A Pastor Is an Elder Is a Bishop

I was sitting at the dinner table. We had just finished family worship that evening. My wife and I were talking about inviting “the elders” over to our house the next week. My five-year-old daughter asked, “Who are the elders?” I said, “They’re the pastors of our church. Elder is another word for pastor.”

But is that true? Did I lie to my daughter?

In this article, I’ll argue that every elder is a pastor and every pastor is a bishop (or overseer).^{11 .} The term “bishop” comes from the Greek word episkopos through the Latin language and into English, though Bible translations today often use “overseer” to render it. Bishop and overseer are exactly the same thing in the original language of the New Testament. In particular, I want to make a case from Scripture for why we should understand that these three terms refer to the same office. My argument moves along three steps. First, every elder is an overseer. Second, there are two ongoing offices in the church (i.e. elders and deacons). Third, a common function implies a common office. Therefore, elders are pastors are overseers.

No Elder, No Overseer

According to the New Testament, every elder is an overseer. In Acts 20:17, Paul gathers “the elders of the church” in Ephesus for his farewell address. The central thrust of his counsel to them is found in Acts 20:28: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” What are the elders to do? Care for and watch over themselves and the whole flock. Why? Because the Holy Spirit has appointed them as overseers in the church. The elders are the overseers.

Not only that, but later in his life, Paul wrote to Titus about his task to care for the churches on the island of Crete. In Titus 1:5, Paul gives Titus his standing orders: “This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.” There were churches in Crete, but they weren’t in order, according to Paul. There were true churches, but they weren’t healthy churches because they didn’t have elders leading them. Paul goes on in Titus 1:6–9 to give qualifications for these elders. Because if Titus is going to fulfill his task, he’ll need to know which people to look for.

Paul’s first qualification is that an elder must be “above reproach” (Titus 1:6). He lists other aspects of an elder’s character, but he repeats the first one. Importantly, in the middle of a longer list of qualifications for elders, Paul says, “for an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach” (Titus 1:7). How was Titus to put these churches into order? Appoint elders or overseers who must be above reproach. Paul uses the two terms interchangeably.

If a church doesn’t have any elders, then it doesn’t have any overseers. No overseer means no elder because the two terms refer to the same office.

Two Offices, Not Three

According to the New Testament, there are two offices in the church, not three. The Scriptural qualifications show this as well. In 1 Timothy 3:1–13, Paul only gives qualifications for two different groups of people: overseers (or elders) and deacons. Qualifications imply offices, just like responsibilities and privileges form job descriptions.

Not only that, but in his letter to a church in Philippi, Paul writes “to all the saints,” including “the overseers and deacons” (Phil. 1:1). It would be quite odd for him to leave out the pastors if he’s writing to “all the saints in Christ Jesus,” especially since he outlines the two offices, qualifications and all, in his other letter. A careful reader of 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9 may also notice that the list of qualifications is virtually identical. So, if you say a pastor is not an elder, then you risk loosening the connection between overseer and elder as well.

If you want “pastor” to be a New Testament office in any sense, then you’ll need to decide if pastor goes in the elder bucket or the deacon bucket. There’s no other option in the New Testament.

Common Function, Common Office

Finally, a common function implies a common office. Considering roles according to responsibilities or duties is the way we mark off one office from another. This isn’t merely corporate enterprise-speak in ecclesiological dress. Consider the story of the Bible from the perspective of shepherd leadership.^{22 .} For a beautiful biblical theology of the shepherd metaphor for leadership in the Bible, see Timothy S. Laniak, Shepherds After My Own Heart: Pastoral Traditions and Leadership in the Bible. You’ll need to understand that “shepherd” and “pastor” are two different words for the same thing. “Pastor” comes into English from the Latin and Anglo-Norman French word for feeding or grazing, similar to our word “pasture.” “Shepherd” or “feeder” or “herdsman” are legitimate translations of the Latin word pastor.

Israel’s leaders failed to shepherd God’s flock. Ezekiel’s condemnation of the wicked shepherd-leaders is as striking as it is stirring (Ezek. 34:1–10). Perhaps most terribly, the wicked shepherds failed to feed the sheep, and instead fed only themselves (Ezek. 34:2, 8). Thus, the Lord God himself would come in search of his sheep as their Good Shepherd (Ezek. 34:11; cf. Ps. 23, John 10:1–18).

Remarkably, one of the promises of the new covenant is that God will give his people faithful shepherds. The Lord said through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:15). Notice, the main job of a shepherd is to feed the sheep, but the metaphor has meaning only if it is spiritual, not physical. Christ’s shepherds feed his people with “knowledge and understanding,” just as Jeremiah said and just as the Lord Jesus himself did (cf. Mark 6:34).

If you want to be a good shepherd, you have to be able to feed the people of God on the Word of God. This biblical theology of pastors (or shepherds) gives us one significant and clear reason why Paul included “able to teach” as the only distinct competency for the office of elder or overseer. Elders must “teach” the Word in order to fulfill their job description (1 Tim. 5:17, 2 Tim. 4:2). In fact, that’s how elders “shepherd” or pastor the flock of God (1 Pet. 5:2).

This is also why Paul includes “shepherds and teachers” in his list of gifts that the ascended Christ gives to his church for the sake of her maturity (Eph. 4:11–16). If someone wants to argue that this gives us grounds for a distinction between pastor as office and pastor as gift, then they’d have to reckon with the fact that the person is the gift in the text, not a function or activity of that person. The pastor is the gift, not the pastoring. If the function of a pastor is teaching, then pastor is synonymous with elder because elder is the teaching office. Teaching as an authoritative function differs from other gifts in the New Testament, such as administration, for example. Oversight and teaching give shape to the shepherd’s pastoral job description. Or, as Jonathan Leeman recently put it, “Rule is definitional to shepherding.”

Pastoring is tied to the person in the role or office. The function of a pastor or shepherd—to lead, feed, and protect—is tied to the office of elder/overseer (Acts 20:28). That’s why elders “shepherd” or pastor the flock of God. In the New Testament, the relationship between the terms “elder” and “pastor” is entirely interchangeable and reversible, just like the terms “overseer” and “elder.” A pastor simply is an overseeing elder.

Application

If what I have argued above about the full interchangeability of pastor and elder and overseer holds true according to the Scriptures, then a few important implications follow.

First, we should not use the title “pastor” for someone, whether on church staff or not, who is not also an elder as recognized by the congregation. Additionally, we should not call anyone “pastor” if they don’t meet the biblical qualifications, such as men who fail to meet the qualifications or women who cannot meet the qualifications (1 Tim. 2:11–12).

Positively, we should treat non-staff (or lay) elders as full pastors and be careful of common terms we use for them. New Testament plurality presupposes basic parity and equal authority for those in the office of pastor or elder. It can be easy, even in healthy churches, to use “pastor” for the staff elder and “elder” for the non-staff elder. But varying the terms helps teach the congregation that no fundamental difference exists in authority. In fact, young men who aspire to the office of overseer might even find the itch they have is scratched by serving in lay eldership. Because, according to the Bible, an elder simply is a pastor.