Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
Happy New Year! The question for you that we're going to discuss today, or at least start the discussion, is what is a pastor?
Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content, or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
Well, welcome to The Wrap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rapoport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community, of which this podcast is a proud member. Of the other 50-plus vetted podcasts, go to christianpodcastcommunity .org.
You will find something worth listening to that you will enjoy, guaranteed, or your money back. But with that, we are glad to be here with you. Start off a new year with a new series. Wait a minute. Some of you are thinking, Andrew, aren't you in the middle of a series?
Yes. Yes, we are. Glad you brought that up. We have not forgotten about that. But we don't want to be, since we have a series that's like 40 episodes long so far, we've been breaking it up. We are doing a series on what we believe.
That is, going through the doctrinal statement at Striving for Eternity and looking at a, well, basically, it's a systematic theology, but it's also looking at what to look for in a doctrinal statement.
And so that series, if you want, what we've done is actually put together all of the list of episodes in that series in one place for you. If you go to strivingforeternity .org at that website, you'll be able to find the doctrinal statement under the about section.
And under that, it says what we believe. Kind of makes sense since that's our what we believe series. But there you'd be able to go and find out not only what we believe and look at our doctrinal statement, but you'll also be able to scroll to the bottom.
And there is a link to the podcast episodes on the series. And that will link you through every one of the episodes that we have with that series. So there's almost 40 of them right now. That way you'll be able to just go to them, find them easily.
So if you'd like that series, want to go through that series, check that out. With that, what we also have is another series we're doing where we're going through with the different speakers at the Overcoming Evil Men's Conference.
We're going to continue that. It's just with schedules. It was hard to get done. And so we do have some some things there that will just take a bit. And so you could check that out. That's going to be just we'll filter those in.
But we want to do is a series to start off the new year with a series on called What is a Pastor? Yes, I freely admit it is a complete kind of take off from Matt Walsh's, you know, What is a Woman? But we want to cover the question, what is a pastor?
Because it is something that I think we need to have discussion on and hopefully encourage you through that. So what I want to do in this episode is just to introduce the topic to you. Introduce what we're going to go over at least January, probably into February.
And so we want to be able to make sure that as we do this, we want to hear from you as well. OK, and so we're going to be discussing things that hopefully you will be able to get in touch with us and let us know what you think.
So what I want to do is in this intro episode, give you kind of the overview, touch on a little highlights, hundred thousand foot view. What we're going to dig in deeper in the next few episodes so that you'll be not only encouraged looking forward to it yourself, but that hopefully you will be as well looking to share it with others.
So with that, what we're looking to do in this series is talk about what a pastor is. But first, we want to cover what a pastor is not. And the number one issue that we have to cover when we talk about what a pastor is not is.
If I had a drum roll now would be a great time to edit that in, but I don't. So what is a pastor? Well, it's not a woman. That is something that nowadays, boy, is there lots of discussion on that. And we're going to try to spend at least one, maybe even two episodes going through and looking in detail.
What is a pastor specifically when it comes to a woman? Can a woman be a pastor? That's something we need to address in our current culture. So for that reason, we're going to spend some time going through the arguments that people make for women pastors.
And we're going to try to address, hopefully, every passage that people try to use with that. We're going to do that in detail to hopefully give you all the ammunition you need to be able to address the topic that people bring up.
And if you are concerned, we may not address the verses you think or the arguments you think. Let me just let you know right up front with everything with this series, we want to hear from you. I want to hear what you want covered in this series, because this podcast is for you.
It's to help you.
It's not to have us hear ourselves speak here. It's not so that I could just talk to a microphone. It's only valuable if you find value in it. So if you could email us and let us know your comments, your questions, your passages you think we need to address in covering what a pastor is, email us and we're going to send you a free gift.
I'm not saying what the gift is yet. That may come in a future episode, but we will send you a free gift that has a lifetime guarantee. And in our technological age, it's something all of us need. Just going to leave it at that for now.
But you can email us at info at striving for eternity dot com info at striving for eternity dot com. And if you email us there, please give us your address so we can send you this free gift that we have for everyone.
But I want to hear from you if there's specific passages, especially if you want to defend the argument. If you want to argue that a woman can be a pastor, then what I want you to do is definitely give us your best arguments.
I want to address them. I want to look into what Scripture says on them. So we want to deal with that. So the first and probably the one that we're going to have to deal with the most, it's going to have in our culture, the most pushback is a woman being a pastor.
But there's not that's the only not the only issue that when we say what a pastor is not, because, you know, another thing a pastor is not is some guy preaching on the street. Even if it's on a Sunday.
Yeah, I know we call it open air preaching. I don't like that title. We'll get into it when we deal with that episode and call it why I call it open air evangelism, because many men have thought, well, I'm preaching.
And if I'm preaching, therefore, I'm a pastor. So sometimes they don't go to church on Sunday because, well, a lot of those guys don't find a church they like. Really, what it means is they don't like the accountability and can't get along with people.
So they go out and say, well, see, I'm on the street corner. I'm preaching the Bible. Therefore, I'm the pastor. And some have even made the argument, well, there's two or three gathered because they're listening.
So that's church. Yeah, I don't think that passage means what you think it means. Just saying. So is a street preacher a pastor? Now, can a pastor be a street preacher?
Yes.
But is a street preacher a pastor? Not necessarily. We'll cover that. We'll cover what is a pastor. You know, there's three terms in the Bible that we use. Shepherd or pastor, elder, and overseer or bishop.
Now, in many churches, we see a distinction with those three. A lot of churches, the pastor is the paid guy and the elder is the unpaid guy. And they're both in the same kind of office. But we make this distinction between the pastor, the guy who preaches every week, and the other pastors that are not the preaching pastor.
And that creates this hierarchy, like pastors are above elders, or what you do is it's the paid guys are pastors and the unpaid guys are elders. Or as some churches have, you have an elder board and the elder board is the board that makes the decisions.
And not all of the paid guys or all the, you might have the title pastor, but if you're not on the elder board, well, I guess you're kind of like pastor and name only, you got no voting privileges. So this is the things we're going to cover in that, but each of those are the same office used interchangeably.
Pastor or shepherd, bishop or overseer, elder, that's the same office, but each of those have a different aspect of them. And we want to cover the role because each of those is the role that every pastor should be doing in the church.
I also then want to say what qualifies a man for pastor. I mean, we know the list that we see in first Timothy and Titus, but we're going to cover topics like, does he need to have a seminary training?
Can a pastor be a pastor without having gone to seminary? Does he need to go to seminary? Is it required? And then we're going to make, I'm just telling you, it's going to be controversial this one. If you think the first one wasn't controversial, the last one, this last one will definitely be.
I'm going to say that the way we hire pastors in most churches today, not only is unbiblical, but wrong. And I'm not even talking about whether he has a seminary degree or not, but there's many problems that we have with the hiring process.
And the ultimate goal of this is going to be ways that you could pray for and bless your pastor. We want to cover that as well. Now, I'm going to tell you that as we go through this series, I want to be encouraging you to be blessing your pastor.
If you don't, if you're not in a church, then the first thing I'm going to tell you is get in church. If you're not in church, you're not following a biblical command. We are to be gathering together.
And we do that. And you don't have, look, you don't have to agree with everything your church believes. But you do have to be part of a church. You do have to be serving the church. You're not going to church to get, you're going to give.
You're going there to use the gifts that God has given you for the body of believers that God has put you in. Now, the question is, are you in a body? And if you're not in a body, well, then you better get in body.
And that's what I want to encourage you throughout that you would do. You need to be in a body of believers. So we're going to cover those topics and more. Well, what are the more? That's going to depend on you, listener.
Email us at info at striving for eternity dot com. I want to hear all of the issues you think we need to address in this series. I want to hear all the things you think we got wrong as we go through the series so we can address those.
If you think that women should be pastors, I want to hear from you. We want to do a thorough job here, digging into the scriptures, answering your questions when it comes to your pastors, my pastors, everyone's pastors.
Okay. We want to make sure that we are doing what's right according to scripture. And so we want to do a thorough job with this, looking at what is a pastor and what a pastor is not. And making sure that the pastor in the church you go to is a biblical pastor.
I'm going to give it away. If you have a woman pastor, she's not a pastor and you're not in a church because you're not following what the church's standard is for how to have a biblical leadership. So we're going to go through some difficult things throughout the year or throughout the series.
And I sure hope it doesn't take a whole year to do the series, but it may take some time. It may take all of January, probably into February, because I want to answer your questions. Again, just email us info at strivingforeternity .com.
It is in the show notes. So let us know what you think we need to address with it. But let me also use this time to encourage you to encourage your pastor. Hey, it's a new year. You haven't made your New Year's resolution yet.
Maybe you can make your New Year's resolution that you are going to bless your pastor this year. What are some ways you could bless your pastor? You know, let me just give you some practical things that I know with other churches that are done.
I know one church that has a pastor that one of the men of the church, every morning he goes and gets a cup of coffee and puts it on the pastor's desk before the pastor gets there. So when the first thing the pastor gets into his office, he sees a cup of coffee made just the way he likes it that's sitting there waiting for him.
Is that so hard to do? You know, you could do things as simple as and this may never have dawned on you, but I could tell you as someone who was a pastor how much this matters. You're going to go out of town.
You get a business trip. You're going to go see family. Maybe you're not at church because you're sick. Shoot your pastor a quick text. Hey, I'm not going to be here for two weeks. I got a family event and then I got to go travel for work.
Let your pastor know you're not going to be at church on Sunday.
Why?
I mean, he's going to see you the next week or two, right? What's the big deal? Well, to the pastor, most pastors, when they don't see you there, they start wondering where you are. Is everything okay?
It just sets his mind at ease. These are things that, trust me, this is what goes through the minds of pastors. And you could encourage your pastor greatly just by letting them know if you're not going to be around.
Hey, I'm going to be out of town. That's something that pastors really appreciate, just knowing that you care for them enough to let them know when you're not around so that they know to go and, oh, hey, you know what?
I can go.
I know he's not there. I know why he's not here. I could pray for him while he's gone, but you know what they're not having to worry about?
Huh.
I wonder if there's something wrong. He hasn't been here for two weeks. Hasn't been here for three weeks. I'm going to have to reach out to him, reach out to her, but you could make it easier on your pastor.
Just let him know, hey, I'm not going to be around. Here's why. And so that's something you could do. I encourage you to do something as simple as that. Pray for your pastor. Let him know that you're praying for him.
Maybe you could help buy him some good books or add books to his logos. Maybe you could, you know, with my pastor, I went out to my friend Jeffrey Rice and he does Bible rebindings. And so I got a new Bible, had it rebound, had his name put on it and was able to give that to him as a gift for his birthday.
So he has this nice, very nice quality leather Bible that he can now cherish. He spends all his time in the Bible. Well, now he's got one that he could hold that has a name. Can you do something like that?
I mean, there's so many different things we could do to bless our pastors. Why should we? Well, let me tell you what a pastor's life is like. Because most people think that your pastor kind of Saturday night goes, huh, what should I preach?
Okay, let me get some quotes from a bunch of other people. Put them together for a message for the next day, Sunday morning.
Oh, there we go.
We got the message. It's all put together. No, no. Most pastors aren't doing that. Most pastors start their sermons, well, a lot of them Sunday night, Sunday. As soon as he's done preaching the one message, you're already thinking the next.
Some start Monday morning. And so they'll spend the whole week. I mean, do you remember when you were in school and used to have like 10 page book reports you had to do? Maybe not all of you had to do that.
But that was a lot of work. And you had to put the citations in and make sure you read the material and do the research. Well, your pastor has a book report due every week, week in and week out. So every day he's having to prepare.
Month in, month out, year in, year out. He's got a book report that's due. It doesn't matter if he has unplanned funerals that pop up, unplanned counseling he didn't expect. Whatever's going on in the church, someone goes in the hospital and they expect the pastor to be there.
He's got to drop his study to be there. And what is he going to do? Well, he's got to find the time to finish that study. That's why I know some men who start their sermon preps a month out. I know one pastor, his sermon prep for his message for the first week in February is done the first week of January.
Now he continues working on it, but he's got all the prep done. His notes are done. And he kind of keeps adding to it throughout those next four weeks while he's working on the messages for March or for the second week of February.
And he stays a month ahead.
Because he knows life is what it is and there's going to be disruptions. And he wants to make sure he gives his people the best message he can. So you know what he does? He makes sure he's a month ahead.
And there's times where he gets behind and then he's got to work harder to catch up. But he knows, worst case, he's got a month. He finds the time within that. So there's things that men have to do to prepare for life when they're pastoring.
And the congregation doesn't see that. And so this is what your pastor is doing. You know, one of the things we do at Striving Fraternity is we go into churches and we do our Bible Interpretation Made Easy Seminar.
We come in for a weekend, teach people how to understand Bible interpretation at a very easy to understand level. In fact, if you want, you can go to strivingfraternityacademy .org or just strivingfraternity .org and click on the Academy page and you could take our class.
20 lessons on how to interpret the Bible. It's our biblical hermeneutics class. And you go through that. And when I get done doing our seminar, weekend seminar, I ask people, is this a lot of hard work to do to interpret the Bible?
And people go, yeah.
And I go, this is what your pastor does day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, year in and year out. Are you praying for your pastor? You see, it's not easy to do interpretation.
It's not easy to dig into the Greek and the Hebrew and the culture of 2000 or 3500 years ago to know how the culture is, to know the history of the time, to know what those guys meant by what they said, to read it in a culture that's totally unlike ours and bring that into our day and age.
So that he can explain to you what the Bible means and help you to understand how to apply it to your life. It's hard work. Oh, and that's just one part of his job. He's got to do the counseling in some churches, especially the smaller churches.
He's got to put the coffee on, turn the lights on, lock the doors at all of it. Because some churches, majority of churches have a pastor who does everything because there's no one else to do it. They pay him to do it.
And that's not healthy. Are you serving your pastor? Come alongside your pastor and do stuff for him. Not just coffee. Maybe you can, if he's the only one, if he's there opening the building, locking the building, turning the lights off, maybe you could do that.
Maybe you could help him. Maybe he's setting up the coffee. Maybe you set up the coffee instead. Find out how he's spending his week so that you could find out what things you might be able to do to ease his burden so he could focus on the interpretation of scripture.
Because that's his main function. And if there's not deacons around to take up the day-to-day operations, well, then he picks up a lot of that. And that takes away from his time in the Word. And you know what?
That takes away from your growth in the Word. Because if your pastor doesn't have the time to pour into the Word of God, how is he going to pour into you from the Word of God? You see, so you could be a blessing to him that actually comes back and blesses, well, you, because you get the benefit of that.
So that's something you could do is find ways that you could be a blessing to your pastors. So these are just some practical things that I want to encourage you to do throughout this series. Be a blessing to your pastor.
Find some ways you could come alongside and help him. I want to sprinkle that throughout this series. But like I said from the beginning, what I want to do is I want to hear from you. And that's why we're going to give everyone a free gift that contacts us.
Info at strivingforeternity .com. Let us know what you want covered in this series. What kind of things do you think or that you want to know when it comes to the role of a pastor? We want to cover those topics.
So I really want to encourage you guys to please email us about that. So with that, we're going to start this series. I wanted to give the overview. I want you, if you like what you're hearing here, share it with others.
Get people excited about this. The best way you could help us is sharing this episode and every episode you like with others. I'm not asking you to share every episode.
You may not like them all.
But if you get some value out of it, it doesn't take long to just share it. You could even text it to someone. Hey, check this out. Listen to this message. I do that all the time. When I find something valuable, I think, you know, I know someone that would be blessed by this.
I shoot a quick text. Hey, check out this podcast. Most podcast apps have a way for you to share. And you can quickly share the episode. And I do that all the time. It helps other people. So if you find value in this, go share this.
Maybe you could share this with your pastor. Hey, Pastor, I'm encouraged to encourage you. Here's some things I'm listening to in ways I can encourage you. Maybe you could give me some ideas, Pastor, how I could be a blessing to you.
Just an idea. So do that if you wouldn't mind. And I want to let you know where we're going to be. We got some speaking coming up just in case you're in the area. And if there's anywhere where we're going to be and you're in that area, I really want to encourage you to please let us know.
Contact us. And, you know, like you come to an event where we're speaking. What it really meant, mean a lot to me is if you come up and say, hey, Andrew, I listen to your podcast. I have people that come to me all the time.
And so I just sit here behind the mic. I don't always know who it is that I'm speaking to. I can't see you as a listener. But when you come to an event, it really means a lot to me when you come and say, hey, I listen to your podcast.
And so we'll be. January 14th, I'll be preaching at Providence Church in Mansfield, Ohio. I'll be February 20th to 25th, the Open Air Theology Conference. I encourage you if you're in Tennessee area. That is a great conference.
Just do a search on Open Air Theology Conference. Great speakers. The topic is why Calvinism? There's, I think, a pre-conference debate, a post-conference debate. That's shaping up to be a great, great conference.
Justin Peters and I will be speaking at River of Life Church in Watertown, New York, April 12th to the 14th. I will be going April 24th to May 9th to the Philippines. This, folks, I need your help. I will be going, Justin Peters will be going.
We're even trying to add Jim Osman to be going. Why do I need your help? Look, when we get there, we're going to be doing a Strange Fire Conference. We're going to address the issues of the charismatic movement, problems that are within the charismatic movement, things that we see going on that are a danger to Christianity, that are really problems in the Philippines there.
There's a lot of bad teaching out there. The word of faith is really, really prevalent there. And so we're going to go and help those churches. But guess what? These churches can't afford to fly us out there.
It's $2 ,500 a flight to get out there. And we've got three people that we're trying to get out there. So you could help us. Go to strivingforeturning .org slash support and let us know, hey, this is to support the Philippines trip.
If you do that, that will help us.
Because we're not booking a whole lot at Striving Fraternity of Speaking events here in the States right now, because if we can't cover this Philippines trip, we've committed to go because the money is in the bank to go.
But if we can't cover that, we may not be able to go to the other churches here in the States that need help because we go to churches that don't, can't really afford to have speakers come out. And so they don't have the means to pay for us to be there.
That's who we try to help out. And so we can only do that if the money's in the bank. So if you could help us get to the Philippines, we're, they work us like a dog.
I will tell you that.
I mean, we, last time I think I spoke 22 times in 14 days, we will be nonstop when we are there. It's going to be a lot of speaking, a lot of teaching. We have a church camp to do. We have two conferences to do.
I don't even know all the other things. We've got radio interviews and they'll book things as we get there. If you're in the Philippines, we want to get details. Hey, you can email us at infotrivingfraternity .com and we'll get you the details about that trip, where we're going to be, but please help us to get there.
We'll also be in Vail Valley Baptist Church. That's in Vail Valley, Arizona, August 8th to the 4th to August 11th. That is going to be, we're going to cover worldviews at that conference. So that's just the events we have right now.
If you could make it to any of those events, that would be an encouragement to us. Let us know, Hey, I listened to you on the Rapport. I came out to that. Also, if you happen to be in the Bucks County, Pennsylvania area, just want to give you guys an encouragement.
If you happen to be in that area, men, this is a shout out for you. We will be having at my church, Oxford Valley Chapel. We're going to be going through my book. What do we believe?
It's a breakfast.
So breakfast starts at 830. We're done at 930. We're going to be going. I won't be the only teacher. I'm one of several teachers. We're going to go through that book and study it. So if you're in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, please check that out.
Let us know, email us, go to, or you can contact the church Oxford Valley Chapel and join us. Have some breakfast, have some teaching.
It'll be good.
And I'm looking forward to what we will cover throughout this year. But a lot of that's going to depend on you. I want to know what you'd like us to talk about. So please, not just with this series on what is a pastor, anything else you want covered, email us so that we could cover topics that are of interest to you.
I hope that this encourages you to encourage your pastor. And with that, that's a wrap.
This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.