Read the Standard Texts
There is not a huge bibliography on the diaconate in the Episcopal Church. This is good news if your time is limited. It is a little frustrating if you want to push deeper. The next level of work is international and ecumenical study and a lot of hard to find scholarly articles.
The Standard Texts Are:
- Ormonde Plater, Many Servants; An Introduction to Deacons. Cowley Press. This is readable, clear, well researched.
- James Barnett, The Diaconate: A Full and Equal Order. Trinity Press. More history, more scholarly. A lot of detail.
- John N. Collins, Deacons and the Church: Making the Connections Between New and Old. Morehouse Publishing. This book draws on a body of work Collins has done in probing the fuller meaning of the Greek words with the stem diakon – of which diakonia, traditionally translated as “service” is a key one. Collins looks at the secular as well as the sacred uses of the language in the early Church and recovers for us a dimension of diaconal ministry that is “agency,” intermediation, and advocacy.
