Reverend Is a Style, Minister Means Servant, Pastor Means Shepherd

Reverend is a style rather than a job, minister means servant, and pastor means shepherd. Two of the three words describe work someone does, and the third describes honour someone is given. That third word is also the only one of the three that never appears in Scripture as a title for a human being.

That is a good place to begin, because the muddle people get into over these words is not really about vocabulary.

Reverend comes from the Latin reverendus, “to be revered,” and in grammar it is an adjective. That is why careful writers put the Reverend Jane Cole, just as they would put the Honourable, and why editors wince at “Hello, Reverend” even though everyone says it.

Until the seventeenth century the word had nothing to do with the clergy. It was simply what you called someone held in high regard. Slowly it drifted toward the clergy, and there it stuck.

The King James Bible uses the word exactly once, in Psalm 111, where it says of God, holy and reverend is his name. Some traditions have looked at that one verse and concluded that the word belongs to God and should not be lent to men. Others answer, fairly, that the Hebrew there simply means to be feared, and that the whole argument rests on a word a translator chose in 1611.

We won’t settle that here, but it is worth knowing that a Christian who declines to call anyone Reverend is not being difficult; they are standing on a verse.

Minister is Latin too, and blunter than it sounds. It was the ordinary word for an attendant, the opposite number to magister, the master: the master gives the orders, and the minister fetches.

Behind it in the New Testament stands the Greek diakonos, the word that gives us deacon, and diakonos means a servant of the plainest kind, the one who waits at table. Paul reaches for it constantly, and always about himself. He is a diakonos of the gospel, of the new covenant, of the church, and never once does he call himself its master.

So when a Methodist or Presbyterian congregation calls its clergy ministers, the word is doing just what it was made to do. It names a position by naming a task, and the task is service.

Pastor is Latin for shepherd, and it translates the Greek poimen. Ephesians lists the gifts Christ gave the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. That is the only place in the New Testament where the noun is used of a church leader at all.

Nobody leads sheep from the front by shouting at them; a shepherd walks with them, and the word carries that picture with it. Peter, who had denied everything and then been asked three times on a beach whether he loved anyone, is told feed my sheep. Later he writes to the elders and tells them to shepherd the flock of God that is among them, not under them but among them, willingly and not for money.

Of the three words it is the warmest and the most demanding, for in that world a shepherd slept across the gate.

Most of the titles the churches use now came later. The apostles themselves used four words:

Episkopos, an overseer, which becomes bishop. Presbyteros, an elder, which wore down slowly in people’s mouths, without anyone planning it, until it became priest. Diakonos, a servant, which becomes deacon. And poimen, a shepherd, which becomes pastor.

Two of those words describe rank and two describe work. The early church used the first two almost interchangeably, and in one paragraph of Acts Paul calls the same men both elders and overseers. That is why denominations reading the same chapter have organised themselves so differently ever since.

Is Reverend a title or a form of address?

Strictly speaking it is neither. It is a style, an adjective attached to a name. “The Reverend Sarah Miles” is correct and “Reverend Miles” is common and widely accepted, but “Reverend” used alone, the way one might say “Doctor”, is informal, and some clergy dislike it. If you want to be safe, address the person by the office, as Pastor, Vicar or Father, or simply by name.

Can the same person be all three?

Yes, and it happens all the time. A Methodist congregation may have the Reverend John Adams, who is a minister by ordination and a pastor by appointment to that church. The three words answer three different questions: how he is styled, what he was ordained to, and what he does on a Tuesday.

Which denominations use which?

Baptist and non-denominational churches lean on Pastor, and Methodist and Presbyterian churches tend to say Minister. Anglicans and Episcopalians use Reverend as the style and priest, vicar or rector as the office. Catholics and Orthodox use Father in address, with Reverend as the formal written style. These are habits rather than rules, and they vary from country to country.

Does the Bible require any of these titles?

Scripture requires none of them. It describes what these people do rather than prescribing how to address them, and it carries a warning about the whole business: Jesus told his disciples not to be called Rabbi, or father, or master, because they had one teacher and were all brothers. Churches have read that ever since, some more literally than others.

We reach for these words most often at the worst moments: at a graveside, in a hospital corridor at two in the morning, or across a kitchen table when a marriage is coming apart and somebody has finally been called.

Nobody is thinking about Latin at that hour. The word is only the handle on the door we are knocking at.

Yet the oldest of the three still says most plainly who we are hoping will be on the other side of it: not a master but a shepherd, who knows the way home in the dark and walks it with us instead of pointing.

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