Q & A - Church Order
Questions 220 (COD Page 873)
How shall the church act towards calls for financial help of...for food and clothing? What–what act, what–what should the church do?
11 Now we realize that the church is responsible for its own, for our members here of the church, we are totally responsible as far as we have needs to supply them with. We are responsible for our own, that’s, steady, constant members of the tabernacle that come here and worship with us. We are duty bound to them, as our brothers and sisters who have proven to be our members of this gathering.
12 Now, we realize that there is millions tonight without food, without clothing, and we would love to be able to help the whole group of them, to do everything we could; but financially we cannot do that, we can’t support all the world. But we are duty bound to our own. And I think, in that, and then if we have anything left over that you would want to contribute to people who are not members here of this church, something that you’d want to give to them, it should be met between the board of the deacons.
13 The deacons is the one that–that has to meet this opposition, or this problem, rather; because that in the Bible when the dispute come up about food and clothing, and so forth, in the Book of Acts, they called the apostles in about it, and they said, “Go look out for yourself seven men of honest report, and full of the Holy Ghost that they might attend to these things. Because we will give ourself continually to the Word of God and in prayer.”
14 And it isn’t the pastor’s duty to look out to the...for the food and so forth. That’s supposed to be by the deacons. It isn’t the trustees, it is the deacons’ office to do this. And then this should be...Remember in the Bible, they was contributing to their own, the Greeks and the–and the Jewish, where the argument come up that one was getting a little more than the other, but it was people who had sold all their goods and had give it into the church for its support, and then to–to be divided out among them equally. And there was a little dispute come up, and there’s where we got our first deacons. And that’s one of their duties, is to do that.
15 I think that, as our own, as our own people, we should take care of them. And it should be turned in, any complaint, to the chairman of the deacon board, and then it should be met by the deacon board and see what they’re able to do about it. And all of those things which is clothing, and food, and financial help, or whatever it is, should come through the deacons. Then the deacons, when they decide that they are–that they are...what they’re going to do about it, then it should be presented then unto the–the treasurer, to see if the treasurer is able at this time to pay this certain amount of finance, or–or buy these clothing, or whatever it is to that. But the–the deacon board should meet on that, and it doesn’t go to the trustees or to the pastor. It’s a deacons’ thing, altogether.
Now, then, question number two.