Pastors and Elders

Message / Question

What are the qualifications to become a pastor? Are they the same as the ones for elders? How important are they?

Response

The qualifications to become a pastor will vary greatly according to the denomination group concerned, however most churches these days expect a pastor to be formally trained in theology (for some that may simply mean a Bible School course) and have training in areas such as counselling, youth work etc. There’s no standard “fit’s all” answer, but that’s the general requirement.

However, by the second half of your question, I am presuming that you are referring to the Biblical qualifications. Biblically, a pastor IS an elder of the church and thus the requirements laid down in Scripture for an elder are an absolute requirement for one who is genuinely called to pastoral ministry. In the early church, most new converts came from Jewish stock and they fashioned the model of the church in a way consistent with their traditional practices. Each Synagogue was governed by a group of “elders” – the Greek word is presbuteros and from that we have created an English word “Presbyter” (which means elder). The collective term is (obviously meaning elders). Thus the Presbyterian church was given that name because it was governed by a group of elders. So, in the early church, the new converts would ask “Who is in charge? Who are the elders?” and the Apostles said “That’s us, we are the presbyterion. That was fine until some Greeks and Romans were added to the church. They brought with them the cultural expectation of leadership rather than a religious structure. In their culture, groups of people formed fraternal organisations to care for one another and, for example, to provide for the wife and family of a member who died (there was no Social Security in their day!). In charge of each fraternity was a man who watched over the welfare of the group, he was called an “overseer” (Greek word “Episkope”). So the Gentile converts asked “Who is in charge?” and the Apostles said “We are!” but whilst that was OK for the Jewish converts, it didn’t satisfy the Gentiles; they wanted to know which one of the leadership group was the overseer. Ultimately, in the church at Jerusalem, James took on that mantle. In the New Testament, presbuteros is normally found in the plural presbyterion and is translated as “elders”. The word Episkope is generally found in the singular and is most often translated as “bishop”. This is NOT the type of “bishop” that we would expect today, it was simply a title given to the leader of the eldership of each local congregation (each church had a “bishop”). So the plural eldership chose one of it number to lead as bishop, he was seen as the leader of a group of equals. Now obviously over time, various systems of church government developed and this is not the place to deal with all of those systems, but the bottom line is that the leader of a congregation (bishop, pastor etc) is first of all an elder of the church and thus must meet the qualifications clearly laid out in the New Testament.

How important is that? Essential, absolutely. A bishop/priest/pastor or whatever else you may call the leader of a congregation MUST meet that standard.