What is a Pastor.

    When I was growing up there was this cliche that my grandfather told me many of times. It went like this - Preachers come a dime a dozen, but a Pastor is hard to come by. That saying became popular because people recognized a truth. There is a difference in Preaching and Pastoring. Preaching can be taught in a classroom situation but Pastoring can not be taught that way. Pastoring comes from mentorship and having a heart for people. 

    The New Testament talks about several things that get combined in most people's definitions of Pastor, so it only right to start there in talking about being a Pastor. It talks about teaching, and being a teacher or Rabbi is important, but that is different from being a Pastor.  As we look for someone to lead the congregation, it is important to bbe able to teach and to teach, one must study continuously. That means to finding time to dig into the word with the Holy Spirit and go deep into the text to see what it is really saying and not using text to make it say what you want it to say - but, that is not Pastoring.  

     It also talks about evangelizing,  but that is also different from Pastoring. Evangelizing is telling someone who Jesus is and why that is important and what that means to us. This is something that all Christians should do by the way that they live, and Church Leaders should be an example of that - but, that is not Pastoring either.

    The Bible also talks about being an Overseer (Bishop) and being an Elder. All of these are very important, as these are the people who seek out the direction that God wants to church to go, and leads the church in that direction - but, these traits are not Pastoring either. 

    Although everyone looks for all of these qualities in a Pastor, None of these traits define the act of Pastoring. In order for us to understand what Pastoring means, we must go back to the Latin Vulgate. The Latin Bible translated for the Catholic by Saint Jerome way back in the day. That is because the word Pastor is taken directly from Latin word Pastore. It means to shepherd. Latin uses the word Pastor to mean shepherding sheep and shepherding people. The Greek Bible does not separate leading sheep from leading people either. When the English translators translated to Bible into English they used shepherd to mean shepherding sheep and Pastor to shepherding people. I'm not saying that they missed translated, but I'm just diving into the text to understand it better.

    To get a clear picture of what a Pastor is and what is Biblically meant by Pastoring. Go into the New Testament and when you read shepherds or shepherding, replace that word with Pastor or Pastoring and you will get a clear picture. For example, Luke 2:8 becomes - 

    And in the same region there were Pastors out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.   

`    John 10:12 -He who is a hired hand and not a Pastor, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

    Hebrews 13:20 -Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Pastor of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant,

And I could go own. Pastoring means to look after all the sheep and if any of them has a problem, you tend to them to help them. To do this, you must invest the time it takes to know your sheep. A lot of Pastors have no ideal who is a part of their congregation and who is not. Others are so tied up in doing other things that they don't have time to be there for people. I'm not saying these leaders are bad, I'm just saying that is not Pastoring.