Calling Orthodox Deacons

For a while now I’ve been thinking that it would be good to communicate with other Orthodox deacons. Sometimes there are questions I want to ask, and sometimes there are ideas that I’d like to ask others about.

Three deacons

I checked to see if there was an online forum for Orthodox deacons, and was glad to see that there was an Orthodox_Deacons mailing list on YahooGroups. I applied to join it, but there was no response. The last message was posted there more than two years ago, and attempts to contact the moderator have proved futile. It would be nice if it could be revived, but unless one can contact the moderator there is not much chance of that.

It might, however, be possible to start another mailing list if there is enough demand for it, and so I’m asking any Orthodox deacons who might be reading this to let me know in a comment below, or in some other way, whether they think it is a good idea, and if you would be interested in taking part.

It would primarily be an English-language list, but deacons from anywhere in the world who can communicate in English would be welcome to take part.

I have found that the ministry of deacons tends to be neglected. Parishes often say that they are short of priests, but I’ve never heard a parish say it is short of deacons. Bishops say that their dioceses are short of priests, but they rarely say that they are short of deacons. For anyone interested, I’ve written about this in another blog post at Deacons and diaconate | Khanya.

Another three deacons

I hope that on such a mailing list we would be able to share information about resources that would be useful for the ministry of deacons, and news of what deacons in different places are doing.

So if you are a deacon, and would be interested in joining such a list, please e-mail me: Deacon Stephen Hayes, or you can leave a comment in the comments section below. And please mail or tweet or otherwise pass on this link to other deacons you may know. You should be able to do this by clicking on one of the buttons below. Even if you aren’t a deacon, and you’ve read this far, you can still pass this on to some deacons that you know.

And one last thing: if you are on Twitter, and tweet anything that may be interesting or useful to deacons, or news about diaconal ministry, if you use the hash-tags #deacons or #diaconate, they will probably end up in a weekly digest of Twitter links called #Diaconate. You can click to see a sample. It will only collect tweels with links to web pages, and as a weekly digest it can be quite useful,

Update

Since several people have expressed interest in such a forum, it has now started. It is called Orthodox Diaconate.