A Pastor by Whatever Name (from Phil 1)

Still thinking of the first little passage we looked at yesterday, this time with respect to the governance of the church itself. Paul writes to,

To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons. (1.1)

This last little phrase there is quite famous, believe it or not. That is because when people today (or in the past; today they mostly have figured it out the way they want) want to know how the church ought to be governed, they look to see how it was done in the NT church.

Notice there are no pastors or bishops here, just deacons (which in our Baptist churches we still have), and overseers. Both are in the plural, which means they had a group of people acting in those offices, not just one senior pastor, as we often have in small churches today. In other places in Paul’s letters he also talks about elders and bishops (in our English translations).

By comparing the way Paul uses these terms, we come to see that, for him, a bishop, an elder, and an overseer are synonymous terms; they mean the same thing (there must be some old joke on these lines – “One day, a bishop, an elder, and an overseer, walk into a bar. . .”). Basically, all of these are the equivalent to the pastor in our church today – and if, in your church, you have a group of pastors, that is even closer to the model we find here.

If we take all of those names – bishop, elder, overseer – and add that from Eph 4, of a pastor-teacher, we get a pretty full-orbed picture of what today’s pastor is all about, especially when we consider the word for “pastor” comes form the Greek word meaning “shepherd.” So a pastor today is called to shepherd his people; to oversee them with respect to their spiritual health and growth; to act as an elder in the church, advising and giving counsel. I was a pastor for about 20 years, in two different churches, and I consider that role to be one of the most significant in our world today.

I think it was last month, October, that is usually set aside as “Pastor Appreciation Month” in NA. Not a bad thing to do during the rest of the year either.