The Pastorate
What or who is a “pastor?” Where did he come from? What does the Bible say? Where is "the pastor" found in the New Testament?
Many questions are springing up today in regards to the issue of “the pastor.” No doubt, this is largely due to God’s Spirit moving and working in many people’s minds and hearts. (All to the annoyance of many “pastors” I might add!)
It has gotten to the point where many local institutional churches have even created a plethora of pastor levels or posts. There’s the “senior pastor;” “assistant pastor;" the “counseling pastor;" a “youth pastor;" "singles pastor;" “pastor of visitation;” “outreach pastor;” all of these of course report back to the “head pastor”, or the “chairman.”
What is wrong with this picture? How did the "pastor" become such a powerful position?
Can you find anybody……anybody at all in the New Testament who was always the speaker; who delivered funeral orations; presided over marriages; who went to a school for pastors (seminary)?
Can you find anyone in the New Testament who always was officiating over so-called “worship services;” who was on the “payroll;” who patted old ladies on the hand; who was always dressed up in fine clothes and who prayed in a funny voice?
Can you find anyone in the New Testament who was hired by the congregation?
Did you find anyone? I didn’t think so.
The concept that “the pastor” is the premier member and leader of some local institutional church is essentially a Protestant brainchild and is quite striking at that, especially when the singular term "pastor" cannot be found in the King James New Testament…..not even once!
The plural term "pastors" is found in the King James New Testament only once in Ephesians 4:11. This is the only verse in the entire New Testament with the word "pastors", and the world of Christendom has become totally and fanatically obsessed with this term.
One verse on which to hang an entire local institutional church doctrine and practice!
In Ephesians 4, “pastors” means shepherds, a metaphor describing a particular function in the assembly or community. It is NOT an office or a title. A first-century shepherd did not organize official church meetings; officiate “worship services”; set up programs and seminars, and neither was he invested with some kind of unquestionable official authority or position of mediation between the saints and their Lord, like we have today.
When we look at the letters that were written in the NT Scriptures, we find that none of them were addressed to "the pastor"; important travelers coming to town were not greeted by "the pastor," and collections of money were not given to "the pastor."
You would think that today’s "pastors" ought to seem somewhat aware that their job is strangely unbiblical, but no, exactly the opposite! How could something so obviously true be turned around into a great falsehood and then imbibed and embraced as “sound bible teaching” in our day? Such is the astonishing power of deception.
As was said once before, with only the rarest of exceptions, none of these so-called “pastors” who would come across an article like this can ever be objective in reading it because it exposes their role as the unbiblical figures in an unbiblical church institution that the people look up to, and in many cases, who pay their salary, fringe benefits, and other perks!
Many, if not ALL of them literally earn their living as those who think that they have been “called by God” into their “pastoral role”! It is very easy for them to be self-deceived. They have read the modern idea of the modern pastor back into the New Testament.
Never would any first-century Christian conceive of the modern day pastor! Haven’t Catholics made the same mistake with the word “priest?” The word “priest” is used in the NT, yet a priest back then certainly bears no connection or likeness whatsoever to the Roman Catholic “priest” of today.
It was right around the time of the Protestant Reformation that this gross aberration of Scripture was invented by men without any thought of trying to justify his existence Scripturally. “The Pastorate” is a man-made tradition.
Your “pastor” has NOT been called of God, nor ordained thru Biblical means. He has taken it upon his own initiative to label himself “The Pastor” and if these were Old Testament times, fire should swoop down from heaven and consume these imposters for their arrogance.
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