Now presenting the 50th-anniversary edition of this best-selling classic in Judson Press's Work of the Church series! This Second Revised Edition of The Work of the Deacon & Deaconess features new and updated content, reflecting the evolving diversity of ministry in the diaconate. Fans will find time-honored material about the traditional roles of the deacon, as well as additional ideas for tailoring the deacon's work to the needs of a growing congregation and changing community. In particular, this second revised edition includes greater differentiation between the roles of deacon (male and female) and deaconess in churches that maintain a distinction in those ministries.

The development of new forms of ministry, lay and ordained, has included worker-priests, now found in the Anglican Communion in a related form variously called Self-Supporting Ministry (SSM) or Non-Stipendiary Ministry (NSM). This book focuses on one of the most recent developments, the creation of Ordained Local Ministry. After chapters that consider preliminary questions of the nature of ministry, such as authority in the church and Holy Orders, Noel Cox argues that the crucial distinction between these and other forms of ministry is that the Ordained Local Minister (OLM) is overtly ordained specifically for a given locality (variously defined); they are a deacon or priest for a specific church, parish, benefice, or deanery, rather than of the universal church. Their introduction inevitably raises difficult ecclesiological questions, which Cox examines.