The Pastors and Teachers

Pastors must be able to teach. Pastors are God’s gift to the church. “He is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers” (Eph. 4:11). The pastors and teachers are considered as one category in the text, for there is only one Greek article in front of both groups. Therefore, they are “teaching pastors.” Pastors have different functions. However, their teaching function ought to be distinctive. If pastors don’t teach the truth in the church, who will?

John Piper writes:

The Bible tells us in Ephesians 4:11 that Jesus has given to his church pastors and teachers. And it tells us that these pastors and teachers should be “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2). They should be good teachers. So all of us pastors should be thinking, God is giving me as a gift to my church. And he is telling me, The way you will be a gift to your church is if you are an effective teacher.

I think that implies that ordinary folks in the pew need help understanding their Bible. If the sheep did not need help understanding their Bibles, God would not have given shepherds who had to be apt to teach. The shepherds would just read the Bible on Sunday morning, and the people would see and feel all they need to. No teaching or preaching required. But that’s not how Jesus set it up.[1]

To say it from another perspective, David Wells says:

Across much of evangelicalism, but especially in the market-driven churches, one therefore sees a new kind of leadership among pastors now. Gone is the older model of the scholar-saint, one who was as comfortable with books and learning as with the aches of the soul. This was the shepherd who knew the flock, knew how to tend it, and Sunday by Sunday took that flock into the treasures of God’s Word. This has changed.[2]

Pastors become administrators, organizers, church overseers, program directors, etc…We do all things, except being a faithful Bible expositor and teacher. We fail to keep the main thing the main thing. Paul said to the Ephesians elders: “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27, ESV). Paul had faithfully taught and preached the whole plan of God’s salvation as revealed in Scripture.

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[1] John Piper and D. A. Carson, The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry. Edited by Owen Strachan and David Mathis (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), p. 61.

[2] David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 40.