I think everyone would have to agree on the definition of
preach,
preacher, and
pastor to understand the views of others here.
Lets say we define
preach as: Witnessing, telling about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now lets say we define
pastor as: Leader of a church/congregation. God is the ultimate leader, but that's a given.
In that case, a pastor would be a preacher, but that doesn't mean someone who preaches is qualified to be a pastor.
Anyone (male, female, whether new believer or not) who simply understands the gospel of Jesus Christ and has had a real salvation experience can share that and witness to others. Some have a specific and stronger calling to that. If you want to call said person a "preacher" then so be it.
Being a pastor, by my definition above, is a whole other thing. Someone who is a new or relatively new believer would not be equipped for such a thing, in my opinion. Actually, most who have been believers for many years are not even equipped for such a thing. I think it's a very specific calling that requires a specific skill set given by God.
I know there are a lot of big churches who have various staff for different things. I've always attended small churches. In the smaller churches, standing up and delivering a sermon on Sunday morning is a very very small part of what a pastor actually does. Sometimes other "preachers" within the church were allowed to deliver a message on a Sunday morning, but there was still a leader/pastor in place. He was the one delivering most of the sermons in addition to his many other duties.
I also think it's important to note that it's not enough to just spread the gospel. You can witness to and reach thousands of people with your message. If none of them actually get plugged into the holy spirit and the word of God and hopefully some experienced believers, they are more likely to drift away. It makes me think of the parable of the sower and the seed in Matthew 13. If you don't get rooted, you won't last.
Also the passage about how we're all different parts of the body comes to mind. Some of us are more front line people who have a stronger calling to get the word of God out there and get people to that initial point of accepting Christ. Others are better in more of a support role or teaching role...perhaps encouraging and helping those who are already believers. There's room in the kingdom of God for a lot of different people, none more important than the others.
We could throw yet another term into the mix,
teacher. It's possible to teach and not be a pastor or a preacher.
My personal convictions using the definitions above: Pastor - men only.... Preach/teach - men and women.
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On another note, not related to the above: I often see people say "This is not a dating site.". I don't remember ever seeing one put up a link to the site that is a sister site of this site. Christianchat.com has two sister sites.
One of them is:
christianpersonals.com
So instead of just telling people this isn't a dating site, I think it'd be better to also point them there. It drives traffic to a site Robo owns and gives the person somewhere else to look.
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