Who is our Sr. Pastor?
The answer at rest is quite simple, Jesus. It is not that we have 3 or 4 Sr. Pastors, and don’t be misguided as if that office is not filled; it’s that the role belongs to Jesus period.
I know that sounds very cliché, but at rest Church it is more than just a bunch of words. This belief is at the core of who we are and we want people to know us for more than our “rock-star” pastor or pastor team. We want people to know us for our community, how we love one another, and how our leaders are lead servants.
Have you ever been to the church were the Sr. Pastor is pretty much a rock star? How about the church where everything the Sr. Pastor says and does is wrong? Though these are extreme cases, we see them way too often in the modern day church. Can the model of Sr. Pastor work? Absolutely! And it does every single day. Our major issue with the office of Sr. Pastor is that it is really vague to find in scripture. What we do see is Jesus leaving the world with multiple elders, not one senior pastor and eleven department heads.
As we follow the life of Paul we find him planting churches and in each place establishing a plurality of elders/ pastors. If we were to make any type of presuppositions as to why this may be the case I believe we can firmly make two: sin and accountability. As we learn from the scriptures each man, woman, and child have a fallen nature from the moment they exit their mother’s womb (see more here: Total Depravity). Therefore we all want to do things our own way for our own gain when left unchecked. The church was set up to have a plurality in leadership to protect the body of Christ from one person becoming the bigger than life personality who rules over Christ’s bride.
If you have ever built a structure you know how important it is to have a solid footer to place your foundation on. Having the footer placed properly gives the whole structure strength and integrity. In the same fashion, buildings in biblical times would all begin from one strong and sturdy stone. This stone would be referred to as the “corner stone”. The whole structure is leveled from that one singular stone, if that stone was off the whole structure would be off. As Paul points out in Ephesians 2 Jesus is the cornerstone whom everything within the church is built upon.