Should We Call Female Leaders ‘Pastors’?
00:00:00.000 | Today, we jump feet first into a boiling debate over whether female church leaders should
00:00:08.440 | be called pastors.
00:00:10.720 | The question comes to us from a listener named Nick.
00:00:13.240 | "Hello Pastor John, my church is changing its view on the use of the word pastor to
00:00:18.260 | include women, saying Ephesians 4.11 is the only place in the Bible where the Greek word
00:00:23.240 | for pastor is ever used and there it doesn't have any specific qualifications.
00:00:29.000 | Women could fill this role and still be under male headship and a male elder board, almost
00:00:33.280 | more like a deacon or deaconess who leads specific ministries in the church, like a
00:00:37.000 | pastor over worship or a pastor over women's ministry.
00:00:41.600 | But would this change in title be in line with other parts of Scripture?"
00:00:45.960 | Pastor John, what do you have to say to Nick?
00:00:47.680 | Well, let's clarify first that this is a kind of intra-complementarian debate, that is a
00:00:55.200 | debate among complementarians, a debate among those who agree that the New Testament calls
00:01:02.800 | for spiritual, mature, gifted, qualified men to bear the official responsibility in the
00:01:11.800 | local church for governing and teaching leadership.
00:01:16.000 | Complementarianism means more than that, more than just those qualifications for church
00:01:21.920 | leadership, for example, in the home and in society, but that's the relevant part for
00:01:27.440 | this debate.
00:01:28.440 | It's a debate among those who agree on that point, and the question is whether it's biblical
00:01:35.280 | or wise or misleading to use the word pastor for various roles that women can play, various
00:01:46.080 | appropriate roles that women play.
00:01:49.400 | That's the issue that I'm addressing and that I've been reading about recently.
00:01:54.160 | My answer to the question is that it is misleading and unwise to use the English word pastor
00:02:04.040 | for women in ministry, and that the attempt to say that it is more biblical to use it
00:02:14.480 | is built on a misunderstanding of how language works as well as the supposed use of the word
00:02:23.720 | pastor in the New Testament.
00:02:25.520 | And I'll give four reasons for why I think it's misleading and unwise and ill-founded.
00:02:33.760 | So here's number one.
00:02:35.880 | The English word pastor in the English-speaking world today is taken to mean by almost everyone,
00:02:46.200 | everyone who knows the word, to refer to a person with official leadership in the local
00:02:51.600 | church that ordinarily involves preaching and governing and would be roughly the same
00:02:57.080 | as lead elders or overseers.
00:03:00.800 | That's the ordinary meaning of the word in English.
00:03:05.080 | So the question becomes, should a word with that ordinary meaning in English be used to
00:03:13.780 | refer to laypeople in the church, men or women, who do not have that kind of official leadership
00:03:20.920 | role of preaching and teaching and governing as elders and overseers?
00:03:25.680 | And the answer of some is yes, we should use that word because the New Testament uses the
00:03:35.520 | term pastor for non-authoritative roles of shepherding.
00:03:40.880 | That's the argument they would give.
00:03:43.320 | So my second reason for thinking it's misleading and unwise and ill-founded to use the word
00:03:50.440 | pastor for those who are not elders or overseers in the church is that this argument that I
00:03:58.080 | just mentioned doesn't work, namely that the New Testament uses the term pastor for non-authoritative
00:04:05.040 | roles of shepherding.
00:04:07.520 | So let me state the obvious.
00:04:09.760 | The New Testament was written in Greek and, of course, doesn't use the English word pastor
00:04:16.380 | at all.
00:04:17.760 | That may seem silly to even observe that, but it's significant.
00:04:21.760 | It has a word in Greek, poimen, for shepherd.
00:04:27.040 | That word is used 18 times, that noun is used 18 times in the New Testament, one of which
00:04:35.640 | is sometimes translated pastor, namely Ephesians 4.11, where Christ has appointed pastors and
00:04:43.040 | teachers in the church.
00:04:44.240 | But the ESV, for example, translates this "shepherds and teachers," and if we do that,
00:04:52.680 | then the word pastor never occurs in the entire English Bible.
00:04:58.240 | The other translations only have it there at Ephesians 4.11.
00:05:01.600 | The ESV doesn't even translate it there as pastors, but simply shepherds.
00:05:06.400 | That's the way it's translated throughout.
00:05:09.160 | The noun poimen means a shepherd, and most of its uses are literally those who tend the
00:05:16.760 | flocks, like in Luke 2.8.
00:05:19.000 | There were shepherds out in the fields tending their flocks by night at Christmas.
00:05:23.720 | Then comes—it comes to mean Jesus as the good shepherd or the great shepherd, as in
00:05:32.160 | John 10.11 or in Hebrews 13, and it refers once to those who shepherd and teach God's
00:05:38.920 | people, namely Ephesians 4.11.
00:05:43.840 | And it also, of course, refers in Revelation and once in Luke to the ruler of God's
00:05:49.480 | people, as in Matthew 2.6.
00:05:54.320 | Here's the catch in translation.
00:05:56.720 | In English, we have two words—shepherd and pastor.
00:06:01.960 | Two words in English—shepherd and pastor.
00:06:04.080 | In Greek, there are not two words—shepherd and pastor.
00:06:07.720 | It's just poimen.
00:06:09.480 | There's one word, and it means shepherd.
00:06:13.000 | There was no other word that carries the meaning of the English word pastor.
00:06:17.640 | So if you really want to recover something like New Testament language, which is the
00:06:24.080 | claim being made that that's what we want to do, get back to New Testament language,
00:06:28.560 | you would make a case for calling church leaders shepherds, not pastors.
00:06:34.920 | That's the real claim, if you want to get back to originality of usage in the New Testament.
00:06:41.840 | It's highly misleading to claim that in applying the word pastor to laypeople, we are recovering
00:06:50.120 | New Testament usage.
00:06:51.880 | That's highly misleading, when the word pastor does not even occur in the ESV, and
00:06:58.520 | only once does it occur in other versions.
00:07:02.520 | So my third argument now for why it is unwise and misleading and ill-founded to call laypeople
00:07:11.640 | pastors is the observation that when the New Testament does describe its church leaders
00:07:20.360 | as doing the work of a shepherd, with the verb poimenēn, built on that noun poimenēn,
00:07:28.720 | when it does describe its church leaders as doing the work of a shepherd, they were thought
00:07:34.600 | of not as laypeople, but as elders and overseers.
00:07:38.760 | I'll give you three clear instances.
00:07:42.720 | Number one, in Acts 20, Paul calls together the elders, verse 17 of Ephesus, and he says
00:07:50.960 | to them in verse 28, "Pay careful attention to yourselves, you elders, and to all the
00:07:57.040 | flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers."
00:08:02.920 | So now you have two words of authoritative position, elder and overseer.
00:08:07.520 | To shepherd—so this is their task—to shepherd the church of God.
00:08:13.160 | So here he virtually identifies shepherding with the task of overseeing, and he is speaking
00:08:21.000 | to elders about their special responsibility in the flock.
00:08:24.760 | That's number one.
00:08:25.760 | Here's number two.
00:08:26.760 | In 1 Peter 5, 1 and 2, Peter says, "So I exhort the elders among you, shepherd the
00:08:36.480 | flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight."
00:08:41.380 | So Peter uses the same two words as Paul does, namely elder and the task of overseeing, and
00:08:50.080 | he calls these overseeing leaders to shepherd the flock.
00:08:54.880 | That's number two.
00:08:55.880 | Here's number three.
00:08:56.880 | In John 21, 16, Jesus says to the apostle Peter, "Shepherd my sheep."
00:09:03.880 | So not only is there no New Testament word that corresponds to pastor as distinct from
00:09:12.720 | shepherd, but the idea of shepherding in the New Testament was consistently associated
00:09:19.820 | with the leadership of elders and overseers.
00:09:24.120 | So my fourth reason now for saying it's misleading and unwise and ill-founded to use
00:09:31.180 | the word pastor for non-elders or non-overseers, people without official governing and teaching
00:09:38.700 | responsibilities in the church, men or women, is that the title "Pastor Mary" or "Pastor
00:09:47.060 | Jane" is over time going to communicate, especially to our young people, I think, growing
00:09:54.140 | up in the church and people newer to the church, it's going to communicate inevitably that
00:10:01.140 | the office of pastor, as almost everyone understands it in English, is properly filled by women.
00:10:10.700 | In other words, I think those who are arguing for the use of the word pastor for women ministering
00:10:20.220 | or men who are not elders or overseers are undermining the teaching of the New Testament
00:10:28.120 | about church leadership, even as they aim to do the opposite.
00:10:32.900 | >> Appreciate it.
00:10:34.300 | Thanks for weighing into this controversy, Pastor John.
00:10:37.940 | And thank you for joining us.
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00:10:45.680 | And for our episode archive or to submit a controversial question of your own, go to
00:10:49.700 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:54.420 | Well up next time is a question from a wife wondering why her husband does not pray with
00:10:59.000 | her more.
00:11:00.500 | Should couples pray together regularly?
00:11:03.060 | Why or why not?
00:11:05.180 | That's up next time.
00:11:06.180 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:07.180 | We'll see you on Monday.
00:11:08.180 | Have a great weekend.
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