The Pastor

Although it's not one of the ten basic truths of Christianity, any believer wanting to join County Line Church should be aware of the biblical responsibilities God has given the pastor of a local church. Perhaps no other aspect of the church has been so encrusted with tradition as the office of pastor. As with everything else at County Line Church, we chisel the duties of the pastor out of the quarry of biblical marble, not from the historical swamps of the traditions of men.

The historical swamps of tradition vary from region to region. In another era across the Atlantic, tradition dictated that the pastor was to ride a bicycle higher than those of others. In some areas, he was to dress differently and when he had something important to say, he had to stand in a specific place behind a certain article of church furniture and speak in a different tone of voice.

Yet, the Bible is clear on the calling of a pastor. God calls him and gifts him to be a "equipper." It's a calling, not a "job;" the pastor is not a "professional." The biblical pastor would be the first to tell you that his calling is based on God's sovereign grace-gift of pastor-teacher, the gift mentioned in Ephesians 4.

Ephesians 4:11-12 puts the spotlight on the gifts God has given to men and the men He's given to the church. In the Greek language, "pastors and teachers" (vs. 11) is one gift, "pastor- teacher," so that the pastor is a teacher with a God-directed purpose.

God is specific in Ephesians 4:12: the pastor's calling is to equip believers to do the works of service so that the body of Christ might be built up. The biblical pastor (there shouldn't be any other kind!) is an equipper, a cultivator of believers who brings a person to be the servant God designed him (or her) to be. The cultivator moves people from being ineffective to becoming effective servants of the Lord who build up the body of Christ. In summary, the pastor helps you to become all God designed for you to become.

At times the cultivation will be formal and planned (sermons) at other times, it's informal and incidental (in conversations, in one- on -one discussions, in small discipleship groups, in hospital rooms). In the formal equipping, the pastor-teacher teaches the Word of God and what it means in your daily living. He's not a lecturer on antiquities, but he deals with the Bible and our lives now.

The Bible summarizes the cultivation work of the pastor with the command to "make disciples" (Matt. 28). The cultivator reproduces reproducers. He leads God's flock by equipping them for the work of service through teaching them to know and live God's truth in such a way that they become disciplemakers.

We can also capture the role of the pastor-teacher with a modern equivalent, what we call a "player coach," one who teaches the believers to play their positions in the field, and then he turns them loose to let them play.

Ephesians 4:11-12 drains the historical swamps of the traditional, man- assigned roles of the pastor. Ephesians 4 won't allow the pastor to keep his hands on the reigns and do it all. These verses won't allow the pastor to use people to feed programs to get things done. He is a cultivator, not a user. The cultivator equips believers who then begin to do what God has designed them to do in line with their gift.

God has written the description of the calling: "Equip believers to do the work of the ministry." No pastor has a right to write the description, one which would suit his preferences of performance. Pastors aren't God's editors; they are God-called and God-gifted cultivators given to the church. It's a grace-gifting, neither earned nor deserved by its recipient.
Certainly there are many things in a local church that need doing. The beauty of the body is that God gifts believers with all kinds of gifts (I Cor. 12, Rom. 12, and Eph. 4) who, once equipped, mesh those gifts of administration, teaching, helps, encouraging, et. al. into a vital and functioning organism that has impact.

In the early church, one of the things that needed doing was the administration of neglected widows. In Acts 6 there was the potential of diverting the apostles (the first cultivators) from their role of making disciples and channeling their energies into administrative/delivery duties.

The apostles saw the danger and alerted the church to it. The church then chose others to enroll the widows, keep the lists, administrate, and deliver the meals on chariot wheels. This allowed the cultivators to devote themselves to their God-assigned role, saying, "We'll devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word."

Cultivator. Player-coach. Disciplemaker. The three words all say the same thing and are terms that sculpt the biblical marble into the doctrine of the biblical pastor.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor