Pagan Christianity: The Pastor
By Fred | Saturday, July 17, 2010
The next chapter in Pagan Christianity deals with “the pastor.” The authors claim that the contemporary version of “pastor” comes from “an implicit desire in people to have a physical leader to bring them to God.” This desire, it seems, stems from “the Fall” (p. 108). They trace the history of church leadership, which, with the inevitable influence of culture, results in an unhealthy hierarchy of leadership. Presbyter becomes priest becomes bishop becomes pastor.
They then move to the “[u]nscriptural clergy/laity distinction [which] has done untold harm to the body of Christ” (p. 136). Well, I have a hard time disagreeing with this. I believe they’re absolutely right. The expectation is that the pastor does the work of the church, rather than the church doing the work of the church.
They go on to say that 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 one Person—the Lord Jesus” (p. 137). Frankly, I’ve never heard of a pastor that calls himself the head of a local church in the place of Christ. Some may have acted so. But if someone abuses a position of leadership, it doesn’t negate the existence of healthy leadership.
Part of the problem is that “pastor” is a particular leadership gift (see Ephesians 4:11), along with apostle, prophet, evangelist, and possibly teacher (it’s difficult to tell in the original language whether “teacher” is a separate position from “pastor” or merely a two-word description of the same position). Whatever the “gift” of the person giving leadership to a local church, they usually carry the title pastor (at least, in our tradition). In the church I attended during my teen years, the “pastor” was not a pastor at all according to the “gift of pastor.” He was an evangelist. But because of our tradition he held the title “pastor.”
So what happens here is that after acknowledging that God has given us leadership in the church. Barna and Viola ascribe the desire for leadership to sin—to the Fall. According to their view, in spite of the teaching of Scripture and the model of the early church (where leaders certainly existed), we shouldn’t have human leaders. Because of the abuse of leadership and the creation of an inappropriate clergy/laity dichotomy, we should dismantle human leadership and rely on Christ as the head of the church. We should all be in…house churches (where apparently human leadership doesn’t exist?).
An example of poor leadership (whether that leader be a pastor, evangelist, prophet, elder/bishop (it’s the same word in Greek), or whatever) does not require that we dismantle all leadership. The model in Acts and the instructions of Paul in his pastoral letters (to Timothy and Titus) is that we do have leadership in the church: godly leaders that give direction to local churches under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
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