10: Your Pastor Probably Isn’t A Preacher

Welcome to the Ready for Eternity podcast. My name is Eddie Lawrence. In the last episode, we talked about how the

New Testament uses several words to describe the role of those who have the spiritual oversight of a local church.

They are elder or presbyter, shepherd or pastor, overseer or bishop, and steward.

The word preacher is perhaps the term that is most frequently used by Christians to refer to a pastor.

It is quite remarkable, therefore, that the New Testament never refers to a congregation's leader as a preacher.

We'll find out why in this episode. That's right.

The New Testament never refers to the leader or leaders of a congregation as a preacher.

Now, most Christians use the words preacher and pastor interchangeably, but the

Bible does not. The New Testament makes a distinction between the two roles.

It's understandable why this difference is overlooked. Most of us were never taught to notice the difference.

Even well -educated teachers and scholars often fail to point out the differences in the two roles.

The roles of pastor and preacher are not the same. What is the difference in the two roles, and where does the

New Testament make the distinction? Let's first understand what the word preach means.

Most people I know are under the impression that preaching is a style of public speaking.

They consider preaching to be dynamic, loud, and animated. They associate preaching with a fire -and -brimstone type of message aimed at repentance.

It's the getting -your -toes -stepped -on kind of public speaking. On the other hand, teaching is typically contrasted with preaching.

People tend to consider teaching to be more of a calm, intellectual, knowledge transfer.

While such a distinction is the popular opinion, it is not biblical.

How does the New Testament define the word preach? Now, I'm going to butcher these

Greek words, so bear with me, but the Greek words most often translated into English as preach are keruso, euangelizo.

The definition of keruso is to make an official announcement, announce, or make known by an official herald or one who functions as such.

The word euangelizo means to bring good news, to announce glad tidings.

As you can see, they are similar in meaning. A preacher is someone who proclaims good news.

In the ancient world, it could have referred to any good news, but was usually something of national importance.

Examples would be winning an important military victory or the inauguration of a new king.

In the New Testament, the gospel, which means the good news, is the good news about King Jesus.

In the New Testament, who did preachers preach to? The word preach, or its variations of preached, preaching, etc.,

occurs 138 times in the King James Version of the New Testament.

In 98 of those instances, the text specifically says it was the gospel that was being proclaimed.

In every case, the context reveals that those who heard the preaching were those who were not followers of Jesus.

On my website, I have a page, which is linked to in the article that goes along with this episode, that has all 138 references of the word preach, preaching, etc.

I encourage you to go look at that page and see for yourself that followers of Jesus were not the target audience of the basic gospel message.

Now, I've listed just the verses, but you really need to look at the context of each of the verses

I've linked to. Now, this makes sense if you think about it. Why would you proclaim the good news about Jesus to those who are already

Christians? They've already heard and believed. Once a person believed the good news and became a follower of Jesus, it was time to move on to the next phase, their discipling.

A preacher and an evangelist are the same thing. An evangelist is one who proclaims the gospel to the lost.

The word proclaim is a synonym for preach, as you can see by comparing two different Bible translations.

Listen to Matthew chapter 10, verse 7, from both the ESV and the

New King James Version. And proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

English Standard Version. And as you go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

New King James Version. The work of an evangelist is to share the gospel with those who have never heard it or who have not obeyed it.

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia notes how the work of the preacher takes place before the work of a pastor.

The evangelist's work precedes that of the pastor and teacher. The evangelist has no fixed place of residence, but moves about in different localities, preaching the gospel to those previously ignorant of it.

As these are converted and united to Jesus Christ by faith, the work of the pastor and teacher begins to instruct them further in the way of Christ and build them up in the faith.

J .M. Gray, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. New Testament scholar

C .H. Dodd notes that preaching and teaching are different and they are aimed at different audiences.

Dodd's first thesis was that the New Testament writers draw a distinction between preaching and teaching.

Teaching is in a large majority of cases ethical instruction. Preaching, on the other hand, is the public proclamation of Christianity to the non -Christian world.

Accordingly, Dodd distinguished preaching from teaching both by its content and by its audience, with the latter distinction, preaching, being aimed at non -Christians, posing the sharpest possible contrast with modern -day preaching, at least as perceived from the pew.

G .P. Hugenberger, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Didn't Paul preach to Christians?

Out of the dozens of verses mentioning preaching, there are a few which, on the surface, appear to suggest a

Christian audience. They are Acts 20, verse 7, Romans 1, 15, and 1

Thessalonians 2, 9. I've written about these three verses in another blog post, but we'll take a look at those in the next podcast episode.

We'll talk about why these three verses aren't really about preaching to those who already believe.

So, in short, a preacher is one who shares the good news about Jesus with unbelievers.

So what is the job of a pastor? A pastor is one who has been given the oversight of a group of people that are already

Christians. We can see this in Acts 20, verse 28. The word pastor is an archaic term for a shepherd.

Shepherds, also known as elders, overseers, or stewards, are those who tend a flock of God's people.

They're responsible for the spiritual feeding, care, and protection of the Christians over whom they exercise oversight.

When a pastor stands before a group of Christians and teaches them, he is not preaching.

By the Bible's definition, when he delivers a sermon to the church, he is not preaching because he's speaking to the saved.

Preaching is sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with the lost. Let me reiterate that.

Preaching is defined both by the message and by who the audience is.

Therefore, when a pastor speaks before a church, before a group of Christians, he is not preaching.

They are already believers. So can one person fill both roles? Can one person be both a pastor and a preacher?

Yes, it's possible, but it is probably impractical in most situations.

Pastors serve local congregations where their responsibilities are to teach and care for the spiritually weak or sick, and to protect against threats to the church that may arise from inside or outside.

This is a full -time job. Likewise, being an evangelist or preacher implies someone who is not necessarily tied to a single congregation.

They are typically mobile which prevents them from shepherding. Besides this, those who serve as preachers may not meet the biblical qualifications of a pastor.

There are exceptions to this. For example, in 1 Timothy 5 .17, Paul tells us that some people do fill both roles.

However, it would seem that even in the New Testament, this was a special case rather than the norm.

If your church leader or leaders mainly work with and serve those who are already saved, they are not doing the job of an evangelist, aka preacher.

If a person works nearly exclusively sharing the gospel with the lost, they do not meet the scriptural description of a pastor.

In most situations, a person does primarily one work or the other. Therefore, your pastor is probably not a preacher.

Thanks for listening to the podcast. We hope this episode has deepened your understanding of scripture.

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