What's in the job title?

I've often baulked at being called pastor, mostly because of the connotations I believed it's generally carried in the church. Pastor has often been perceived as primarily a caring role. We talk about pastoral visiting as if it's focus is spending the afternoons checking on the sick and housebound. But the role of pastor is more than this.

Ed Stetzer recently blogged about addressing the question "What's a Pastor to do?" at his church as they prepared to call a new pastor. This is how he defined the role"

A pastor must be:

1. Unique Qualifications

a. True

b. Spiritual

2. Unique Responsibilities

a. Teach the Scriptures

b. Lead the Church

c. Equip Believers

All of these were drawn from the Timothy and Titus letters.

I found this outline helpful and interesting. For those who would like to understand the tensions with which most of us in pastoral ministry live on a daily basis, this might give you some insight. For those sensing God's call to this unique, privileged role within God's mission, it ought to give you something on which you can reflect.

The original post is here and includes a video with the text. There is one sentence that needs a little bit of clarification, well it needed clarifying for me! The sentence is this:

If pastors do for people what God calls them to do, they get the praise and the work of God gets hindered.

The 'them' refers to the people not the pastors, the 'they' refers to the pastors. So the sentence reads:

If pastors do for people what God calls the people to do, the pastors get the praise but the work of God gets hindered [because they are both doing the wrong things]. It's easily misread if you are not concentrating.