Pastors

Continuing my thinking about Julia Duin's book "Quitting Church," here are my thoughts on her chapter "Is the Pastor the Problem?".

For most people, inside and outside the church, it seems unthinkable to have a church without a pastor, unless it's just a temporary situation until a new pastor is hired.  But the truth is, the professional pastor is a human tradition, with very little evidence for it in the New Testament.  The Greek word poimen is usually translated as "shepherd"--because it normally referred to people who worked with actual sheep.  "Pastor" itself is a transliteration of the Latin word for shepherd.  There is only one passage in the entire New Testament that lists "pastor" among the leaders of the church--Ephesians 4:11-12.  "And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.  (NASB)  That's it--that's the only reference to "pastor" or "shepherd" in the functioning of the church.  Is that enough to justify the institution the modern church has built up?  Is that why we have a profession, a full-time job for most who are in it, starting with a degree from a seminary or Bible college?  Just that one verse justifies this whole edifice?

What about Paul's "Pastoral Epistles"?  Guess what?  Nobody called those letters to Timothy and Titus by that label in the early church!  That name was applied to them in the 1700s, after the modern institution of the pastorate had been established in the Protestant churches of Europe.  Actually, Timothy and Titus were part of Paul's missionary team, not local pastors.  They were sometimes on detached assignment--staying a bit longer after Paul moved on, to help get the new church established, or sent somewhere when Paul was unable to leave where he was.  But the strong indication they were not local pastors is in the closing verses of both II Timothy and Titus, where Paul told them to wrap up their work there and rejoin him.  He did not intend for them to stay there as local pastors!  They were on temporary detached assignments, not anchored to one church.

So the institution of the pastor is, at best, non-Biblical, a human tradition.  Does that make it wrong?

Well, to start with, it has created the clergy/laity division in the church:  an artificial distinction that divides the mass of the people from their supposed leaders, and all too often sets the leader on a pedestal.  Somehow, being in "full-time ministry" is perceived by most as being holier and more important than the ordinary church-goer.  It sets up a "first-class" and "second-class" system among the members of the body of Christ.  When I was in high school, in the church my family attended, there was a certain status implied if you were going to enroll in Bible college rather than a secular university.

This next part is personal.  During my years in preaching, I eventually learned that the biggest occupational hazard in professional ministry is that a person's pride gets wrapped around their position in the church.  In some cases, they just become a little too impressed with their own eloquence in the pulpit.  In the worst cases, it ruins the individual.  I saw it happen to one of my friends from college in less than a year. And I saw signs that it was happening to me.  I made the decision to walk away from preaching; I thought it was more important to stay close to Jesus than to be a pastor. Shortly after that decision, I came to know a man in his sixties who was so eaten up with pride that he could not tolerate any disagreement.  If someone disagreed with one of his ideas, he did not defend his opinion; he re-interpreted the disagreement as an attack on his office in the church, and defended his office tooth-and-nail, no-holds-barred.  This man had been a pastor and Bible college professor.  And in a period of five or six years he destroyed a very promising startup church; he ran off every other leader or potential leader, because of his pride.  And that church declined in number and soon ceased to exist.

Those two are not the only ones I have known with a pride issue--many of the pastors I have known as an adult have had some problems in this area.  Being on a pedestal and constantly in the spotlight does that to you.  I have known a few who have beaten it; some of them went through some kind of personal hell--for two, being kicked out of their lifelong fellowship over tongues may have cured them of it.

This issue of pride may well be a factor in the rash of sexual offenses that are troubling the church today.  The scandals in the Roman Catholic church may be the most covered by the press.  But the Southern Baptists and other groups are having to deal with it as well.  It has been going on for a long time--the minister who performed my wedding ceremony eventually got into an affair with the church pianist, and lost his profession and his family--50 years ago!  In her book, Duin refers to several of the big-name preachers that she knew of who ended up in scandal, and there have been more since the book came out.  Something I read many years ago:  psychologists and psychiatrists have been saying for years that often rape is not a matter of just lust, but of the sense of power it gives the perpetrator.  Who is the most powerful person in the church?  the pastor!  Given that kind of power, is it that surprising they fall into sexual sin?

But if we do not have professional pastors, who will lead the church?  The New Testament teaching on local church leaders is found in Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus.  Elders and deacons were the original pattern:  "An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, uncontentious, free from the love of money.  He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?); and not a new convert, lest he become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.  And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he may not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil."  I Timothy 3:2-7, NASB

How does that compare to taking kids just graduated from high school, giving them a few years of specialized college classes, and then putting them in charge of churches?  If you hire a new pastor from out of town, how do you know all the things Paul cited about that person?  My own experience was that the Bible college I graduated from did not do that much to vet their students.  I had to submit a letter from my pastor or other church leader vouching for my character--that's all.  Did they actually know that much about my personal character?  Not really--they only saw me on Sundays!  For how many pastors evaluate their members, look for the quote from Wesleyan pastor Robert Girard in my post from Jan. 11,2022.  I strongly suspect the majority of Bible colleges and seminaries are no better, based on what I have seen of preachers over the years.

Over the centuries since the Reformation, there have been a few groups that bucked the system.  The modern Quakers now often have pastors, but for most of their history they did not.  From what I have read of the Amish, they pay their bishops, but not their local preachers; many of their local groups meet in homes rather than church buildings, and each group has three or four men who handle the preaching.  They work for a living all week and take turns preaching on Sunday.  Apparently it is considered a burden rather than a higher status.  But the history of both groups is a story of persecution by both Catholics and other Protestants.

Duin has another chapter on "Not-so Solid Teaching."  I will deal with it next.