The Southern Baptist Convention has recently made waves by deciding to add to its rules that associating churches must not include women pastors on their staff. This links in part to the decision by Saddleback Church to appoint female pastors and Rick Warren’s change of mind on complementarianism. However, the decision has caused consternation not only amongst egalitarians but also with many complementarian churches who would appoint women as pastors (e.g. women’s pastors, student pastors, youth, family and children’s pastors) without there being any suggestion that they see these roles as the equivalent of a main teaching pastor or elder.
I don’t want to particularly get into the specifics of the SBC debate here but I was interested by a tweet and article by NT scholar, Michael Bird.
I am tempted to respond that “it depends”. Whether or not we think of people as pastoral/pastors depends on what we mean by the words. I think that “pastor” and “pastoral” have primarily become associated with soft skills. For church, we associate the word with visiting the sick and elderly, lending a listening ear, offering counselling and advise. We may also think of “pastors” as those who provide services such as weddings, funerals and dedications.
This reflects wider society. I note that Michael, in his article talks about having a kind of pastoral role in the seminary he teaches at. This tends to mean that students can come to particular tutors for support. In schools, here in the UK there is a tendency at leadership level to distinguish the pastoral track from the curriculum/teaching and learning track.
However, when churches originally began to pick up on the language of pastors and pastoral care, this isn’t really what they had in mind. Yes, pastoring included all of those things. However, the point of the word is that its linguistic roots are to do with shepherding. A pastor is a shepherd, in fact this means there is some overlap with the language of eldership, oversight and bishops when it comes to the New Testament’s usage of those words and concepts.
Pastoring, or shepherding is about providing for and protecting the flock. In that respect, we pastor when we visit, counsel, pray but we also pastor when we teach, preach, correct, even when we engage in the difficult business of church discipline. We pastor when we meet as leaders to make decisions and when we seek to cast vision or set the mission of the church. We pastor when we write books, blogs and articles too. We pastor when we proclaim the Gospel.
I’d be inclined to suggest that if a school teacher is pastoral, then it is as much when they are in the classroom making sure a kid gets their grammar right as when they sit down with a kid and their parent to talk about why the child is turning up late or their behaviour and concentration have deteriorated. If Michael “pastors” in the seminary, then it is as much through his teaching as it is through his chaplaincy type work.
This perhaps doesn’t offer a decision about what churches should label staff members and I’m not sure we should worry too much about the labels, we should primarily be concerned about them using the gifts God has given them for his glory and the benefit of the church. However, I hope it helps us think more about what pastoring entails.
Faithroots 