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The First Christians Didn't Have a Pastor · Theology Made Podcast

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: welcome to the theology made podcast i'm dr jordan vale
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  SPEAKER_00: in today's episode we're going to look at how the first christians didn't have
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  SPEAKER_00: a pastor
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  SPEAKER_00: somewhere in america this sunday around 9 47 in the morning a man
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  SPEAKER_00: in his late 30s still holding on to his skinny jeans and a pair
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  SPEAKER_00: of jays his wife didn't want him to wear will walk onto a stage
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  SPEAKER_00: he spent 20 hours this week preparing what he's about to say his name is on
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  SPEAKER_00: the sign out front his salary is the largest line in
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  SPEAKER_00: the church budget his health his marriage and his energy levels are one of
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  SPEAKER_00: the quiet subtexts of almost every elder meeting because everyone knows that
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  SPEAKER_00: if he goes down attendance goes with him we call him the pastor let's pause there
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  SPEAKER_00: if you could pull a christian out of the year 60 and you set her in
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  SPEAKER_00: the back row some of the morning would feel familiar to her the singing yes
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  SPEAKER_00: the scripture reading yes the bread in the cup would feel
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  SPEAKER_00: a bit watered down no pun intended but but still familiar
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  SPEAKER_00: the man on the stage would confuse her completely she has no category
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  SPEAKER_00: for him her church has nobody like him and the word we use for him the word printed
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  SPEAKER_00: on his office door and on his business cards is a word her churches almost never use
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  SPEAKER_00: for a human being at all the first christians didn't have a pastor so today i want
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  SPEAKER_00: to show you what they had instead when the job we know was invented and why
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  SPEAKER_00: the answer is more interesting than any church fight you've ever sat
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  SPEAKER_00: through let's start with the word itself because the word is the first clue
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  SPEAKER_00: if you open a new testament and search for pastor as a title for the leader of
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  SPEAKER_00: a congregation you'll find the noun applied
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  SPEAKER_00: to church leaders exactly once it's found in the book
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  SPEAKER_00: of ephesians chapter 4 verse 11 paul lists gifts christ gave
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  SPEAKER_00: the church apostles prophets evangelists and pastor teachers that's it it appears in
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  SPEAKER_00: a list in the plural
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  SPEAKER_00: with no job descriptions there's no duties there's no qualifications there's no
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  SPEAKER_00: instructions for hiring one
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  SPEAKER_00: now consider what's missing paul wrote 13 letters to churches
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  SPEAKER_00: and church workers scattered across
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  SPEAKER_00: the roman world he addressed elders he addressed overseers he addressed deacons
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  SPEAKER_00: and once memorably an entire church having a meltdown but he never once addressed
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  SPEAKER_00: a letter to the pastor of a congregation luke he wrote the book of acts
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  SPEAKER_00: which is essentially volume one of church history covering three decades
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  SPEAKER_00: of christian expansion from jerusalem to rome count the pastors named in it zero
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  SPEAKER_00: the word behind pastor is pointing it just means shepherd
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  SPEAKER_00: and shepherd language is everywhere in the new testament but notice when you find
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  SPEAKER_00: the language who's the one who owns it it's jesus he calls himself the good shepherd
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  SPEAKER_00: in john 10 the letter to the hebrews calls him the great shepherd of
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  SPEAKER_00: the sheep peter calls him the chief shepherd and says that when he appears
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  SPEAKER_00: the elders who served under him will receive a crown
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  SPEAKER_00: and there's a verb form to to shepherd and it does get assigned
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  SPEAKER_00: to humans peter tells a group of men to shepherd the flock of god that is
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  SPEAKER_00: among you paul tells a group of men in acts 20 to shepherd the church of god
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  SPEAKER_00: but notice it's a group both times and actually every time for
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  SPEAKER_00: the first christians shepherding was a task a team performed
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  SPEAKER_00: the shepherd capital s well that was somebody else though
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  SPEAKER_00: if there's no pastor who's running these churches
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  SPEAKER_00: and
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  SPEAKER_00: the new testament answer is pretty consistent elders plural always plural acts 14 23
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  SPEAKER_00: paul and barnabas they appoint elders plural
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  SPEAKER_00: in every church singular one church multiple elders titus 1 5 paul tells titus
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  SPEAKER_00: to appoint elders plural in every town on crepe philippians 1 1 opens with greetings
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  SPEAKER_00: to the overseers plural of a single city's church
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  SPEAKER_00: james 514 says if you're sick call the elders not the elder the elders and here's
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  SPEAKER_00: a detail
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  SPEAKER_00: that was infused much later those different titles you've heard elder overseer
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  SPEAKER_00: bishop shepherd
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  SPEAKER_00: they weren't at first different ranks yet they were just different words for
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  SPEAKER_00: the same person and you can see Paul do it in
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  SPEAKER_00: a single scene Acts chapter 20 Paul is sailing for Jerusalem
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  SPEAKER_00: and he stops somewhere he sends a message up the coast to Ephesus and calls for
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  SPEAKER_00: the elders of the church when they arrive he tells these same men that
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  SPEAKER_00: the Holy Spirit has made them overseers
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  SPEAKER_00: and for those of you who are part of a high church tradition you probably recognize
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  SPEAKER_00: that this is the word we eventually turned into bishop and then he charges them
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  SPEAKER_00: to shepherd the church of god so one group of men three words elder bishop pastor
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  SPEAKER_00: and in the year 57 those are just synonyms and there's no fourth person standing
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  SPEAKER_00: above them
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  SPEAKER_00: so picture this actually happening because I think understanding
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  SPEAKER_00: the scale it helps us see the context
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  SPEAKER_00: because there were no church buildings there would be no dedicated church buildings
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  SPEAKER_00: anyone could verify for roughly two more centuries the church in Ephesus met the way
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  SPEAKER_00: the church everywhere met in homes notice Paul's greetings it's always the church in
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  SPEAKER_00: the house of and then it's the person's name
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  SPEAKER_00: the largest room of a wealthy roman home held maybe 40 people and that's with
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  SPEAKER_00: the kids on parents laps so leadership in a room like that it's going
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  SPEAKER_00: to look less like performing and more like hosting the elders were often
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  SPEAKER_00: the homeowners the older tested believers whose lives
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  SPEAKER_00: the whole community could inspect at close range nobody preached to strangers
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  SPEAKER_00: because there weren't strangers no one built a platform because there was no stage
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  SPEAKER_00: to put it on
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  SPEAKER_00: and we even have an early church
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  SPEAKER_00: the church's biggest personal problems which was get this traveling preachers
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  SPEAKER_00: the didache's churches were regularly visited by wandering apostles and prophets and
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  SPEAKER_00: the manual lays out rules for vetting them that it's almost comically practical
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  SPEAKER_00: a traveling apostle may stay one day two if necessary if he stays a third day he's
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  SPEAKER_00: a false prophet if he asks for money he's a false prophet if he orders a meal in
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  SPEAKER_00: the spirit and then eats it himself false prophet
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  SPEAKER_00: and when it comes to permanent local leadership
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  SPEAKER_00: the didache gives one instruction appoint for yourself bishops and deacons worthy of
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  SPEAKER_00: the lord so for yourselves the congregation chooses and it chooses bishops plural
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  SPEAKER_00: for one community and around the year 100 in at least one corner of
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  SPEAKER_00: the christian world church polity was a team
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  SPEAKER_00: of locally elected overseers plus this rotating cast of what seems
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  SPEAKER_00: to be often suspicious house guests
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  SPEAKER_00: but there's no senior pastor in that document there isn't even a hint
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  SPEAKER_00: that anyone had imagined one so when does the single leader show up
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  SPEAKER_00: and we can get close to naming the decade and we can definitely name the man
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  SPEAKER_00: so there's a scene from the year 96 it's a church in Corinth 40 years
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  SPEAKER_00: after Paul has done something scandalous it fired its elders the church
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  SPEAKER_00: in Rome hears about it and sends a long letter
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  SPEAKER_00: the one we call first Clement pleading for the elders to be reinstated
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  SPEAKER_00: the letter appeals to order to the ranks of the Roman army to the harvest cycle
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  SPEAKER_00: to anything they can find with a structure
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  SPEAKER_00: but notice what the letter doesn't say it never says obey your bishop
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  SPEAKER_00: because it can't corinth doesn't have one and apparently needed as rome because
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  SPEAKER_00: the letter is written in the name of the whole roman church and never mentions
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  SPEAKER_00: a bishop of rome not even as its author and later traditions attach the name clement
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  SPEAKER_00: and the title bishop but the letter itself knows nothing about it now jump ahead
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  SPEAKER_00: a decade to a prisoner on the road his name is ignatius he's an old man he's
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  SPEAKER_00: the overseer of the church in antioch condemned to die in the arena
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  SPEAKER_00: soldiers are marching him through asia minor toward the capital and he calls them his 10 lepers
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  SPEAKER_00: who get worse the kinder he treats them as he travels churches send delegations to meet him
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  SPEAKER_00: writes them letters seven survive and ignatius is the first voice in church history
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  SPEAKER_00: to demand what
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  SPEAKER_00: we would recognize as a single head of
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  SPEAKER_00: a congregation one bishop per city says do nothing without
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  SPEAKER_00: about the bishop
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  SPEAKER_00: wherever the bishop appears there let the people be and six
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  SPEAKER_00: of his seven letters hammer the structure over and over naming
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  SPEAKER_00: the local bishop urging obedience to him but then he writes his seventh letter
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  SPEAKER_00: to rome and the bishop language
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  SPEAKER_00: poof just vanishes he greets no bishop of rome he urges obedience to no bishop
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  SPEAKER_00: of rome so the most bishop obsessed writer of the ancient church goes silent on
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  SPEAKER_00: the subject in exactly one letter and it's the letter to
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  SPEAKER_00: the empire's capital scholars like peter lambie have argued
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  SPEAKER_00: the simplest explanation rome didn't have a single bishop yet the evidence suggests
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  SPEAKER_00: the church in rome was governed by a council of elders well into the middle of
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  SPEAKER_00: the second century
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  SPEAKER_00: meaning decades after the last apostle died the church in the most important city
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  SPEAKER_00: on earth was still run by a plural eldership and the one-man model was
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  SPEAKER_00: a new idea being urgently promoted by a prisoner on his way to die
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  SPEAKER_00: now here's the part where i'm not going to give you a villain
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  SPEAKER_00: because there isn't one the single bishop won out because it solved real problems
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  SPEAKER_00: the second century hit the church with pressures
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  SPEAKER_00: the first generation didn't face gnostic teachers proclaiming secret traditions
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  SPEAKER_00: passed down from the apostles and the strongest counter-argument was
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  SPEAKER_00: a public succession you could actually verify our bishop learned from man
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  SPEAKER_00: who learned from john and you can go check
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  SPEAKER_00: persecution demanded a single negotiator one voice to speak for the church one man
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  SPEAKER_00: for the magistrate to arrest a community needed to know whose hands held the bread
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  SPEAKER_00: on sunday so the office consolidated by the 250s cypher and a cartridge can write
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  SPEAKER_00: that the bishop is in the church and the church is in the bishop
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  SPEAKER_00: given another few centuries and the bishop's local delegate the priest stands at
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  SPEAKER_00: an altar in a building the reformation arrives in the 1500s and it keeps
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  SPEAKER_00: the architecture but it rewrites the job description one man still stands at
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  SPEAKER_00: the front but now he preaches instead of offering sacrifice and the vision you
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  SPEAKER_00: and i know best the senior pastor with a staff vision statement and
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  SPEAKER_00: a leadership pipeline and sermon podcast that model is younger than
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  SPEAKER_00: the light bulb american revivalism built a platform and taught congregations
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  SPEAKER_00: to gather around a gifted communicator
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  SPEAKER_00: radio and then television taught the communicator to scale and in the 1970s and 80s
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  SPEAKER_00: the church growth movement openly borrowed its order charts from the corporate world
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  SPEAKER_00: and the pastor picked up a new unofficial title ceo
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  SPEAKER_00: somewhere along that road english-speaking protestants reached back and revived
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  SPEAKER_00: the old shelved word from ephesians 4 11 pastor a word
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  SPEAKER_00: the first christians reserved mostly for a team task and above all for christ became
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  SPEAKER_00: the job title of one man on the stage now before anyone storms
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  SPEAKER_00: a church office waving this episode as evidence slow down
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  SPEAKER_00: this history is not a demolition order because here's what's really interesting every branch of
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  SPEAKER_00: the church kept a piece of the original catholic and orthodox churches kept the plural tested
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  SPEAKER_00: eldership in the presbytery gathered around a bishop and kept the ancient conviction that
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  SPEAKER_00: leadership must be
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  SPEAKER_00: but i think the plural concept is theologically significant and this is
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  SPEAKER_00: the thing i want you to carry out of this episode when peter wrote to church leaders
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  SPEAKER_00: this man who had walked with jesus who had preached
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  SPEAKER_00: at pentecost he introduced himself as your fellow elder he put himself inside
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  SPEAKER_00: the team under the chief shepherd next to everyone else the first christians split
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  SPEAKER_00: the weight of spiritual leadership i think on purpose
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  SPEAKER_00: because no single person carried
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  SPEAKER_00: a congregation's whole burden absorbed all its criticism
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  SPEAKER_00: or embodied its whole identity
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  SPEAKER_00: the distribution was purposeful we centralized it there are reasons not
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  SPEAKER_00: that we're good but roughly one
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  SPEAKER_00: in three american pastors today report serious burnout and the counseling offices
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  SPEAKER_00: that treat clergy stay booked and every year brings another famous collapse
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  SPEAKER_00: that takes a congregation down with it a first century christian hearing all
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  SPEAKER_00: that would probably ask a simple question
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  SPEAKER_00: what did you think would happen when you gave one sheep
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  SPEAKER_00: the shepherd's job this sunday that man in his late thirties who may
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  SPEAKER_00: or may not be me will walk onto the stage again
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  SPEAKER_00: and like many pastors across the u.s he'll do it faithfully most likely at
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  SPEAKER_00: a real cost and nothing in this episode i think is a reason
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  SPEAKER_00: to respect any pastor less if anything it's a reason to notice how much
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  SPEAKER_00: a pastor is actually carrying because he is carrying something
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  SPEAKER_00: the first christians deliberately split several ways and something
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  SPEAKER_00: the earliest believers said belonged in the end to only one set of shoulders
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  SPEAKER_00: and those shoulders they had scars so maybe this week don't just shake his hand at
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  SPEAKER_00: the door
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  SPEAKER_00: ask them how heavy it is hey thanks for listening to
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  SPEAKER_00: the theology made podcast this was helpful if you enjoyed this please like
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  SPEAKER_00: and subscribe and maybe share it with a friend