An interesting thing about the Oriental Orthodox Church (pictures taken from this recent article) is the role of deacon and deaconess is thought of quite differently from the way the Orthodox Church does. This confuses many people as what we call a deacon with all his responsibilities is not comparable. In the way in which we historically set people aside for a role before they were allowed into the altar, they make young men deacons. To go into the altar you needed to be a taper bearers, readers, subdeacon, etc. and the Oriental Church throws all of that into different ranks of deacons. And for deaconesses, this permits women to sing in the choir.
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