On Staffing Titles (Pastors Talk, Ep. 242)
What do churches call different people on staff? Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever sit down on Pastors Talk to discuss staffing titles within the church and how they differ. Leeman and Dever compare elder to non-elder titles and offer insight into how churches can best approach staff roles. Together they discuss function in staff roles, deaconal offices, and more practical titles given to church staffers.
- Staffing Titles for Pastors
- How to Title Other Church Staff
- Staffing Structures in a Church
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
This is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
This is Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
Welcome to Pastors Talk.
Mark Dever:
This episode of Pastors Talk. Church Matters.
Jonathan Leeman:
This is the name of the new journal. We’re not calling it the 9Marks Journal anymore. We’re calling it Church Matters.
Mark Dever:
Is that what we’re calling this podcast now, Church Matters?
Jonathan Leeman:
A journal for pastors. No, we’re calling it 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to help pastors build healthy churches. Learn more at 9Marks.org.
Mark Dever:
With the glory of God. Amen.
Staffing Titles for Pastors
Jonathan Leeman:
What I want to talk to you about in this conversation, Mark, is job titles. No, I don’t mean the recent conversation about complementarianism and whether or not a woman can have the title of pastor and not be an elder, something like that. The conversation is not about that, right?
This is just the more everyday conversation about what we call these people who work for the church and is that an important conversation? So clearly we’re in the realm of prudence here.
Mark Dever:
Do you mean they have to be elders or deacons?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I want to know if that’s one principle we might consider, but I just want to have a larger conversation about titles for church staff. So, for instance, what are the various titles that CHBC employs? What do you guys do?
Mark Dever:
You mean like all of them?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, how do you think them through?
Mark Dever:
I mean, the basic thing is the person is a pastor or not a pastor.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay.
Mark Dever:
If they’re not a pastor, it’s probably going to have the word assistant. And if they are a pastor, it’ll have the word pastor as the noun.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. Are they all just pastors, or associate pastors? What are they?
Mark Dever:
Well, because in the New Testament, pastor is used interchangeably with elder and we don’t understand pastors are always paid. Most of our pastors are not paid. We do have some who, for some, 1 Timothy 5:17, we choose to show double honor to a financial term in order to pay them, to sort of liberate their time to be full-time working at the church.
Like you guys at Chevrolet, you have to do with John Joseph and Tony Merritt. Well, we do that with a number of brothers. So that’s my situation. That’s Bobby Jamison’s situation, Deepak Raju, Jamie Dunlop.
So these are associate pastors and they’re here for, you know, on the short side, 5 to 10 years on the long side, more permanently. But then you also have, we have assistant pastors who are here 2 to 5 years. They’re brothers who have usually had experience in pastoral ministry in another church, not always, but usually in another church.
And they kind of want to change streams of kinds of churches and they’ve come to us and done the internship and then they’ve become hired by our church. They’ll be a senior pastoral assistant is what we call them at first.
And then we will, when we feel it’s okay for the congregation, they’ve seen them enough. The elders will nominate them to serve as an elder and then they’ll switch to being an assistant pastor.
Should Pastoral Titles Be Specific?
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. So the principal thing at play, the biblical thing at play is the noun pastor. The prudential thing at play is that you have these adjectives attached to each one— senior, associate, assistant—and those are the reasons you just laid out.
Now a lot of churches, Mark, will do executive pastor, missions pastor, counseling pastor, and as I think, is Deepak not a counseling pastor? Is Jamie, say, not an executive pastor? Why don’t you use those titles? Are those fine titles to use?
Mark Dever:
I think these are fine titles to use. We often stress that all of our pastors are liable to do the preaching, do hospital visitation, do funerals, do counseling and premarital counseling, to do weddings so we don’t, try as much as possible not to silo necessarily the work.
We, as our church got larger and our staff got larger, people definitely have, you know, certain realms of expertise, special responsibilities like Riley Barnes, especially responsible for working with our missionaries. But all of our pastors are involved with missions.
So there’ll be leadership taken by various of the brothers on staff, which will help our church and our entire eldership achieve the things we want to try to do. But part of what that pastor counseling or families or course seminars or small groups or discipling or missions, part of what that associate pastor is doing that has that remit as part of what they do, like that specific kind of ministry, is they’re trying to build it in such a way that other pastors and members can step in and be involved.
So they’re not trying to harden those silos and make sure, Hey, this is my bailey week. Nobody else touches missions.
Jonathan Leeman:
So some specialization and pastoral function is fine, but you’ve been leery of giving them the title, lest they specialize in silo too much. That’s basically it. Correct?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Particularly, if it can reinforce others’ participation in it. Yeah. Right.
How to Title Church Staff
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. So that’s all in the pastor lane. Let’s think about the non-pastor side of things. What are some of the titles your church uses?
Mark Dever:
I’m not sure what the official job is. The person answering the phone, the person managing the…
Mark Dever:
I think we call them the building manager, or receptionist. I mean, I’m not sure about the official titles. I don’t know.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay.
Mark Dever:
Well, because I just know the people and I’m not the one really hiring those people.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. Okay. Well, I want to get to that in a second.
Mark Dever:
So on this whole thing, if I could just quote what I often do in this area. The Westminster Confession has good language here. Chapter one, paragraph six, the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether it be a revelation of the spirit or traditions of men.
Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word. And here we go, this is the part for our conversation, that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the church common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the word, which are always to be observed.
So it’s that common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence. That’s the receptionist, that’s the building manager. So I don’t think I’m doing any denigration of the authority of scripture by using…
Jonathan Leeman:
Titles that are in the Bible.
Mark Dever:
Yeah
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, they’re just common to human societies. Children’s ministry director, similar sort of thing.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Are All Non-Pastoral Jobs Diaconal?
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, okay, would it be fair to say that all of those non-pastor jobs in the church, which you are naming according to their function, sound like, are diaconal? They’re all serving the church.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I mean, it’s fair. In fact, I was saying to Wilson the other day, he was having a conversation. The guy at the front desk with a pastor had called and he had initially said, we don’t have to hire any deacons.
And I said, well, that’s not really true because all of our other employees are calling paid deacons. So I was making that very point.
Jonathan Leeman:
You would or would not want them all to meet the qualifications of deacons. A deacon must not be a gossip. You don’t want your church to be a gossip.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, we practically would. We don’t, I don’t know if that’s written in our job description. That’s more.
Jonathan Leeman:
But if we were to open up 1 Timothy 3 and look through those, it’d be hard to think of one that like, that’s fine if he or she is not that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Right. Yeah. But we don’t call them deacons because why do we say building manager? Why don’t we say deacon of buildings?
Mark Dever:
This topic was your idea?
Jonathan Leeman:
Honestly, I’m not sure.
Mark Dever:
I mean, it’s the beginning of a new year. Does this suggest Pastors Talk is near the end? I mean, I could keep doing this for 10 more minutes, man, if you want.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. I will admit, I thought to myself when somebody said, what are you guys doing today? And I said, I said, you know, job titles. The thought bubble was in my head.
Mark Dever:
Well, you know, we can always shock the world and have a 15-minute Pastors Talk and promise more next week.
Jonathan Leeman:
But here people spend a lot of time actually thinking and quarreling over such matters.
Mark Dever:
Those people are not you and me. Let’s just be honest.
Jonathan Leeman:
Let’s push a little bit further.
Mark Dever:
You and I are the ones who like to speed through those issues of the journal and the other stuff.
Jonathan Leeman:
We’re eight minutes in. Let’s see if we can squeeze eight more minutes in with this lemon.
Mark Dever:
And listen, for the brothers and sisters who could, who do see a lot more importance to this and could instruct us in that, we’re thankful for you and people like you. We kind of wish you were here right now. I’m just trying to be honest. We like to be transparent here at Pastors Talk.
Jonathan Leeman:
Why don’t you call them deacons? That’s what they are. Wouldn’t that be a biblically reifying thing to do?
Mark Dever:
That’s a good question. I don’t think we want to be in the position of saying the only legitimate work is diaconal work.
I’d have to think about that more. I mean, the elders have to have a principled conversation about that. I’m pushing it per se, but I have thought about that.
Mark Dever:
And that is casually how I referred to those other positions to our receptionist just this week earlier in conversation.
Jonathan Leeman:
And the advantage of whether you call it pastor or deacon, well forget the pastor, in the non-pastor lane, whether you call it deacon or not, the advantage of recognizing that this is diaconal work is to some extent it does tie it to those qualifications, right? Which I think protects the church.
Mark Dever:
Yes. I think the light of nature and Christian prudence is also going to bring all those same things up when you’re hiring somebody for a church.
Jonathan Leeman:
In many churches.
Mark Dever:
I don’t think we’re going to hire somebody who struggles with gossip.
Should Pastors and Deacons be Held to Similar Qualifications?
Jonathan Leeman:
I don’t think you would. Yeah. Okay. So a few basic principles just to sum up some of this is staff should be held to at the very least diaconal qualifications.
Pastors obviously need to be held to pastoral qualifications. Titles that are not pastoral should tend to communicate functionally.
Mark Dever:
Should be strong there. To me, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t.
Jonathan Leeman:
Can benefit from.
Mark Dever:
I certainly would encourage that. Don’t know reasons why not to.
Jonathan Leeman:
How much pastoral work can a person be allowed to do in their job and we’re still not calling them pastor or a pastor, for instance, a youth director?
Mark Dever:
I think a lot because all of the Christian life you could characterize as very pastoral, older women to younger women in Titus 2 is very pastoral. So much of our work caring for other people is going to be pastoral in nature, or it could be described with the English word pastoral.
So I don’t think you’re going to get very far looking at that. I like trying to evacuate all pastoral work from everybody in the church.
I’m going to say everyone in the church is going to be involved in the pastoral type of work because that’s a loving, caring, discipling kind of work. And I think everybody should be involved.
Jonathan Leeman:
So you’re fine with somebody effectively doing the work of a pastor and not calling them and paying for them for it.
Mark Dever:
Well, I think what I’m doing, I’m just saying what we call the work of a pastor accurately is not distinctly and uniquely their work. It’s rather typical that they do so they have a higher responsibility for or a higher competence in, but the manner of the work is going to be, you know, expected at a higher level, but the matter of it in many of its aspects or some of its aspects are going to be widely shared among Christians. Study of the word, teaching the word to others, trying to live with wisdom.
Jonathan Leeman:
Let me flip it around. What about the air in the opposite direction, an associate pastor whose job description effectively has him doing a number of diaconal-type things, building management, and so forth?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, depending on the size of the church, that may be kind of like a bivocational. He may need to. He may need to remove the title pastor from his job description.
May need to do that kind of work as well. You know, do you need to print the bulletins? Well, maybe so if you’re the only person on staff.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. An associate pastor is as much of a pastor as a senior pastor.
Jonathan Leeman:
Oh yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
They both have one vote.
Mark Dever:
Well, churches can set that apart if they want to, but yeah, at our church they do.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, they have biblically, do they not have shared equal oversight over the congregation?
Mark Dever:
They both have shared. When you say equal, you’re getting into the question, does scripture speak to a senior pastor? And I don’t think it does clearly.
So I think again, you’re back to the Westminster, I think you’re in matters of prudence. Is it wrong that I’m able to hire people constitutionally at our church when other elders are not able to singularly just hire people?
Jonathan Leeman:
Here’s what I’m trying to balance in my mind. On the one hand, I look at the Bible and I see that all the elders are given oversight. That’s clear, that’s plain. They’re all given oversight and have a hard time…
Mark Dever:
Look at Paul speaking to the elders from Ephesus there in Acts 20.
Staffing Structures in a Church
Jonathan Leeman:
Precisely. One has more oversight over, it than the others. It has more than one vote. He has two votes and you only get one vote sort of thing.
On the other hand, I recognize we have staffing structures in which the associate pastor to some measure answers to you, the senior pastor, right? How do I put these two dynamics together in my mind? A staffing structure together with shared oversight.
Navigating Shared Oversight in Pastoral Roles
Mark Dever:
It’s going to be a matter of prudence. We just had a conversation about this in our intern discussion last Thursday morning. It’d be interesting for you guys to just drop in on it.
And I think what the other elders who are pastors on staff were saying at the time is, when the interns were raising the question of what my role is like, and they said, when it comes to the eldership, none of them ever felt any pressure for me to vote a certain way. So that’s in their functions as elders we’re all kind of equal.
I may be the first among equals and I’m the one who preaches most and has been here longest, but you know, I’m outvoted on things regularly. And if somebody, Jonathan Keisling was sharing about how in an early vote, he voted differently than me and he wondered if it would matter and it clearly didn’t matter at all.
There are, on the other hand, our staffing questions about things that we decide as employees, office hours, days off, and who is hiring in this or that position. Where according to our constitution, the person in my position gives leadership in that.
So one of the things I have to do is when an issue comes along, I have to decide, is this an elder issue or a staff issue? If this is an elder issue, I actually don’t encourage the staff to talk about it among themselves. I try to push it to the elders and let the elders, as a whole, have a conversation about it, and make a decision.
Whereas if it’s just kind of filling out and doing what we know we should do, and it’s not going to be particularly controversial, somebody just needs to give the time to care for the details. That’s staff work. And that I might assign to a certain brother and say, yeah, Troy, can you make sure this gets done?
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. Time for transparency. You’re sitting there in an elders meeting. Is there ever a temptation in your mind? And I don’t want to make this just about you. You think about for whom others, it might be a temptation.
Two men object to something that you’re trying to push or promote among the elders. One, a lay elder to a staff elder who is, as it were, quote-unquote, under you in the staffing structure. Is there ever a temptation for you to feel a little bit more annoyance, frustration, like, ah, come on, guy, with the staff pastor who’s pushing in a different direction than you than the lay elder?
You kind of expect it from the lay elder, he’s not here all week, he’s thinking about being a lawyer all week, and sure, you expect him to come along and say some things different than you. Whereas the staff guy, hey, he’s on your team. Why would you be pushing against me?
Don’t you remember I’m your boss sort of thing and we’re trying to do this together? Anything like that ever comes up.
Mark Dever:
I certainly hear about that from folks who I’m aware that does happen in churches.
Jonathan Leeman:
I would think it has to be a temptation for some guys.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I’m confident that’s true. I think I relish the brothers feeling fully responsible. So I confess to a certain amount of pleasure when they vote differently than me.
Jonathan Leeman:
Pleasure.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Generally, I think the kind of guys I would hire don’t seem to be reticent to do that. And there have occasionally been votes that I think people will be very sensitive to how I feel, like what translation we use, that I deliberately said, we’re just going to have a secret ballot on this so that people don’t know how I vote. You know, if I think there’s going to be a vote that’s going to go against what people perceive.
Jonathan Leeman:
I remember you doing that on Bible translation.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I just deliberately say, why don’t you go for a secret ballot on this? So nobody has to say how they’re voting. Because I’m trying to get as honest feedback from this group as we can have.
Jonathan Leeman:
Back to that word pleasure, unpack that word pleasure. What is the nature of that pleasure in somebody voting against you?
Mark Dever:
I revel.
Jonathan Leeman:
That has to be exceedingly atypical.
Mark Dever:
Maybe. I’m not sure it is. I revel in having other brothers around who understand themselves to be responsible to the Lord and love me but have understood perhaps from my own teaching well enough that they don’t ultimately give account to me. I just think that seems good. So I’m happy when that seems to be the case.
Jonathan Leeman:
Step into Tuesday afternoon office matters, however, and you expect that staff elder to in a certain sense submit to your instruction guidance?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, if the office is open until 5:30, it’s open until 5:30.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, so is there like a switch that goes off in your mind between 5:30, it’s now four o’clock, five o’clock, 5:30, I’m expecting the staff pastor to a certain sense respond to my instruction and so forth, whereas just had dinner, now we’re in the elder meeting, it’s 7:30, I don’t expect that.
Mark Dever:
Well, that’s not a matter of the clock. I was using office hours as an example of the kind of thing that staff would have.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, no, no, no, I understand, but I’m trying to move from your staff hours and what your staffing…
Mark Dever:
On the eldership we’re voting on, do we want to recommend the excommunication of this person to the congregation? Well, there’s not a staff line on that. I mean, that’s just, that’s each individual elder as they’re close to the situation, as they’ve heard the things rehearsed, what their judgment is.
Or you mentioned the Bible translation. Well, that has nothing to do with us being on staff. I mean, that’s… They’ve heard the two years’ worth of presentations. They’re using their sober judgment.
This is the best they can give us and what they think. So, I mean, the closest we would have is maybe the use of the building. And even there, I can think of how as a staff, we have voted differently on the use of building questions in the last year.
Different Responsibilities Within a Pastoral Role
Jonathan Leeman:
What I’m trying to draw out here for brothers is to explain, and understand almost these two different mental landscapes it feels like you’re describing yourself living on.
Mark Dever:
One, I serve, I serve in the work day. I serve everyone by acting as the guy in charge. Now there’s lots of distributed authority and lots of delegation in that.
And so a lot of it is me finding out, okay, what do you think we should do? Okay, any problems with that? Let me see how I can help.
Jonathan Leeman:
But you also say to them, guys, I expect you to be at an intern discussion.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. Exactly. So I say office hours are a good example of this. So there’s definitely an overall order that’s brought by there being somebody in charge like somebody’s getting the services done right now.
Well, that would be me. You know, somebody’s planning this stuff basically. So if you’re ever in a situation where there’s nobody finally in charge, then you really begin to notice the problem.
Jonathan Leeman:
You making a mental adjustment. You are comporting yourself differently. You are putting on a different hat when you move from that to the elder meeting with respect to your associate pastors.
Mark Dever:
You must be right. It doesn’t seem, it seems very natural to me. There are certain kinds of things, judgment in these matters where we’re all standing there kind of equally.
Mark Dever:
Yes.
Jonathan Leeman:
Other things we’re in a structure where somebody is responsible for making x decision.
Mark Dever:
Right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. And even though I’m asking the questions in a slightly combative way, I am trying to flesh out these two landscapes for brothers for whom it’s not natural or intuitive. And I think it’s worth making note of because we don’t typically do that, right?
As people age. Treat people uniformly. And you’re like, no, actually I’m treating these people very differently based on the circumstance.
Mark Dever:
We had an elder one time, a lay elder who would call the church office and give assignments to the PAs. And I had to step in and let him know they don’t work for you. They work for me.
Right. Now the elders can have a discussion as a whole about something that they want the church staff to do. And I can be responsible for figuring out how that gets done, but you can’t draw a straight line from elder over to pastoral assistant, it doesn’t work like that. The staffing structure still is It goes through me.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, that’s right. And just a last thought, your question here, that means you exercise direct oversight over associate pastors, over a couple of the PAs, whereas some of those other diaconal functions, you said, you’re not even sure of their titles because they are answering to who?
Mark Dever:
The front desk is answering to the office manager. Building managers answering to, I think, usually Jamie Dunlop. Yeah. So this is just more light of nature. Yeah. There’s just a lot of delegation.
And some of the PAs will just work more closely with some of the associate pastors in certain parts of their work. Membership matters, missions, course seminars, youth group.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. So the associate pastors are exercising some authority directly.
Mark Dever:
On various ones of the PAs. That’s right. Pastoral assistance.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. Well brother, thank you.
Mark Dever:
Oh, you’re welcome, man.
Jonathan Leeman:
I know this may not be the most exciting, but this is nuts and bolts. This is inside baseball.
Mark Dever:
This is nutty and bolty as it gets.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right. Hopefully helpful to someone, anyone out there. Thanks.
Mark Dever:
Thank you.
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