Pastors and Priests, Part 1

Today we are back to our study on church structure.

Elders is easy. Deacons is easy. Both are offices of the early church, both are ordained of God in those offices.

What is difficult is pastors and priests.

Scripture clearly states that WE have become the priests; we have no need therefore of any other priest, other than our GREAT HIGH PRIEST: JESUS, who is also the HEAD of the church. There is no official “office” of priest in the local church as established by the apostles, which means there is also no scriptural office for “pope”. Which means that both priest and pope came in at a later date, but were not biblical offices, or not "valid" offices as prescribed by the Bible. But, as I expect not everyone will want to hear that, I will skirt around that subject (for the moment) and move on to Pastor.

Now that I have probably irritated members of the Catholic, and Anglican, and Presbyterian faith and possibly some others with the above statements, on the office of priest, let me now go on to irritate the Protestants, of which I myself am one, although I was raised Catholic.

On the subject of the “office” of pastor, I have bad news: there is none. There is a spiritual gifting that produces a ministry of pastoring, but not an “office” of pastor. You might be saying about now, well aren’t we talking about the same thing? To which I have to say, not at all.

You see, we are not looking at spiritual gifts at the moment, as that is the second half of our study. Right now, we are looking at the structure of the church, as it was structured in the days of the apostles and as we hope it is still structured today so that we have biblically-formed churches versus what would be unbiblically-formed churches. I hope this is as important to you, as it is to me; for in everything that I do, I would hope that it lines up with the Word of God, or else why would I do it?

Again, you say, but what’s the big deal? Whether you call it a gift or an office, what’s the difference, a pastor is a pastor, and that’s not unbiblical.

The difference is this: if pastor is not an office, but only a gifting for a ministry, then why are there so many churches whose governing leaders are pastors, rather than elders and deacons only? Is that ordained of God or are we following a tradition of the past that was created by men rather than God?

My concern is that it might just be a tradition of the past created by men, and we just haven’t spent enough time in our Bibles to determine what the Word really says. Many times we carry on traditions in our churches (as I said earlier) that we don’t even know the origin of, or, whether they are biblical or unbiblical. Sometimes, we miss what the Word of God is saying, because we don’t seek it out fully; we just follow along with what everyone else is doing and has been doing for centuries. But that doesn’t make it scriptural. It could be we’re following something that was unscriptural as of perhaps 19 centuries ago, and remains unscriptural today.

Then again, maybe we believe sticking with what the current culture is doing is more important than following God’s Word? After all, nobody wants to “rock the boat,” unfortunately perhaps.

In my thirty something years as a Christian, I have actually seen churches run by one pastor, having either no elders, or having elders in place that were “yes” men to the pastor and having no real authority over that of the pastor, neither of which is scriptural! And all of those churches had serious problems in not keeping with the Word of God in all areas, and thus the sheep of those churches at some point became scattered, driven away by error. If a church is built or established or "structured" in biblical error in the first place, then it is very easy to allow more error in. "A little leaven, leavens the whole bunch" does it not?

As we have already discussed, man is frail. We have hearts that deceive us. We need each other! The Lord knew that which is why He put us into fellowship in churches in the first place! And who is more susceptible to frailty than one who is in primary leadership without peers equal in authority, such as many pastors are today? There are many walking-wounded (lost or confused sheep) because of those pastors, including the pastors themselves. All of which Jeremiah speaks of when he speaks of pastors in the only Old Testament usage of the term "pastor" (KJV only, there is no OT usage of "pastor" in NIV):

Jer. 23:1-4 “Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Saith the Lord. Therefore thus saith the Lord God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold I will visit upon you the evil of your doings and I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord."

I believe Jeremiah was speaking prophetically (into the future) and his words are landing appropriately here in these times when pastors are not feeding the sheep (with the "whole" Word of God which also happens to contain the words "repentance" and "sin"...not heard much in the "positive-speaking" churches of our day.)

But the main problem is that from what I can see in the Bible there was never meant to be ONE MAN in charge of a local church. Never!

I’m not saying that an elder can’t operate in the ministry of pastoring, because he can; so can many other people operate in the ministry of pastoring in the church, who aren’t necessarily elders. The Bible doesn’t state that one must be an elder to have a ministry of pastoring. But it does state quite clearly that there are only two “offices” – elders and deacons. And only elders “oversee” the church as a whole, while deacons “serve” the church as a whole.

The term “pastor” was used in both the Old Testament and the New, but surprisingly little in both; and also surprisingly, the NIV uses the term “pastor” only once and that is only in the New Testament: Ephesians 4:11 (actually it is the plural “pastors”.) The King James uses it only 8 times in the OT (all 8 in Jeremiah) and 1 time in the New Testament (again in Ephesians 4:11).

The one time that it is used in the New Testament (Ephesians 4:11), it is in a list of giftings or ministries resulting from the spiritual gifts, not offices of the local church; and certainly not an “overseeing” office, as is the case with the elders (plural).

Study those scriptures for a while and we will talk more about this tomorrow.