Ephesians 4:11 and the Elder

For most of my life the members of the church of Christ realized that a "Shepherd" and a "Elder" in the Bible were in fact one and the same person. In Acts 20:17 we find Paul summoning the "Elders" of the church and later we read that those Elders were "Shepherds" (Acts 20:28). Further we read in 1st Peter 5 that an Elder and a Shepherd are one in the same. In this case, the Elders were to shepherd the flock while waiting on the Chief Shepherd to come and of course that is Jesus. What many of us knew and were taught as we grew up is now lost it seems. There are men in the church who desire to be Elders who in fact can't even define what is an Elder. Like the Calvinists, they seem to think that doing things the Bible way is unimportant.

Let me explain my former remark concerning the Calvinists. When the very early translators were working on the biblical text, the then Protestant congregations were already using a Pastor/Shepherd model as a preacher. Of course, such a position is not in the Bible. The word Pastor was added as a replacement for Shepherd (in Ephesians 4:11) to accommodate religious practices that were already in play. Stated another way, the early Calvinists could not find a model in the Bible to accommodate their religious beliefs so they just changed the Bible. We don't really need any references to prove the above thesis since when we look at the Greek text, we find Ephesians 4:11 translated (ποιμεας) "Pastor" and in fact word is found through out the NT correctly translated "Shepherd." Ephesians 4:11 is the only place in the New Testament we find the English word Pastor, and that was translated in that manner to accommodate the Calvinists. If my memory serves me correctly, there were some early translations that footnoted the word "Pastor" and explained that the translation was left as so because of tradition, erroneous as it is. But you might say, why does it matter? Well it certainly does matter. The church of Christ has been very gifted over the years as compared to the denominational world. For the last several years I have had the pleasure of having denominational people in my classes and I have always been amazed that they don't understand the early heresy in the church that lead to Roman Catholicism. But if we consider that it takes an advanced understanding of what the Eldership is, and should be, to understand 'how' the Roman Catholic church corrupted the Eldership to form their religion, then we become a group of people detached from reality.

In the New Testament the leaders of Israel often failed in their task as "shepherds" of people, and usually this Old Testament idea of a shepherd is generally negative. The New Testament idea of a shepherd does not, for the most part, retain this idea and is generally expressed positively. It is used even as a metaphor to express God's love for sinners (Luke 15:4-6).

Jesus refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd (John 10:11,14) or the example of the perfect Shepherd and thus becomes the model for all other Shepherds who desire to do good.

Poimen is used literally (we have several examples of shepherds herding sheep) and metaphorically to refer to Jesus, but its primary function serves to describe the Elders of the church. To see that Jesus (the Good Shepherd) is the model for other Shepherds look no further than Hebrews 13:20 or 1st Peter 2:5. These are the under shepherds who work for Jesus. These people are to protect God's flock and not to serve for personal gain. In short, those members of the church who want to take the distinction away and refer to everyone as "shepherds" are in fact returning to the Calvinist model. Our forefathers worked extremely hard to bring us this far and we ought not  throw it away now!