Equipping servants in the New Testament church

An equipping servant is a proposed term for the New Testament diakonos function: translocal servants who move between churches to strengthen, encourage, and equip believers for the work of ministry, interdependent with local elders. The later office of deacon as a local board is a different role. In Church-Centric Bible Translation, those servants equip the lingual church for translation and formation, and they leave local leadership in place.

Definition

equipping servant: a proposed term for the New Testament diakonos function: translocal servants who move between churches to strengthen, encourage, and equip believers for the work of ministry, interdependent with local elders. Not the later “office of deacon” as a local board. People named diakonos in the NT include Epaphras, Tychicus, Timothy, Phoebe, Apollos, and Paul.

Tim Jore, The Equipping Servants of the Early Church (2025). See also equipping servant.

Why it matters for the church

The New Testament church is a multiplying familial network. Local elders shepherd churches in a place, and translocal servants move among those churches so the family stays connected, established in the faith, and able to grow.

Church-Centric Bible Translation follows that same shape, aiming at establishing the church in sound doctrine with Bible translation as a means. The lingual church still needs people who can train, resource, and encourage it for translation and theological formation. If those people take the work away, the church does not grow in capacity. Without someone to equip, the church lacks training, tools, and open resources it can use. Equipping servants build up the church so believers do the work of ministry themselves.

How it works

The New Testament yields two leadership functions that do different work, though most English Bibles obscure the distinction by rendering the same Greek word as “deacon” in some verses and “servant” or “minister” in others.

	Local elders	Equipping servants
Scope	A locality	Multiple localities
Work	Shepherd, oversee, teach, protect	Strengthen, encourage, equip, connect
New Testament language	presbyteros, episkopos, poimainō	diakonos, and related servant terms
Relation	Stay with the flock	Move among churches; do not replace elders

Epaphras served Colosse, Laodicea, and Hierapolis while Tychicus carried news and encouragement between churches, and Timothy strengthened Thessalonica, Corinth, and Ephesus at different times. Phoebe served Cenchreae and was sent to Rome. Paul planted, Apollos watered; Paul called both diakonoi and also called himself a diakonos of the gospel and of the church.

The relationship runs both ways: equipping servants appoint and encourage elders, and elders send them. Paul left Titus in Crete to appoint elders in every town (Titus 1:5–9), and once that unfinished work was done, the church’s own elders took up shepherding the flock. In Philemon, Paul has standing to command and chooses to appeal as a partner, serving among siblings.

The church translates, checks, and owns the work, while unfoldingWord and ministries like it make tools, training, and open resources available and leave the translation with the church.

Scripture

Jesus taught that greatness is service: “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,” and “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:43–45, BSB).

Christ then gives people to the church so the saints do the work of ministry: “And it was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for works of ministry and to build up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11–12, BSB). He gives those gifts so the church can build itself up in unity and maturity, and so the body is not tossed by every wind of teaching (Eph. 4:13–16).

Paul also names a field of influence: he will not boast beyond the limits God assigned, and he will not claim labor that belongs to someone else (2 Cor. 10:12–18): “We, however, will not boast beyond our limits, but only within the field of influence that God has assigned to us” (2 Corinthians 10:13, BSB). An equipping servant who trains a church to translate stays inside that field and leaves the church’s work and credit with the church.