PASTOR, WHAT PASTOR?

Don’t you think it a bit strange that nearly every church appoints “a pastor” to be its leader?

Jesus appointed five ministries to enable the church to carry out the work of ministry and to perfect the saints, that of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. Do you think at some stage he changed his mind and said “Look, I have made a mistake? All you need is one ministry, that of Pastor. So please, forget the other four.”

A bit like a company appointing a general manager, a sales manager, a warehouse manager, a finance manager and a personnel manager and then down the track saying “look, we don’t need all these managers. I am going to get rid of all of them except the general manager and let him do all of their jobs.”

How long do you think the company is going to last with one frazzled, worn out, dispirited and stressed general/sales/finance/warehouse/personal manager.

Perhaps that is why we have 10,000 ex pastors in Australia today. We have asked them to conduct all five ministries and we expect them to stay sane and healthy.

To be a fully rounded and effective expression of the church we need all five ministries. However, it is difficult for this to happen whilst we are all divided up into spiritual tribal groups (Baptist, Brethren, Lutheran, Anglican, Pentecostal and so on) and never the twain shall meet.

In the New Testament Church the local congregation which consisted of everyone who lived in a town was led by a local body of elders, who were the senior men of the fellowship.

The five ministries worked alongside them to build up the body of Christ. The apostle wasn’t called or sent to establish a new Baptist Church in the town. He usually went to a town where there was no church to begin one and when that was achieved and they were established in the faith, they chose elders to take over the oversight of the fellowship and then went on to another town with no church.

Most churches today send out people to start a church where there are already 10 churches. How good is that? One thing I have noticed that in third world countries, most of the time those with an apostolic ministry go to villages where there is no church. No wonder they are producing new converts by the thousands.

In the New Testament Church, the apostles had the original oversight of the local congregation and then they handed over the leadership to a body of local male elders. The five Ephesian ministries worked alongside the elders to help them grow the church. They never led the church themselves once elders were in place.

Depending on the numbers involved, the church in a given town might have 50 people with a pastoral ministry. None were appointed or paid. They were anointed with the ministry and got on with it.

We need to start realising that until we are a united church in each town, functioning with a leadership that sees itself with a ministry to the town not just a handful of Christians, we won’t have a hope in hell of dislodging satan and his minions from their position of power and authority, which currently we are giving him.