Reproducing Pastors: A Pastor’s Other First Task
“You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”
2 Timothy 2:2
Do you want your main preaching-pastor to be uncompromising with God’s word from the pulpit and to answer the biblical mandate to reproduce leaders who can shepherd the body as a whole? Then you cannot turn him into the American “my-pastor-in-a-box.” You may have some other value ranking high on your list.
“He must at least draw X amount of people to Y events. But, of course, I want him to do the sound doctrine thing too.”
Indeed. You may be very sincere in those commitments. However, you cannot have both.
You cannot have one man be CEO-Community-Organizer-Dr.Phil-Director-of-Worship-and-Life-Coach, and at the same time remain faithful at bringing the word to bear on all of church life.
In the first place, that monstrosity of a man is nowhere in Scripture, and arguably even a quarter of that is nowhere in Scripture. What is in Scripture is a directive to raise up “elders” (plural) in all the churches (also plural). In other words, the norm is to have a plurality of elders shepherding every local church.
I have known many Christians who will nod their heads in agreement at this, but then proceed with industrious oblivion to go right back to ordering the CEO-pastor at the drive through window. Spoiler alert—it is the “pastor” who is at the window. He is working alone tonight and he is now wearing the clown outfit you were just talking into. Congratulations.
What you will not have is a biblical church. At least not functionally speaking. It may have the surface of the word and sacraments. It may even check all the right boxes in the Reformed confessions and catechisms. But the truth of the doctrine therein will remain in the shackles you have placed around one man.
Answering a Few Objections
The first obstacle that must be cleared is any lingering doubt that Paul’s instruction to Timothy means what I am suggesting. One might reason,
“Perhaps all that it means is the ordinary task of qualifying elders, which elders may be ‘able to teach’ (1 Tim. 3:2), though without implying anything beyond that about the workload of shepherding the flock.”
But is this really a reasonable inference? Why qualify men for an office with duties that are not discharged on a regular basis? Nor can we suppose such an important office without any duties which define it. And one cannot have it both ways. If the work is so pressing that the pastor must be called regularly, then one cannot turn around and deny that the work in question is regular.
The most underlying resistance is usually not expressed as an argument, but as an assumption that most American Evangelicals take for granted. The vast majority of lay people simply do not know—they have never studied the matter, how could they?—that the terms “elder” and “overseer” and “pastor” and “shepherd” are used interchangeably in all of the relevant New Testament texts. The words are different (whether in Greek or in the English translation) simply because they are focusing on different aspects of the pastoral role.
The word presbyteros (elder) focuses on the man’s age and thus life experience. The word episkopos (overseer or bishop) focuses on the man’s sight of the field, whether of flock or wolf, and so he must “see over” what average lay person can see. The word poimén (pastor) is just the word for “shepherd,” and so emphasizes the imagery of his personal care for the sheep. And if anyone is wondering, the English word “pastor” is just borrowed directly from the same spelling of the Latin word for shepherd.
The majority Reformed tradition has seen fit to speak of three offices in the local church—elder, deacon, and minister—and will use verses like 1 Timothy 5:17 to locate the distinction between elder and minister,
“Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.”
However, the context of this verse is about pay for the minister. The “especially” marks that out because the man’s time would require it. That is all. Paul is not suggesting an office division. Now I am in the minority on this, I must admit. But since I am not in the minority of the Reformed in appealing to sola Scriptura, I do so now. Not only does the text not warrant the division, but much mischief and stagnation comes from the division. It would require another writing to draw that out.
For now I simply note that in the New Testament, there is no such thing as a mandate for a single pastor. Since Presbyterians typically know their Bibles better than non-Presbyterians (sorry, but we need to cut to the chase here), Presbyterians need to perform more skilled acrobatics to justify slapping one pastor into the stall and saddling him with the whole Christian life of the body. Most others do it out of biblical ignorance.
My own conscience is not troubled by serving under a denomination holding to the distinction since it need not be used as a pretext for the “pastor-CEO” model, as it is often called. It is only when the minister versus elder distinction is pressed to the point where neither is being a “pastor” as the Bible defines it that we must break out the more exact Scripture red pen.
Other objections will focus on the wider scope of New Testament teaching:
“Just a moment—these texts on reproducing a plurality of church teachers only have to mean pastors at several church plants, since, after all, Timothy and Titus were in a unique relationship to the Apostle Paul, and not everything they were doing to set up can be transferred as an exact norm.”
Certainly I agree that the norm cannot be “exact” in every sense. But the moment we are agreed on that, we are back to a draw.
Pointing that out doesn’t settle anything on which parts of those texts are transferable, nor which dimensions of it are normative over all. If we are agreed (from passages like Acts 14:23 and Titus 1:5) that a plurality of elders in each local church is normative, then the only thing possibly preventing one from moving all the way to my conclusion is that majority Reformed distinction between elder and minister. Although, even there, let us assume that as a proper breakdown. What then? It would still be the case that all elders are required to be “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2). But what about ordinary pastoral care? How do the Apostles address this? It is the same.
“I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you” (1 Pet. 5:1-2).
There is much that is of interest in 1 Peter 5:1-5 as a whole, but we ought to at least take notice of two things: First, There goes an apostle again equating “elders” to the other teaching offices, and this time to himself as an apostle no less! Second, The imperative for these elders is precisely to “shepherd,” that is, to tend to the more regular, day-to-day pastoral care. And it was to the Ephesian elders as a group that Paul said,
“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).
When we constantly see these texts using all of the above titles to keep pointing the officer mentions to the same tasks, at some point we must be honest about all the interpretive gymnastics our traditions have done to avoid the obvious.
The Pastors as the “Programmers” of 1 Corinthians 12
Another passage seldom brought into discussions of pastoral ministry is 1 Corinthians 12. And we might also consider Romans 12:3-8, Ephesians 4:11-16, and 1 Peter 4:10-11 in that same train of thought. The upshot of these texts is simply that there is one body and many parts. That means that the Holy Spirit has empowered particular gifts in each Christian for the edification of the other parts. That, in turn, is for a unified mission. This unity has a universal application (a common way that this works in all churches) and a particular application (a way that this serves the missions specific to each local church). As there is diversity in the body, so that diversity principle will be a factor not only in each Christian exercising his or her gift, but also in each congregation exhibiting mission focus that will differ from others. This is perfectly legitimate.
What matters in application of this study is how pastors are related to the replication of the various “body parts,” and to their proper integration, in these various texts. Of course the 1 Corinthians 12 passage is the most famous for this imagery and the most extended passage of that set. While I would not be able to offer an expository defense in this little writing, I have preached sermons on that chapter before that would make that case about both the equality and the excellency implied in the “body parts” image. That said, a few principles may be observed from that chapter, as well as the shorter statements in Romans 12 and 1 Peter 4.
1. Build on your strengths.
2. Serve in areas that are not your strength now (a) because it must be done, (b) not to make any point beyond that.
3. Remember that “missing pieces” are providential.
4. Do not allow good additions to be pit against essential elements, nor any gift against another.
5. Grow around people (with them where you can). Don’t replace people.
These principles are especially pertinent to the church plant and to the revitalizing of a small or dying church.
In conclusion, I would pay careful attention to Paul’s line of reasoning in Ephesians 4:11-16. If we begin with those offices that are ongoing, however one wants to unite or divide “pastor” and “teacher” (v. 11), we can see that their ministry is designed by Christ specifically to equip the whole body “for the work of ministry” (v. 12).
In other words, the purpose of these ministers is to train up every member of the church for the more constant, day-to-day, life of serving each other and bringing the gospel to their homes, places of labor, and neighbors. The pastor cannot do those things. Even a group of pastors cannot do those things. Their job is defined by Paul as training the vast majority to be ministers of those things. Now deacons are leaders among servants, but in a general sense, all Christians are ministers and servants.
How does the pastor-teacher do this? It is by the same word that informs the Christian in their personal sanctification (Jn. 17:17). That word is the informing agent for the proper relation of church service as well. Although such imagery did not exist for Paul, if we wanted to picture the pastor as one of the “body parts” it would not be the head. Christ alone is head of the church (Col. 1:18). And forms of church government that tend to place a mere mortal in a “head” position, though they may insist that this is only representative, commit another version of the same error.
The pastor is more like a computer programmer. Mind you, this is an analogy of something that Paul already makes an analogy. Like all analogies, they are limited to one or a few comparative points. All analogies “break down,” as they say. But it is helpful as far as it goes.
A programmer essentially buys a few puzzles, spills the pieces out on the table, looks at the boxtops, and then throws them away. He then tries to assemble them (lines of code) into something unique. The program is analogous to the human body, which Paul already makes analogous to the church. Like the programmer with his puzzle-piece code, the pastor with his doctrinal word is “piecing” together the unique Spirit-given capacities of each member of the body into the “program” of that local church.
All of this may seem very reductionistic, as if I am envisioning the pastor as “merely” a dispenser of truth, whereas the Bible also depicts him as praying for the sheep. Others would add coordinating liturgy, personal counsel and visitation of the sick. Aside from prayer, one would not be able to show a single verse in the New Testament that assigns exclusively to a singular pastor these activities, it is more troubling that the “truth dispenser” notion reveals just how Evangelicals have been trained to think of church teaching as mechanistic, theoretical, or, in other words, inhuman.
I suppose my own analogy of the pastor as “programmer” runs the risk of playing into that. Nonetheless, it makes the point that pastors are given by Christ to coordinate not this or that end product called a “ministry,” of which the lay persons consume, but rather what they coordinate is the every-member-ministry itself which then takes the shape of their unique gifts. Naturally, the more programmers getting their hands on the puzzle pieces, the more integrated and vast and colorful the picture will become. And just as naturally, that is part of what we teach—You—the non-pastors are the body of Christ! You are the ministry! Be equipped, and free the first pastor up to equip others to keep equipping you.
