Flippin’ Pastors

If there was ever a ministry in the church that was crying out to be flipped it would be pastors today. Come to think about it, some of you reading this may have already thought about flipping your pastor! Nearly everyone in full time ministry in the free churches and the lower end of churchmanship types of fellowship gets to be called pastor. Is that what Paul envisioned in Ephesians 4:11? Actually the Greek word used is ‘poimen’ and everywhere else in the Bible it gets translated ‘shepherd’ as the ESV does here. Its remarkable, and completely wrong, that we have come up with ‘pastor’ as a universal word for church leader. Many churches even interchange elder and pastor so that the role is totally confused with that of those who carry the authority of the church. This has led to a weird kind of idea that church leaders are somehow different to the rest of the church, above the flock as it were. 

How hard it is to be a servant and yet also be somehow above the church! Surely we have given rise to a breed of Christian who is a totally confused, spiritual schizophrenic! Nearly all of the 17 verses which talk about shepherds in the Bible are referring to Jesus the good shepherd with the main exception being Ephesians 4:11. 

Perhaps we need to look at what a shepherd was in the time of Jesus to get hold of what he has called some people to be in the church today. Today a shepherd tends to drive around in a Land-rover and jump out with his sheep dogs who then faithfully respond to his calls as they round up the sheep. The sheep are driven by the dogs to go where the shepherd wants them to be. But not so the shepherds in Jesus time, or for that matter shepherds in the Middle East today. 

I sat for a few hours once and watched a flock in Cyprus. The shepherd walked slowly up to a patch of pasture and right behind him were a few sheep, then after a few minutes more sheep appeared mixed with a few goats, later came more sheep and goats and then last came a few stragglers. After another half an hour the shepherd stood up and walked down to the river a mile away and the same procession followed. I have no doubt that this process carried on all day as the shepherd took the flock of sheep and goats from one feeding ground to a watering hole, to safety for the night and so on. The sheep and goats heard his voice and followed.

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me. Jn 10:14

God has given shepherds to the church to lead them to spiritual and material food, water and safety. Its one of the ministry gifts where an analogy is used to describe the role, but because of the limitations of the analogy we lose sight that these shepherds are actually also sheep. The role is one of leading people into a place where they are cared for. In fact pastors lead all people, sheep and goats, they don’t make a distinction, but yet again this leadership isn’t ruling people, it is service. The pastor/shepherd is focussed on the needs of people so that he/she can meet those needs just for the sake of meeting the needs. A pastor is focussed on knowing people and knowing where in the city a need can be met and they help the church to fulfil that role and they release the anointing which a church needs to be a caring people. I would think that a pastor would be the worst possible of the ministry gifts to be the key leader of an ekklesia. Left to their own anointing a pastor would never change a culture, but would be overwhelmed by the needs of a world which would be counter kingdom of God culture entirely. Maybe that is one of the reasons that churches today comprise 24 serving adults worn out trying to keep the machine going led by a pastor who according to recent surveys will only last 7 years in ministry before he/she becomes disillusioned.