Theopedia

Pastor

“And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.”

— Jeremiah 3:15 (ESV)

Definition

A pastor, from the Latin word for “shepherd,” is the elder or bishop considered under his charge of shepherding the local church: feeding it God’s word, guiding it, and protecting it from danger.1 Paul names this charge directly when he lists “the shepherds and teachers” Christ gave to equip the saints (Eph. 4:11-12), and the 1689 confession likewise names “pastors” among a church’s ordinary officers.2 Christ himself, “the good shepherd” who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11), is the pattern every human pastor serves under.

Confessional Witness

The 1689 confession names pastors alongside bishops or elders and deacons as the officers Christ has appointed for a particular church.2 Two paragraphs later, addressing this office under its own name specifically, it states what a congregation owes the man who holds it:

“The work of pastors being constantly to attend the service of Christ, in his churches, in the ministry of the word and prayer, with watching for their souls, as they that must give an account to Him; it is incumbent on the churches to whom they minister, not only to give them all due respect, but also to communicate to them of all their good things according to their ability, so as they may have a comfortable supply, without being themselves entangled in secular affairs; and may also be capable of exercising hospitality towards others; and this is required by the law of nature, and by the express order of our Lord Jesus, who hath ordained that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.”3

The confession grounds a pastor’s material support in the nature of the work itself. Attending “constantly” to the word and prayer leaves no room for a second occupation, so a congregation that receives this care owes its pastor a “comfortable supply” in return, a debt the confession traces to “the law of nature” and to Christ’s own command that those who preach the gospel should live by it (Luke 10:7; 1 Cor. 9:14).

Biblical Basis

The shepherd image in the Old Testament

Israel already knew God himself as its shepherd: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1). Ezekiel condemns Israel’s own shepherds, its kings and leaders, for feeding themselves instead of the flock, “you eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool… but you do not feed the sheep” (Ezek. 34:2-4), and records God’s promise to seek out his scattered sheep and shepherd them himself (Ezek. 34:11-16). Jeremiah likewise records God’s promise to raise up faithful shepherds in place of the failed ones: “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:15). Strauch reads Ezekiel’s charge against Israel’s shepherds as the standing warning behind every pastor’s first duty: “a selfish shepherd is, according to the biblical authors, a bad shepherd (Ezek. 34:2-8).”4 Charles E. Jefferson, quoted by Strauch to the same point, ties feeding directly to Ezekiel’s indictment: “Unless wisely fed they become emaciated and sick, and the wealth invested in them is squandered. When Ezekiel presents a picture of the bad shepherd, the first stroke of his brush is—’he does not feed the flock.’”5

Christ the Good Shepherd

Jesus applies this whole Old Testament background to himself: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” in contrast to “a hired hand and not a shepherd,” who “sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees… because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep” (John 10:11-13). After his resurrection, he charges Peter three times, “Feed my lambs… Tend my sheep… Feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17), commissioning the apostle to the same shepherding work Christ has just described as his own. Peter later passes that same charge to the elders he addresses, calling Christ “the Chief Shepherd” who will appear to reward those who shepherd his flock well (1 Pet. 5:2-4), and elsewhere calls him “the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Pet. 2:25), the office every human pastor holds under him.

The gift of pastors and teachers

Paul writes that the ascended Christ “gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-12). Whether this names one office (“pastor-teachers”) or two distinct, closely paired groups is a genuine, long-running exegetical question rather than a settled point. Louis Berkhof takes the “one office” reading: Paul’s phrase, he writes, “mentioned as a single class, to the Church, clearly shows that these two did not constitute two different classes of officers, but one class having two related functions.”6 Jonathan Worthington’s 2025 study of the verse’s grammar argues the opposite: the shared article and Paul’s own sentence structure “portray pastors and teachers as two recognizably distinct groups… who nevertheless must serve the saints in closer connection together than the other leaders mentioned.”7 Worthington traces the “one office” reading itself back to a historical dispute, noting that “Calvin, the Westminster Directory, and the New England Puritans promoted a distinction between pastors and teachers in Ephesians 4:11,” a distinction Charles Hodge, on the other side of the question, called “a false interpretation of Scripture.”8

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t paying a pastor a wage make him a hired hand rather than a true shepherd, the very contrast Jesus draws in John 10:12-13? The hireling Jesus condemns is marked by abandoning the flock at the first sign of danger because “he cares nothing for the sheep” (John 10:13), not by receiving support for his labor. Peter’s own charge to pastors distinguishes the same temptation from the office itself, calling them to shepherd “not for shameful gain, but eagerly” (1 Pet. 5:2). The confession’s provision for a pastor’s “comfortable supply” reflects Christ’s own ordinary appointment “that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel,”3 the same principle Paul states plainly elsewhere: “the laborer deserves his wages” (1 Tim. 5:18; Luke 10:7).

Doesn’t calling one man “the pastor” of a congregation contradict the New Testament’s own pattern of a plural eldership? Popular usage often narrows “pastor” to a single ordained professional set over a congregation’s other elders. Strauch warns against exactly this narrowing: the New Testament’s noun for shepherd is never applied to a single office-holder standing over a church, and the term “is not used in a clerical sense or as one person (senior pastor) separate from and over the elders.”1 On the confession’s own terms, every elder is a pastor, since the whole council of elders together, not one man among them, bears the charge to shepherd the flock.2

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), chap. 2, “Pastoral Leadership,” 31-42: “since the elders shepherd God’s flock, it is appropriate to refer to them as shepherds, undershepherds, or even pastors, as long as it is understood that the term pastor is not used in a clerical sense or as one person (senior pastor) separate from and over the elders. ‘Pastor’ is the Latin word for ‘shepherd.’” ↩ ↩2

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 8. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Second London Baptist Confession, chap. 26, para. 10. ↩ ↩2

  4. Strauch, chap. 2, 31-42. ↩

  5. Charles E. Jefferson, The Minister as Shepherd, quoted in Strauch, chap. 2, 31-42. ↩

  6. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 570. ↩

  7. Jonathan D. Worthington, “The Pastors and Teachers in Ephesians 4:11,” Themelios 50, no. 3 (2025): 495-511. ↩

  8. Worthington, “The Pastors and Teachers in Ephesians 4:11,” 497. ↩