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Summary
- An evangelist carries the gospel to people who have not yet believed, while a pastor shepherds people who already belong to a church.
- Paul names both among Christ’s gifts to the church in Ephesians 4:11, and both serve the same purpose, building up the body of Christ.
- The word evangelist appears only three times in the New Testament, and Philip in the Book of Acts is the one person it names.
- Pastor means shepherd, and in the New Testament the shepherding was done by the elders, also called overseers.
- One person can do both: Paul told Timothy to “do the work of an evangelist,” and Billy Graham pastored a church before he became a traveling evangelist.
- Today a Catholic pastor is the priest who leads a parish, and in the Assemblies of God churches one sociologist studied in a Brazilian town, evangelist is a rank of its own, separate from pastor.
- Churches differ on apostles: the Apostolic Church holds that every gift of Ephesians 4:11, apostles included, continues today, while Calvin counted apostles an extraordinary office and the Catholic Church teaches that bishops succeed the apostles as pastors but not as witnesses of the Resurrection.
- Since the early centuries Christians have also called the four Gospel writers the evangelists.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- The Holy Bible, King James Version (public domain), via BibleGateway and Project Gutenberg: Jeremiah 3:15; John 10:3, 10:11, 21:15–17; Acts 1:22, 6:5, 8:5, 8:35, 8:39–40, 20:27, 20:28, 21:8–9; Romans 10:14–15; 1 Corinthians 3:6; Ephesians 4:11–12; 2 Timothy 1:11, 4:2, 4:5; James 5:14; 1 Peter 5:2, 5:4.
- The King James Version of the Bible, Project Gutenberg, used for the word counts of “evangelist(s)” and “pastor(s)”.
- Blue Letter Bible, Strong’s G2099, euangelistes, with Thayer’s Greek Lexicon.
- Blue Letter Bible, Strong’s G4166, poimen, with Thayer’s Greek Lexicon.
- Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History, Book III, chapters 18, 23, 24 and 37, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert (1890).
- Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 519.
- Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Billy Graham biography.
- James Washington Alves dos Santos, “Trabalho religioso e mercado religioso no meio pentecostal”, Anais do I SEMLACult, Foz do Iguaçu, 2017.
- The Apostolic Church UK, What We Believe.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book IV, chapter 3, section 4, trans. Henry Beveridge (1845), Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 860 and 862.
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