A brief sum­mary of why we use the term “pas­tor” in place of “bishop”.

If we always seek to base our con­clu­sions on the Bible, then we have to have bib­li­cal evi­dence to sup­port and demon­strate our posi­tions and con­clu­sions. I pro­pose that the con­cepts “elder”, “bishop”, and “pas­tor” are all in the church in one form or another. I also pro­pose tht these peo­ple were peo­ple in the first cen­tury church as well, and they were min­is­ters, ser­vants that served in humil­ity before God and the churches. On the one hand, the mod­ern pas­tors that grab power and domin­ion over the peo­ple of God is not what we see in the first cen­tury church. It is prof­itable that we make some notes on who and how these lead­ers of the early church are referred to.

Who is iden­ti­fied as a bishop?

Judas Iscar­iot — Acts 1:20
Require­ments for a Bishop — 1Tim 3:1*; Titus 1:7
Jesus — 1Pet 2:25
The elders of Eph­esus Acts 20:28
Bish­ops in Philippi Phil 1:1
Tim­o­thy — (this is in the epi­logue 2Tim 4:22 “to the bishop in Eph­esus”)
Titus (in the epi­logue again Titus 3:15 “the bishop in the church in Crete”)

* Note that the form of the word is dis­tinct in these two pas­sages with the aster­isks: Acts 1:20; 1Tim 3:1, for the office of bishop.

Paul used the term “elder” (Pres­by­te­rio) in Titus 1:5–9, and bishop (episko­pos) in 1Tim 3:1–7 for the same office and func­tion. He iden­ti­fied Tim­o­thy and Titus clearly as bish­ops in these churches where they min­is­tered. So then, we have some actual names of peo­ple who were bish­ops. Bishop is not over more than one church, but is a posi­tion of min­istry over­sight within a local church.

Who is iden­ti­fied as an elder?

Peter — 1Pet 5:1
John — 2Jn 1:1; 3Jn 1:1

The prob­lem with the term “elder” is that it is used with a dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal mean­ings, and another appli­ca­tion, an elderly (old) per­son. We don’t know exactly if this word is used in a par­tic­u­lar con­text for advanced age o in a reli­gious sense, or a posi­tion within the local church. It prob­a­bly does not refer directly to a posi­tion, but rather to a qual­ity of life of some­body that, because of their age and expe­ri­ence, has more wis­dom than the com­mon man, and because of that, he is seen as a leader among his peo­ple. So the qual­ity of being an “elder” is not some­thing that is con­ferred on the indi­vid­ual by any­body in par­tic­u­lar, but rather it is a lot of peo­ple who look up to the per­son for his wis­dom and expe­ri­ence, inde­pen­dent of whether he has offi­cial recog­ni­tion in some posi­tion or not. An elder then is basicly some­body who is wise and because of his char­ac­ter eas­ily gets other peo­ple to take his opin­ions seri­ously. A per­son can be an elder whether or not he has offi­cial place­ment in a church, as long as his tes­ti­mony is such that he is a wise, spir­i­tual leader. Fools and peo­ple with bad tes­ti­monies of sin­ful con­duct are gen­er­ally excluded from the pos­si­bil­ity of being elders by these ele­ments in them. An elder is a leader who is wise and spir­i­tual, no mat­ter whether he has a for­mal lead­er­ship rela­tion­ship with a par­tic­u­lar group or not.

Who is iden­ti­fied as a pas­tor?

Jesus — John 10:11 “the prince of the pas­tors” 1Pe 5:4

Do we err in call­ing our lead­ers “pastors”?

In this dis­cus­sion, we have to take into account what is the bib­li­cal evi­dence that we believe, and we have to use the words in their purest sense, as the Bible uses these words, but we must also take into account how cer­tain abu­sive peo­ple and unbib­li­cal groups have twisted these words and con­cepts, and not fall into the prob­lem of caus­ing con­fu­sion and doubt about the bib­li­cal mean­ing and stance. Really the Roman Catholic church has done great dam­age over the years by wrench­ing the true mean­ing of the word “bishop” from its bib­li­cal base (a local super­vi­sor of a sin­gle church) to make it a sup­port for their demonic eccle­si­as­ti­cal sys­tem. Because of this most good pas­tors refuse the term bishop and use in pref­er­ence “pastor”.

Sum­mary: A pas­tor is a verb. You pas­tor a flock. With­out a flock, you are not a pas­tor. It is linked to a local group. It ref­eres to what he does to this group, watch­care, super­vi­sion, defense, feed­ing, etc. A pas­tor is a min­istry. The con­cept speaks much more to the char­ac­ter and abil­i­ties in rela­tion to the dynam­ics of daily life of the sheep than any­thing else. A pas­tor has a staff, and he is nor­mally the only thing between the sheep and perdi­tion, mak­ing him a type of O.T. priest, inter­ced­ing for the peo­ple of God. A pas­tor is a per­son who will­ingly with­out fan­fare nor remu­ner­a­tion throws him­self between the sheep and the wolves. This con­cept speaks to the man’s char­ac­ter in that he is trusted and beloved by the sheep. A pas­tor is a per­son who other peo­ple fol­low because they respond pos­i­tively to the char­ac­ter of the man. They like and appre­ci­ate him even if some­times he rebukes or cor­rects things out of place in the sheep’s life.

A “bishop” is an offi­cial posi­tion. It is tech­ni­cally a local church posi­tion of lead­er­ship and admin­is­tra­tion. A bishop is the cor­rect term for the posi­tion with­out a lot of ref­er­ence to what he does other than “over­sight”. It means lit­er­ally over­sight. You are installed into the posi­tion of bishop, and you leave the posi­tion of bishop, but instal­la­tion is an orga­ni­za­tional thing (offi­cial and author­ta­tive recog­ni­tion) more than any­thing else.

An “elder” is a qual­ity of life that a per­son has or doesn’t have. Nobody makes you elder but you your­self by you reac­tion and deal­ing with life itself. A per­son can be an elder always whether he has any respon­s­abil­i­ties, activ­i­ties, or offi­cial duties within a local church or not. In the OT, there were elders, that just were. They had no instal­la­tion except as they advanced through life and oth­ers noted their wise and expe­ri­ence, and these other peo­ple sought them out for what they could help in clar­i­fy­ing and help­ing them in the sit­u­a­tions of life.