It is the people of God who are the servants to one another and to the world who live out the gospel message. It is a contradiction in both form and substance, I believe, for ordained individuals to be the key leaders for the lived out ministry of the baptized people of God. Professional church workers are the educated and trained individuals who have the skills and the background to equip and assist the baptized people of God in their ministries. This ought not to be an ordained order. It ought to be, I believe, a licensed or appointed position in and for the community that is accepted and affirmed by the community for the time and place for which it is being exercised.
Baptism is the ordering for the servant ministers of the church.
We do not need to fight the battles for or against the diaconate. We need to just live out who we are without apologies. The old notions of office and authority and prestige, etc. will die of their own course. We do not need to waste energy, as I certainly have in the past, in trying to make a cogent argument for this particular idea. We just need to DO IT, and allow the relics of the past to die and crumble as we set our faces toward the future and to living out the Gospel for our time and place in history.