Many years ago, it became public at church that one deacon (now in glory!) had nominated an old friend for the next elections to the diaconate. The nominee was a nice enough fellow, and had done lots of repair work for the church, but he was never at the prayer meeting, and I seriously doubted his ability to lead us in prayer helpfully at the Lord's Table.
(The situation is different now. A name has to be approved by either the church secretary or the pastor before the owner of it can be put to the church for voting on.) Faced then with what to me was no small problem, I said nothing to the church secretary or even to my wife, but waited on the Lord for light.
When it came to the members meeting, I said: 'A number of friends have joined the church since last we met in this way, to whom those willing to serve as deacons are names without faces. To enable the new members to vote intelligently, I'm going to ask each candidate to come forward in turn (alphabetical order) and tell us something of what the Lord has been saying to them through his Word in their daily Bible reading, or doing with them in their circumstances.'
