The church should never love and follow its pastor more than they love and follow the Lord. Christ must increase, and the pastor must decrease. This does not mean that the pastor is practically “invisible” in the congregation. But it means that, when people look at the church from the outside, they should not particularly notice him first. Instead, they should first see a body of people devoted to the Lord, each of them exercising his or her gifts, worshiping and serving together for the glory of the Chief Shepherd.

Modern Christian authors who have an intriguing ability to take the EKG of the church and discern its health have been warning for some time now about the tendency pastors have to become the local attraction of their churches. Ministerial superstars. Pastors who are winsome speakers and world-class organizers can become the CEOs of their own kingdoms or the rock stars of their own venues. Some become recognized names in Christian households and spend much of their time traveling the world as celebrated pastoral celebrities.
This image of what it means to be a pastor is one of the reasons that John Piper (himself a household name) seeks to encourage his fellow pastors in his book, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. In no fewer than 36 passionate mini-sermons, Piper urges pastors not to professionalize their calling but to be purposefully devoted to Jesus Christ. He warns that the temptation to be “professional” is not only for the CEO-type with his “three-piece suit and the stuffy upper floors,” but the pop culture-type also, “the understated professionalism of torn blue jeans and the savvy inner ring.” The former is learned by “pursuing an MBA” but the latter by “being in the know about the ever-changing entertainment and media world” and learning to have a certain “ambiance, and tone, and idiom, and timing, and banter.”
Howard Snyder addressed this very issue almost 50 years ago in his book, The Problem of Wine Skins. In his chapter, “Must the Pastor Be a Superstar?” he writes,
I confess my admiration, perhaps slightly tinged with envy. Not because of the talent, really, the sheer ability. But for the success, the accomplishment. Here is a man who faithfully preaches the Word, sees lives transformed by Christ, sees his church growing. What sincere evangelical minister would not like to be in his shoes? Not to mention his parsonage.
But then he continues,
I think of all the struggling, mediocre pastors, looking on with holy envy (if there be such), measuring their own performance by [the superstar pastor’s] success and dropping another notch into discouragement or, perhaps, self-condemnation.
For after all, the problem is plain, isn’t it? The church needs more qualified pastors, better training. More alertness to guiding those talented young men God may be calling into the ministry. Better talent scouting to find the superstars.
Personally, I’ve never had to worry about becoming the CEO or a rockstar of the churches I’ve pastored in. No one has ever chased me down to sign a contract or asked to fly me around the world. But growing up in the church in a pastor’s family, I did notice at a young age that it was possible for pastors to climb the social ladder among their peers. And I was definitely influenced by that culture. The larger the churches, the bigger deal was made about the men who pastored them. Good men, too. Faithful men. But there would be preaching conferences where the more important pastors would come and preach to big crowds and parade around and sign people’s Bibles. My wife calls this parading the “pastor swagger.” She says it’s a kind of strut that we pastors get when people are making a big deal about us or we become over-confident. So, I learned early in my pastoral ministry that when it is a “good Sunday” where a lot of people show up and ministries are running smoothly and people seem excited to be a part of the church and they liked the sermon, I can start walking around with this particular vibe. But soon my wife will sidle up to me to mutter, “You’re doing the pastor swagger.” And that usually shuts it down.
Now, I’m not saying that people should never know the names of pastors or that we shouldn’t give glory to God for his sustaining grace in the life of a pastor who has faithfully shepherded, whose wisdom should be an example for younger pastors. There are certainly men whom the Lord has greatly used to impact many congregations toward the worship and glory of Christ. Apollos in the NT was a dynamic preacher whose ministry was widely known.
But has the church come so far in its tradition of church leadership that we have lost touch with how the New Testament presents the office of the pastor? Should pastors be promoted and known and celebrated? Should they be the center of attention in their churches? Should their names be on the church sign? Should people commonly identify the name of the church by the name of a single pastor?
Because it seems to me that, at least in the New Testament, the pastor is practically invisible. We know there were plenty of them. But it’s very difficult to find any in particular.
You don’t believe me? Try naming a pastor from the NT.
Maybe you’re thinking of Timothy and Titus, those men to whom Paul addressed what today we refer to as the “Pastoral Epistles.” But Timothy and Titus, though they may have had pastoral gifts of preaching and teaching and administration, were not tasked with the shepherding of a congregation. They were Paul’s co-workers, apostolic representatives who were placed at different times in different places so that they could establish those who would be serving as long-term pastors in the churches, mainly various house-congregations (1 Tim 1:3; Titus 1:5–9). When called upon, perhaps they even fulfilled pastoral duties in the fledgling stages of a new church, just like the apostle Paul seemed to do (e.g., 1 Thess 2:5–13). But none of these men are actually called pastors in the text. And even if some will argue that they were, in fact, pastors, the very fact that this is a debated point demonstrates our uncertainty about who actually fulfills the role of the pastor in the pages of the NT. The pastors are, for all practical purposes, invisible.
Can you think of anyone else?
Identifying the Terms that Designate the Pastoral Office
Part of the issue of identifying names of pastors in the NT is that there is a perennial debate about what pastors should be called. But this fact is itself an indication of the anonymity of their office. Not only are pastors seldomly given names in the NT, but even their nomenclature remains today a subject of some obscurity.
In fact, it’s very doubtful that pastors were ever really called “pastors” until sometime later in church history—because the term is virtually unused to describe them. “Pastor” is simply the Latin word for “shepherd.” In 1 Peter 5:1–4, Peter encourages pastors to “shepherd the flock of God (v. 2),” but this is an analogy he is making with the Lord Jesus who is the “Chief Shepherd” (v. 4), the true Shepherd of the flock. But Peter doesn’t call these men “pastors.” He calls them “elders” (presbyteroi, v. 1).
The only time that the word “pastor” is used as a title, in fact, is where Paul says that Jesus gave gifts to the church in the form of ministers, among whom he names “pastors and teachers” (Eph 4:11). But there is considerable discussion as to what Paul actually means here.
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When Jesus was tempted by Satan to gather food in the wilderness in a way that God had not commanded, he was Israel all over again, tempted in the wilderness. And to underscore this association, Jesus chose the words from Deuteronomy 8:3 to answer, “No! I am not like my ancestors in the wilderness who cared more about the food than the commandment. I do not live for bread. I live to do the will of the Father.” So how do we face temptation as Jesus did? Not by merely quoting Scripture, but by knowing God’s will and by being committed to it before temptation even comes.

I’ve heard it explained that when you face temptation to sin you should quote Scripture at the devil to defeat him and cause him to flee. After all, the argument goes, Jesus himself quoted Scripture at Satan in the wilderness.
When Satan said, “Command these stones to become loaves of bread,” Jesus answered with what we know as Deuteronomy 8:3. “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt 4:3–4).
When Satan took Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and said, “Throw yourself down,” Jesus likewise responded with Scripture, Deuteronomy 6:16. “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matt 4:5–7).
Finally, when the devil put the glory of the world’s kingdoms on display and promised them to Jesus if he would simply fall down and worship him, Jesus used the words from Deuteronomy 6:13. “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve’” (Matt 4:8–10). And Satan ran away.
Now, on the one hand, it is vitally important to know the Bible from memory and to be able to apply the very word of God to specific situations, especially when we face trials and temptations. But the account of Jesus’ temptation is not intended to teach us that quoting the Scripture at the devil is our weapon to make him go away. That’s using the Bible as a kind of magical incantation, as if Satan is a vampire and we’re holding a wooden cross.
In fact, that use of Scripture is on the same level as the superstition that there is a verse in the Bible that will stop your nose from bleeding. When I was pastoring in the mountains of Western North Carolina I learned that there are people who believe that if you quote Ezekiel 16:6 when you have a nosebleed, the blood will miraculously stop. (I’m not making this up!)
The verse reads in the King James Version,
And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.
Some say you have to read the full verse three times and really believe that your nose will stop bleeding to get it to work.
But there is no promise in the Bible that reading Ezekiel 16:6 will stop your nose from bleeding any more, in fact, than there is a promise that quoting the Bible at the devil will make him leave us alone.
In fact, if quoting the Bible makes the devil flee, why didn’t he run away the first time Jesus used Scripture?
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John writes this gospel for us, so that we believe and continue to believe and know real life in his name. After all, this “faith,” Jude tells us, was delivered to the “saints” (Jude 1:3). So, do not rest on your believing as a past action. Continue to read the gospel story. Reflect. Rehearse. Marvel. Wonder. And believe.

Why does John place the story of “doubting Thomas” at the climax of his gospel? Because John’s whole purpose is to call people to believe in Jesus of Nazareth—his claims about himself, his ministry, his death for sin, and especially his resurrection from the dead—even though they have never seen him.
In fact, out of about 250 times the New Testament uses the verb “believe” (pisteuō), nearly 100 of them occur in John’s gospel alone. And what is even more interesting is that John never uses the noun form, “belief” or “faith” (pistis). For John, belief is always an active idea, a verbal idea.
But John is not merely interested in instilling belief in those who have not yet embraced the good news. He is just as interested in strengthening the belief of those who are already followers of Jesus as well.
We can see this emphasis in the Gospel of John through the way John emphasizes the faith of Jesus’s own disciples at the beginning of the gospel and later toward the end and climax of the gospel. The first person in the Gospel of John who believes is Jesus’s disciple Nathanael.
Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these” (John 1:49–50).
The next time believing is mentioned it is Jesus’s disciples who believe after the miracle of the water turned to wine.
This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him (John 2:11).
Later, in John 2, after Jesus cleanses the temple and declares, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), John forecasts the fact that Jesus’s disciples would later remember that he had said those words and believe:
When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken (John 2:22).
After this passage, however, John’s Gospel turns away from the issue of the disciples believing, and gives attention solely to others believing—Nicodemus (John 3), the woman at the well (John 4), the Pharisees (John 5), the 5000 (John 6), the people at the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7), the man born blind (John 9), Martha at Lazarus’s tomb (John 11), to name a few.
But after the people of Israel in general refuse to believe in him (John 12:37), John turns our attention once again to Jesus’s own disciples. Often in the private conversation that Jesus has with his disciples in John 13–16 the subject turns to their believing in him (e.g., John 14:1, 10–12; 16:25–33). Twice Jesus tells his disciples what is about to happen to him in his passion “so that” when it does happen they will remember what he told them and believe (John 13:19; 14:29).