The only time I have ever been regularly addressed at all formally was when I used to be a teacher. It is standard form in UK schools for “sir” or “miss” to be the generic means of calling for your teacher. If you want to be specific, it would have always been “Mr Kneale” and never just Steve.
I remember when I first took up my post as pastor and was asked, ‘how would you like us to refer to you?’ I was taken aback at first. I always introduced myself as “Steve”. I never expected anyone would call me anything else. And it seemed laughable to me that, at 27 years old, much older, respectable believers might refer to me formally as “Pastor Steve” or just “pastor”. It seemed both unwarranted and utterly misplaced to me.
I had always referred to my pastors – who were older and much more formal than me – by their first names. I can’t remember a single exception. Not one of them suggested I should do other and I don’t recall hearing anybody else doing so either. It was new to me that anybody would formally refer to their pastor by a pseudo-title. My pastors were always “Richard”, “David”, “Trevor”, so it didn’t occur to me that anybody might call me anything other than “Steve”.
It jarred with me more because I am not a formal type anyway. It seems funny to me that I would formally be called “Pastor Steve” while I am talking to somebody in my tracksuit and snapback. Whilst, to some degree, that is just who I am, I did intentionally want to make myself more accessible to ordinary people. Titles and honourifics tend not to help with that kind of thing.
I am also wary of putting any division between myself and the other elders. We are all pastors, all overseers, all elders. Though I appreciate some will want a shorthand distinction between the full-time guy who does most the preaching and the others – and pastor seems to be the agreed term most land on to mean full-time elder – when it is used formally as a title, it almost certainly conveys something more. Something I am not convinced is very helpful.
I am similarly wary of putting too much distance between the elders and the congregation. After all, we believe in a priesthood of all believers. I am not at all convinced by a clergy/laity distinction. As far as I am concerned, elders are distinguished from the members only by virtue of their ability to teach. The rest of the character qualifications are supposed to be distinctive, setting us apart, so much as exemplars to which all must, and indeed can, aspire. It should be no shock to us to find lots of people in our congregations who exemplify many of these traits to a greater or better degree than their elders. The only thing preventing such people from being appointed to eldership would be teaching ability. But all that is to say, using “pastor” as a title that puts a level of distance and distinction between the members seems both arrogant and unwarranted to me.
What I didn’t factor in is that old habits die hard and culture eats strategy for breakfast (I know the context of that latter one doesn’t quite mean what I mean, but I think it’s true in this context too). It didn’t matter how hard I tried to make the point that I’m no different to anyone else, the old-school Pentecostals who landed with us, the Nigerians, the West Indians and a few others couldn’t shake the habit engrained in them by their culture. I was “pastor” and that’s that.
But I don’t think it’s a non-issue. I am very keen to emphasise the similarity between the elders and the members, between the individual elders themselves, and to push against any sense of ‘set apartness’. At the same time, I don’t want to undercut a right and proper desire for members to want to honour their elders (even if it is in ways that I, as a Brit, find deeply embarrassing). Let’s be honest, there’s enough disrespect and distrust of church leaders floating around that anybody with a desire to honour their leaders has to be applauded for the effort!
Where we have landed is on a happinness that I can introduce myself as “Steve” whilst those who want to call me “pastor”can do that. And then we can laugh at one another, as they see how embarrassed I am at the unwarranted formal honour and I see how embarrassed they are at the thought of just calling me “Steve”. We can pull each other’s leg about our respective cultures, appreciating what each is aiming to do with good and godly intent.
I grew up I think a decade or so before you and it was still normal to address a pastor with that prefix to their name or just as “pastor”. We also would have addressed people as Mr and Mrs X or for those considered close enough Uncle ior Auntie. Oddly there were two spinster ladies who always sat together and gave out sweets but one was Mrs Hix and the other Auntie Mary. That had allchanged significantly by the time I was in ministry. Add to the fact that I was with an ex Brethren church and there was still a debate about what my official role was. The advert was for pastor/church supported worker and it took an 80 year old lady to say that noone outside has a clue what the second part meant and actually pastor sounded quite nice and warm! Incidentally in some formal external contexts such as a hospital visit or helping someone talk to lawyers, the prefix helped (though sometimes in correspondence it may have been more thevLlB (hons) after my name. What then happened was that Africans and South Americans came and called me Pastor Dave. It’s worth observing that they would give everyone a prefix my wife was Mrs Sarah, Doctors were given that title etc. There are some in our current church who would call any elder Pastor. Personally I’m relaxed and more so than I was at first. I prefer people to call me by my first name but if for some it is helpful to address with an indication of the relationship that’s no problem. I also think it’s important to avoid situations where people compartment my relationship to them as friend and as elder – I’m always both
I grew up with auntie and uncle, that’s was the norm. Old people were always Mr and Mrs. But nobody else. Some of that is Northern and not universal, I am now led to believe.
But my pastors were never anything other than their first name, to anybody. I know churches where they were Mr X or Y, but to us we were first name terms.
Yep – that may reflect either possibly a decade difference or variances between slightly different church traditions. I think there may still be a tendency to refer to a pastor with prefix in some contexts
Yes we have a lovely Nigerian member who calls my husband ( non-full time teaching elder) ‘Elder Andrew’ which is both touching and lightly amusing, and we can tease them both about the Proper Respect.