Pastor

I thought about retracting some of what I said yesterday but I have decided not to.

Did you know there are more references to snake handling in the New Testament than pastor?

Where does that one come from? I believe there are people with a pastoral gift which as part of a team is a valid contribution. Up until the second century there was no defined official structure for church leadership. First century churches where strange, they where very contrary to the existing power structures of the time, they were counter culture. Frank Viola says "They were religious groups without priest, temple, or sacrifice". Yet our church structures today look like any other business or organisation.

There were elders, shepherds, overseers but from my reading they were equals. Then of course there were "the sent ones" apostles, they planted churches they didn't end up hanging around in those churches and they didn't control them.

I love the Apostle Paul who says " I Paul a servant" not a controller or a dictator; a servant. A lot of apostolic figures today are more like consultants than apostles. I think senior guys should move on from their big churches go to a rough area and plant a new one, maybe they should keep doing this on a kind of 5 year rotation.

The pastor as the senior leader, the head honcho is totally unbiblical.

The pastor is the protestant equivalant of priest. It smacks of a pyramidical structure when I last looked the last pyramids I saw where in Eygpt which represents slavery and oppression.

I don't like it when guys call themselves pastor, although I do know some great guys who are called pastor and they have humble servant hearts, but that is no exscuse for mantaining the title.

As long as it remains in place the title eludes to the fact that there is one who greater, it can also produce laziness in the church. The pastor is the one who hears from God, he is under tremendous pressure to bring direction. He becomes the all singing all dancing man (yes normally man) who gets burnt out and bitter because people expect far to much of him.

Then there is the more dreaded wierdness, the pastors wife! This poor lady gets responsibilty through marriage, she normally does intercession groups, childrens work or prophetic ribbon dancing. Totally wierd, I don't understand it.......