Once again I am pulling content from Chuck Pierce and Robert Heidler’s book, Apostolic Church Arising.
In order to make the shift to a new wineskin and an apostolic church, the pastor as the primary office of the church has to change (Page 63).
One of the authors did a Bible word study on “pastor” and found nothing. Then he did a word study on the word “pastors” and found one reference in Ephesians 4:11, “He gave ..as pastors.” That was the only reference to pastors in the Bible. No New Testament church had a pastor. In I Corinthians 12, Paul says “First apostles, second prophets, third teachers…. Pastors are not mentioned in the list.
In the Bible, apostles are mentioned 87 times, prophets 157 times and teachers 121 times. Evangelists three times, and pastors mentioned once (Page 64).
Many churches today do not believe apostles and prophets exist. They let “teachers” teach a Sunday school lesson out of denominational curriculum, and allow an evangelist to come once a year for a “revival.” Then they take the office of pastor that is mentioned once in the Bible, and build the entire church structure around the office of pastor. All the gifts are important, but the pastor was never intended to be the primary office.
When the Church adopted cessationism (the view that the Holy Spirit ceased as well as all the spiritual gifts and five-fold ministry gifts) as their platform, Holy Spirit did leave and left denominational church to it’s own devices. What we have left is dead denominational church!
The traditional pastoral model is destroying pastors (Page 66). The current pastoral model requires pastors to do everything associated with the church. They teach/preach, care for the members of their church, and give oversight for the operation of the church. Most of the time pastors are not gifted to be pastors, but rather teachers. They are exhausted from trying to do it all!
I have a few other posts about this issue, before I move on to other topics.
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