Pastoral Monuments

The Pastor.  He is the fundamental figure of the Protestant faith.  So prevailing is the pastor in the minds of most Christians that he is often better known, more highly praised, and more heavily relied upon than Jesus Christ Himself!  Remove the pastor and most Protestant churches would be thrown into panic.  Remove the pastor, and Protestantism as we know it would die.  The pastor is the dominating focal point, mainstay, and centerpiece of the contemporary church.

       But here is the profound irony.  There is not a single verse in the entire New Testament that supports the existence of the modern-day pastor!  He simply did not exist in the early church.

Note that I am using the term "pastor" throughout this essay to depict the contemporary pastoral office and role, not the specific individual who fills this role.  By and large, those who serve in the office of pastor are wonderful people.  They are honorable, decent, and very often gifted Christians who love God and have a zeal to serve His people.  But it is the role they fill that both Scripture and church history are opposed to.

The word "pastors" does appear in the New Testament:  "And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers."      - Ephesians 4:11, NASB

I would like to make the following observations about this verse:

This is the only verse in the entire New Testament where the word "pastor" is used.  One solitary verse is a dangerous piece of evidence on which to hang the Protestant faith!  In this regard, there seems to me more biblical authority for snake handling(Mark 16:18 and Acts 28:3-6) than there is for the present-day pastor.  Roman Catholics have made the same error with the word "priest".  You can find the word "priest" used in the New Testament three times.  In every case, it refers to all Christians.

The word is used in the plural.  It is "pastors".  This is significant.  For whoever these "pastors" are, they are plural in the church, not singular.  Consequently, there is no biblical support for the practice of sol pastora (singe pastor).

The Greek word translated "pastors" is "poimen".  It means shepherds.  Pastor, then, is a metaphor to describe a particular function in the church.  It is not an office or title. A first-century shepherd had nothing to do with the specialized and professional sense it has come to have in contemporary Christianity. Therefore, Ephesians 4:11 does not envision a pastoral office, but merely one of many functions in the church. Shepherds are those who naturally provide, nurture, and care for God's sheep. It is a profound error, therefore, to confuse shepherds with an office or title as commonly conceived today.

At best, Ephesians 4:11 is oblique. It offers absolutely no definition or description of who pastors are. It simply mentions them. Regrettably, we have filled this word with our own Western concept of what a pastor is. We have read our idea of the contemporary pastor back into the New Testament. Never would any first-century Christian have conceived at the contemporary pastoral office. 

        If contemporary pastors were absent from the early church, where did they come from? And how did they rise to such a prominent position in the Christian faith? The roots of this tale are tangled and complex, and they reach as far back as the Fall of Man.        With the Fall came an implicit desire in people to have a physical leader to bring them to God. For this reason, human societies throughout history have consistently created a special cast of revered religious leaders. The medicine man, the shaman, the rhapsodist, the miracle worker, the witch doctor, the soothsayer, the wise man, and the priest have all been with us since Adam's blunder. And this person is always marked by special training, special clothing, a special vocabulary, and a special way of life.        Up until the second century, the church had no official leadership. That it had leaders is without dispute. But leadership was unofficial in the sense that there were no religious offices or sociological slots to fill.        In this regard, the first-century churches were an oddity indeed.  They were religious groups without priest, temple, or sacrifice. The Christians themselves led the church under Christ's direct headship. Leaders were organic, untitled, and were recognized by their service and spiritual maturity rather than by a title or an office.        Church leadership began to formalize at about the time of the death of the itinerant apostolic workers. In the late first and early second century, local presbyters began to emerge as the resident "successors" to the unique leadership role played by the apostolic workers. This gave rise to a single leading figure in each church. Without the influence of the extra-local workers who had been mentored by the New Testament apostles, the church began to shift toward the organizational patterns of her surrounding culture.        Ignatius of Antioch was instrumental in this shift. He was the first figure in church history to take a step down the slippery slope toward a single leader in the church. We can trace the origin of the contemporary pastor in church hierarchy to him. Ignatius elevated one of the elders in each church above all the others. The elevated elder was now called the bishop. All the responsibilities that belong to the college of elders were exercised by the bishop.        In AD 107, Ignatius wrote a series of letters when on his way to be martyred in Rome. Six out of seven of these letters strike the same chord. They exalt the authority and importance of the bishop's office.        According to Ignatius, the bishop had ultimate power and should be obeyed absolutely. Consider the following excerpts from his letters:  "Plainly therefore we ought to regard the bishop as the Lord himself...All of you follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father...Wherever the bishop shall appear, there will the people be; even as where Jesus may be...It is not lawful apart from the bishop either to baptize or to hold a love feast; but whatever he shall approve, this is well-pleasing also to God...It is good to recognize God and the bishop.  He that honors the bishop is honored of God...Do nothing without the bishop...Therefore as the Lord did nothing without the Father, being united with Him, either by Himself or by the Apostles, so neither do you anything without the bishop and the presbyters...You should look on your bishop as a type of the Father."        In Ignatius's mind, the bishop was the remedy for dispelling false doctrine and establishing church unity. Ignatius believed that if the church would survive the onslaught of heresy, it had to develop a rigid power structure patterned after the centralized political structure of Rome. Single-bishop rule would rescue the church from heresy and internal strife.        From AD 313 to 325, Christianity was no longer a struggling religion trying to survive the Roman government. It was basking in the sun of imperialism, loaded with money and status. To be a Christian under Constantine's reign was no longer a handicap. It was an advantage. It was fashionable to become part of the emperor's religion. And to be among the clergy was to receive the greatest of advantages.         Clergyman received the same honors as the highest officials of the Roman Empire and even the emperor himself. In fact, Constantine gave the bishops of Rome more power than he gave Roman governors. He also ordered that the clergy receive fix annual allowances.        In AD 313, he exempted the Christian clergy from paying taxes, something that pagan priests had traditionally enjoyed. He also made them exempt from mandatory public office and other civic duties. They were freed from being tried by secular courts and from serving in the army. Bishops could only be tried by a bishops court, not by ordinary law courts.        Moving forward to the sixteenth century, the Reformers brought the Catholic priesthood sharply into question. They attacked the idea that the priest had special powers to convert wine into blood. They rejected apostolic succession. They encouraged the clergy to marry. They revise the liturgy to give the congregation more participation. They also abolished the office of the bishop and reduced the priest back to a presbyter. Unfortunately, however, the Reformers carried the Roman Catholic clergy/laity distinction straight into the Protestant movement. They also kept the Catholic idea of ordination. Although they abolished the office of the bishop, they resurrected the one-bishop rule, clothing it in new garb.        The rallying cry of the Reformation was the restoration of the priesthood of all believers. However, the restoration was only partial. Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli affirmed the believing priesthood with respect to one's individual relationship with God. They rightly taught that every Christian has direct access to God without the need of a human mediator. This was a wonderful restoration. But it was one-sided.         What the Reformers failed to do was to recover the corporate dimension of the believing priesthood. They restored the doctrine of the believing priesthood soteriologically, as it related to salvation but they failed to restore it ecclesiologically, as it related to the church.         In other words, the Reformers only recovered the priesthood of the believer. They reminded us that every believer has individual and immediate access to God. As wonderful as that is, they did not recover the priesthood of all believers. This is the blessed truth that every Christian is part of a clan that shares God's word one with another.         While the Reformers opposed the Pope and his religious hierarchy, they still held to the narrow view of ministry that they inherited. They believe that "ministry" was an institution that was closeted among the few who were "called" and "ordained".  Thus the Reformers still affirmed the clergy-laity split. Only in their rhetoric did they state that all believers were priests and ministers. In their practice they denied it. So after the smoke cleared from the Reformation, we ended up with the same thing that the Catholics gave us, a selective priesthood.        Luther held to the idea that those who preached needed to be specially trained. Like the Catholics, the Reformers believed that only the "ordained minister" could preach, baptized, and administer the Lord's Supper. As a result, ordination gave the minister a special aura of divine favor that cannot be questioned.         In short, the Reformers retained the idea that ordination was the key to having power in the church. It was the ordained ministers duty to convey God's revelation to His people. And he was paid for this role.        It was not until the eighteenth century that the term "pastor" came into common use, eclipsing "preacher" and "minister". Even so, the Reformers considered the pastor to be the functioning head of the church. According to John Calvin, "the pastoral office is necessary to preserve the church on earth in a greater way than the sun, food, and drink are necessary to nourish and sustain the present life."

        The Reformers believed that the pastor possessed divine power and authority. He did not speak in his own name, but in the name of God. Calvin further reinforced the primacy of the pastor by treating acts of contempt or ridicule toward the minister as serious public offenses.         This should come as no surprise when you realize that Calvin took it as his model for ministry. He did not take the church of the apostolic age. Instead he took as his pattern the one-bishop rule of the second century. The irony here is that John Calvin bemoaned the Roman Catholic church because it built its practices on human inventions rather than on the Bible. But Calvin did the same thing. In this regard, Protestants are just as guilty as are Catholics. Both denominations base their practices on human tradition.        In short, the Protestant Reformation struck a blow to Roman Catholic sacerdotalism (the belief that propitiatory sacrifices for sin require the intervention of a priest).  It was not a fatal blow, however but merely a semantic change. The Reformers retained the one-bishop rule. The pastor now played the role of the bishop. The bishop-driven church evolved into the pastor-driven church. The pastor came to be regarded as the local head of the church, the leading elder.         The long-standing, postbiblical tradition of the one-bishop rule, now embodied in the pastor, prevails in the Protestant church today. Tremendous psychological factors make laypeople feel that ministry is the responsibility of the pastor. It's his job. He's the expert is often they're thinking.         The New Testament word for minister is diakonos.  It means "servant".   But this word has been distorted because men have professionalize the ministry. We have taken the word "minister" and equated it with the pastor, with no scriptural justification whatsoever.  In like manner, we have mistakenly equated preaching and ministry with the pulpit sermon, again without biblical justification.         The one-man ministry is entirely foreign to the New Testament, yet we embrace it while it suffocates our functioning. We are living stones, not dead ones. However, the pastoral office has transformed us into stones that do not breathe.        Permit me to get personal. I believe the pastoral office has stolen our right to function as a full member of Christ's body. It has distorted the reality of the body, making the pastor a giant mouth and transforming us into a tiny ear. It has rendered us a mute spectator who is proficient at taking sermon notes and passing an offering plate.         But that is not all. The modern-day pastoral office has overthrown the main thrust of the letter to the Hebrews, the ending of the old priesthood. It has made ineffectual the teaching of 1 Corinthians 12-14, that every member has both the right and the privilege to minister in a church meeting. It has voided the message of 1 Peter 2 that every brother and sister is a functioning priest.         But there is something more. The contemporary pastorate rivals the functional headship of Christ in His church.  It illegitimately holds the unique place of centrality and headship among God's people, a place that is reserved for only one person - the Lord Jesus.  Jesus Christ is the only head over a church and the final word to it. By his office, the pastor displaces and supplants Christ headship by setting himself up as the church's human head.         The contemporary pastor is the most unquestioned fixture in twenty-first century Christianity. Yet not a strand of Scripture supports the existence of this office.        Rather, the present-day pastor was born out of the single-bishop rule first spawned by Ignatius. The bishop evolved into the local presbyter. In the Middle Ages, the presbyter grew into the Catholic priest. During the Reformation, he was transformed into the preacher, the minister, and finally the pastor. To boil it down to one sentence:  the Protestant pastor is nothing more than a slightly reformed Catholic priest. Again, I'm speaking of the office and not the individual.        Catholic priests had seven duties at the time of the Reformation: preaching, the sacraments, prayers for the flock, a disciplined, godly life, church rights, supporting the poor, and visiting the sick. The Protestant pastor takes upon himself all of these responsibilities.         The famed poet, John Milton, put it best when he said, "New presbyter is but old priest writ large."   In other words, the contemporary pastor is but an old priest written in larger letters!

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