As I stated in a comment in the last post, pastors are a very important part of the Church. They are one of the five groups of people listed in Ephesians 4:11 that were given to the Church by God "so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." Sounds pretty important to me.
A quick study in the New Testament on pastors might surprise you though. In most translations the word pastor or pastors is actually only used once (in Eph 4:11) and literally means "shepherd." There are other words that people assume mean the same thing as pastor, like bishop or overseer, but even if you include them, they are only mentioned a handful or so times to describe a person other than Jesus.
Perhaps most surprising of all, I have yet to come across a passage of Scripture that identifies any individual (other than Jesus) as any of those things, pastor, bishop, or overseer; and I have yet to see anything that would indicate that every local church had a pastor. In Revelation, the messages to the seven churches never include a single word about pastors, though there is a mention of false apostles. In Acts 13, the church at Antioch had prophets and teachers, and five of them were named, though Paul and Barnabas were set apart and sent to others. Even the church at Jerusalem had a council made up of apostles and elders (see Acts 15).
Can I make a statement that may seem a bit heretical? During the first days of the Church, I don't think every church had a pastor, certainly not as the leader of the church. I think leadership was usually done with a team approach, utilizing apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons. I don't think every church had all of these people, but I don't think a church was supposed to have one man in leadership of a local church either, no matter what title you give him.
I think we have done a great disservice to pastors. They have a very special place and role in the Church, but we have elevated them far beyond where they are supposed to be. We have almost completely neglected our responsibility as priests and ambassadors and have decided to pay pastors to do almost everything for us. Is it any wonder that we are seeing so much turmoil among our pastors? For example (as cited in Death by Church by Mike Erre):
- 80% of pastors believe that pastoral ministry affects their families negatively
- 90% feel they are inadequately trained to cope with ministry demands
- 50% of pastors' marriages will end in divorce
- 70% constantly fight depression
- 23% confess inappropriate sexual behavior with someone in the church
- 1500 pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches
- The majority of pastor's wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry
Maybe it is time to seek the Lord and seek the Scriptures to find out what the leadership of the Church and of local churches is supposed to be. Maybe it is time for the followers of Jesus to be the Church, the body of Christ. Maybe it is time to show our pastors that we are done being spectators and bench-warmers and that we are really going to seek the Lord and do what He says. I can't think of anything more encouraging to do for our pastors than that. What about you?
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