese of New Jersey:
Resources
Lifting Up the Servants of God: The Deacon, Servant Ministry, and the Future of the Church, by Thomas Ferguson
The Deacon in the World Today The 1970's and 1980's witnessed a phenomenal resurgence of the deacon within the Episcopal Church. By the 1990's the number of deacons was nearly double that of the previous decade. Deacons function in almost every imaginable setting within the Episcopal Church. They are often categorized three ways.
Many function as parish deacons, leading, modeling, and encouraging the diaconal ministry of all the baptized. Deacons can be found in urban cathedrals such as Grace Cathedral in San Francisco as well as in the smallest of rural missions in Nevada, and everywhere in between. It is the dream of some bishops that there be at least two deacons in every congregation.
Some are institutional deacons who work as chaplains in prisons, for law enforcement teams and firefighters, in hospitals, hospices, and in schools.
A few are diocesan deacons working with and for their bishops in a variety of staff and leadership roles. In the Diocese of New Jersey, for example, the Venerable Carol Stoy, Deacon, serves as Archdeacon for Deacons.
The above is but a rough outline of the many and varied ways in which deacons serve in the church. In all that they do, today's deacons are centered on fulfilling the role as an image of Christ, called and sent to serve in the world and mobilizing the baptized for service. This was Jesus? ministry and something which Ignatius of Antioch recognized eighteen hundred years ago