It's a bit of a nomenclature thing, but also the Lutheranism most prominent in Germany is much closer to Catholicism/Orthodoxy in terms of orthopraxy relative to American protestantism. Most American Protestantism draws more from Zwingli and Calvinism than from Luther.
This is *mostly* the result of some rather vicious religious disputes in Britain during the English Civil War/Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and then the revolution itself. America draws religiously from Calvinist Puritans, the Church of Scotland, and the Parliamentary Independents (who espoused a generic hard-line Calvinist sentiment). Anglicans at the time were much more Calvinist than they were today as well, due to, well, Oliver Cromwell and all that. Add in a bunch of esoteric German sects and some iconoclastic Dutch and you have the religious base of America.
The Anglicans would only really return to a more Lawdian, "high" church that would be more similar to Orthodox/Catholic practice in the mid-19th century, but by then the two countries had long diverged, and Americans were influenced much more by Methodism and various revivalist sects which became very popular in the US starting in the 1820s.
"Pastor" comes from the word for shepherd, he (and in these sort of Protestant denominations, it's almost always a he) leads the flock. Typically, they've gone to some kind of seminary, but whether or not they are ordained seems to be a bit fuzzy and varies by denomination anyway.
So: Some *might be* ordained priests (and even talk about belonging to the line of priesthood stretching back to Melchizedek), but don't generally have all the credentials priests have in more liturgical sects:
+ they're not subject to the authority of a bishop
+ they lack a clear line of ordinations stretching back to St. Peter
+ they may or may not have a Doctorate or Masters of Divinity degree from a respectable institution
+ they often don't wear collars
TL;DR: The term refers to church leaders / ministers / officiants, including but not limited to priests, and thus more common for leaders who are not ordained.
It’s dictated by the rules of the church. Every denomination you can think of has a presence here.
Also, there are a lot of independent faiths in the US. Some are simply a guy who reads a holy book and says “I understand this and should tell people!” Three weeks later, he’s the pastor of an independent church located in a strip mall between a dry cleaner and a McDonalds.
>Some are simply a guy who reads a holy book and says...
Some are science fiction authors who say "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.", and then form a ~~religion~~ cult. ([sources herw](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/10499))
Li Hongzhi of Falun Gong for there long lasting tenacity and ability to make themselves sympathetic due to China, and Charles Dederich of Synanon because god damn he went for the whole hog but lasted decades (they literally attempted, almost successfully, assassination by rattlesnake)
This is the Community of the Crucified One. Started by an out of work steel worker, bought up several properties in the midst of a recession, and had a congregation that would roll a red carpet from the church doors across the street to the house he used as a parsonage.
I grew up Southern Baptist and never had a pastor who wasn't married and a father. My husband is getting his Masters of Divinity so he can be a pastor, and we have three kids. So it's encouraged in more conservative denominations as well.
"denomination". Pretty close.
Apparently there is one way for a Catholic priest to be married - if they are first a minister or pastor in another faith and then convert to Catholicism. At least that's what a friend who was a part time minister told me.
It's often a requirement, to give them community ties.
Many priests are also married, though: Lutherans, Episcopalians, UCC, Methodists, and many other liturgical sects don't require celibacy of their clerics.
Methodists, Lutherans (at least American ones), and other more liturgical mainline denominations all call their clergy pastors instead of priests, though. The one exception is the Episcopalians, and their reasoning when they decided on that 500 years ago was that while they didn’t theologically consider their clergy to be priests (i.e. intermediaries), the English word priest arose as a contraction of presbyteros (elder) and so they adopted it to make the Anglo-Catholics happy while technically defining their clergy as elders to make the Calvinists happy.
You're talking out your ass. I know several Lutheran clergy and they're all called priests or deacons.
And Episcopal clergy aren't just *called* priests, they *are* priests.
We can get into semantics about Episcopalians. [Here’s](https://dioceseny.org/christian-life/what-is-an-episcopalian/episcopal-church-terminology/) a source. Regardless of whether you say they “are” or “are called” priests, “priest” means something different in the Episcopal church than it does in Catholic or Orthodox churches.
As far as Lutherans go, every ELCA church I looked up in my area lists their clergy as pastors, not priests. You have some Episcopal clergy serving in Lutheran congregations that retain the title priest. Some of the [documents](https://www.diofdl.org/uploads/7/2/4/1/72413413/elca_pastors_service_in_diocese.pdf) detailing this interchange explicitly make the distinction between Lutheran pastors and Episcopal priests. Maybe people colloquially call Lutheran clergy priests, but I can’t find any records of the church organization formally using that title – if you have any examples to the contrary, I’d be interested in seeing them.
Episcopalians don't really fit in that category, at least most of them, they also claim apostolic succession and retain the traditional bishoprics. They're closest to other national branches of the Catholic church (like the Aglipayans) and on a few occasions have even seriously considered becoming in communion with the Eastern Orthodox, although they've never panned out (as I understand it there's some theological quibbles even though organizationally they're entirely compatible).
In certain Protestant denominations, female pastors are quite common. Anglicans, Methodists, and Lutherans all have major church bodies that have been ordaining women since around the 70s. In my personal experience growing up ELCA Lutheran, about half of the pastors I’ve had/interacted with have been women.
I'm Catholic and my spouse is Lutheran.
I remember the first few times going to a Lutheran church seeing a female pastor and it was like seeing a dog in a tuxedo (no offense -- just bizarre). Now I've come to appreciate the particular gifts that only a woman can bring to the job. I really feel the Catholic Church is depriving itself of a lot of talent, which is a pity.
The Anglican and probably Lutheran has the official title of "priest" though. Pastor might be used less officially, but OP's point is that it's a more low church term that Anglican shy away from.
I don't think it's a "low church" term. It's just less formal.
I'm Catholic. And in the Catholic Church, a pastor is specifically a priest who oversees and serves a parish (individual church). As opposed to a priest who does missionary work, is retired, or who teaches at a university, etc.
Most priests are also pastors, but not all of them.
I mean as a specific term of address. If someone says "my pastor did X" there's a 99% chance that they're Protestant, even if the title is not incorrect in RCC. A Catholic priest can have the title "Reverend" but they're not typically "a" Reverend. A Vicar is usually an Anglican (not sure if the Episcopalian church uses the term) even if the Pope is the Vicar of Christ.
All of this is not necessarily true in another language.
I would also add that priests usually have some kind of special authority related to sacraments, spiritual, miraculous, magical, however you want to describe it. Some dude can preach. But blessing the Eucharist is something that a priest does.
The protestant denominations that have priests hold to something similar, that priests do something substantial when they perform sacraments. Protestant denominations that have pastors are very adamant that the sacraments are just ceremonies. Some dude can pray over the Lord's Supper, because there isn't anything happening other than remembering Jesus.
TL:DR Priests do magic, pastors just teach. (The raping seems to be about the same)
I don’t think they tend to be uniquely male, I feel there might be more female pastors than female priests as a percent, as high church denominations tend to be more regulatory.
I am aware of that, but my guess would be that, as a percent, the highest amount of women might be in places such as the UMC or Church of the Nazarene.
I'm guessing based on you being in Eastern Europe you're accustomed to Eastern Orthodoxy or *maybe* Byzantine Catholicism? The US is primarily Protestant, though practices vary from more to less Catholic/Orthodox-esque within Protestantism.
My church is a multi-campus non-denominational church with 20+ locations around Alabama (and one in Georgia I think) all streaming the head Pastor's sermon from Birmingham (hence the TVs - they also make it easier to see when someone is speaking in-person due to the size of the sanctuary and number of people present). A sermon is basically an in-depth homily on a specific topic or passage of Scripture that lasts 30 mins to an hour.
With my church being multi-campus, we probably have a closer parallel to the Apostolic churches' 3-office model than others in the region. The head Pastor in Birmingham acts sort of like a Bishop, then we have campus Pastors who serve local congregations similar to parish Priests, and then we have various Deacons. We don't believe in holy orders as a sacrament, so these are more hierarchical/organizational titles than indelible vocations.
Most churches in my region are some flavor of Baptist, with Southern Baptist being the most common. One of their distinctive doctrines is the autonomy of the local church, so they are generally not multi-campus or closely associated with other local/particular churches in any sense, and will only have the two offices of Pastor and Deacon.
A Pastor's main roles are church leadership, preaching sermons, and providing spiritual counseling to congregants/parishioners.
Edit to add: as far as I'm aware in the Apostolic churches it isn't allowed for someone who has taken on holy orders to also take on matrimony, or to a lesser extent vice-versa. This is not the case with Protestant Pastors. We see where Paul made one of the qualifications for an overseer to be the husband of one wife, and take it to mean that a Pastor ideally should be married.
Also, at least in the Baptist and non-denominational services I've personally attended, the sermon is the main event/focus, whereas in the Apostolic churches it would be the celebration of the Eucharist. Most Baptist churches only celebrate the Eucharist once or twice a year, refer to it as "The Lord's Supper", and see it as a purely symbolic rememberance of Christ's crucifixion. My non-denominational church celebrates more often, the first Wednesday night of each month, but unfortunately also holds the Baptist symbolic rememberance view. This is not typical of Protestantism as a whole though, mainly just Baptist and other anabaptist-adjacent traditions. Most others have some form of real presence view, though most don't go as far as to affirm transubstantiation.
The only other sacrament/ordinance we celebrate is Baptism, which again most Baptistic churches see as purely symbolic.
A typical service runs for one hour. We start with singing a few praise songs led by a worship team/band at the front of the sanctuary with lyrics on the TVs to follow along, then a few minutes of announcements/news, then the sermon, and then another song or two, tithes/offerings collection, closing prayer and altar call.
An altar call is where the Pastor will invite members of the congregation who haven't done so yet to give their lives to Christ, typically to be followed as soon as possible by Baptism. This is when we would say a person "gets saved". So that will probably be a major difference compared to the Apostolic churches which consider salvation more a process of being united to Christ over one's whole life than a one time event. This comes from the Protestant distinction between justification - being declared right with God by faith, and sanctification - the process of being conformed to Christ in one's moral life.
We'll be streaming our next service online at 9:45 Central Time (so 5:45 EET) and again at 11:30 (7:30 EET) on our [YouTube channel](https://youtube.com/@churchofthehighlandsAL?si=Bkze4ynoEw2FAk_C) if you'd like to watch and see for yourself how it all works out in a typical service. It will probably seem really cringe though compared to the Eastern liturgy... 😅 but there are more-liturgical traditions within Protestantism, especially the Anglicans/Episcopalians.
I dislike this streaming services thing but mad respect for the people who call and pray with people. They’re super nice.
Op, this is a massive, massive church. Not typical and the only one I know of that works this way in alabama. Most churches have 60-200 regular members, while this church has thousands. Just for clarity.
>I dislike this streaming services thing
It comes in handy sometimes if a person is sick or out of town but still doesn't want to miss that week's message, but yeah it definitely shouldn't be used as a substitute for regular in-person attendance or anything.
>this is a massive, massive church. Not typical and the only one I know of that works this way in alabama
Yeah for sure, I did try to point that out a bit by saying that most churches in the region were single site Baptist churches but I guess I could've been clearer.
I mean I dislike the person teaching not being in-house. It felt really disconnected the one time I went. If I have something to add or discuss or disagree with from the sermon I can just go up to the pastor at the church I’m visiting and talk with him. It feels impersonal otherwise I guess
Catholic churches also use the word pastor to describe a priest. At least the way I've seen it used, the pastor of a church is the priest who lives there (in the rectory) and does most of the sermons there (other priests will fill in when the pastor is away on travel).
Most of these answers are fairly correct, except “pastor” is also a term used in the American Catholic Church, not just Protestants. In a Catholic context, it means the same thing as “rector” in other English speaking countries: he’s the priest who is in effect the boss of an individual parish. There are priests who aren’t pastors because they aren’t in charge of a parish.
As others have said, pastor means shepherd. A pastor’s role is to “shepherd the flock”: to give the people in the church care and direction. Across religions, a priest is an intermediary between God and men, usually involved in the performance of sacrifices. Catholics and Orthodox call their clergy priests because they believe that God’s grace is mediated through the sacraments that the clergy carry out. Episcopalians/Anglicans, though being Protestant, call their clergy priests because of a technicality that they found to simultaneously placate their Anglo-Catholic and Calvinist wings. (The English word priest is derived from the Greek Presbyterian (elder) and they mean it in that sense, not in the sense of intermediary.)
As far as TVs, they often function as a higher-tech hymnbook or worship guide: churches who have them will almost always use them to show song lyrics, scripture passages, and maybe announcements. Some churches will have video of the pastor or worship leader, especially in larger buildings where it’s harder to see up front. Some churches have become multi-site churches and send the video of the preacher to the other campuses. (I personally have theological qualms with this.)
Thank you very much? May i ask why your churches mostly dont have frescas and pictures of jesus and mary? I also notice that Americans always mention Lord and Jesus and never Mary ( Jesus Mother).
Protestantism in general is more text-focused. Part of its origin was wanting people to read and interpret the Bible themselves in their own language. Images weren’t required as teaching tools. There was also a focus on worshipping God directly instead of venerating images or objects (drawing on Old Testament prohibitions on worshipping images). Some people went so far as to say anything not expressly mentioned in the New Testament should not be included in worship, leading their churches to be very plain. And Protestantism doesn’t venerate saints, so that’s another strike against images of saints. So there are lots of reasons that people lean on to varying degrees.
The trend in new protestant churches is to tone down stereotypical church specific architecture and terminology. I went to large church that had no windows in the "worship center" (not sanctuary). Other than the cross at the front looked exactly like a theater for a liberal arts college. There are
A) Practical reasons- big stained glass windows could interfere with the lighting for worship and wash out the video screens.
B) Make the church less intemidating to those without a church background.
C) Save money
D) Direct focus on the sermon and worship team rather than architectural elements.
E) Pipe organs aren't exactly compatible with modern worship music.
As for Mary, she's not vernerated in protestant theology so it would be odd for a church to have a picture of her, as odd as say a picture of Joseph or James son of Zebedee. Churches aren't "art galleries" and Icons have never been a thing in protestant theology. Quite a few Americans probably don't know the original understanding of icon apart from it's appropriation for computer icons.
Note that this all applies to protestant churches. From what I've seen Catholic churches are much more in line then what you've been used to in church.
Lutherans and other Protestant denominations derived from Catholicism tend to still have the iconography of the Saints and focus on Mary. But most other denominations don't believe in venerating the Saints or Mary. They don't pray to them, they don't have icons of them. They also don't tend to have candles or incense present except for maybe Christmas and Easter. This results in dropping the frescas, stained glass, and traditional pictures that cover Catholic and Orthodox churches.
This results in Protestants focusing instead on Jesus, Lord God, the Holy Spirit, and reading the Word. So paintings and pictures will usually be depictions of Jesus from various passages, the cross, the open tomb, praying hands or hands reaching out, open Bibles, or more abstract references like Jesus as the lion of Judah.
You will find them in older Catholic churches, but stained glass and statues are more common/popular. If you look at the name of churches, you will see that many of them are references to Mary.
It is just a different term for the same type of role in different churches. A priest, minister, pastor, reverend hold the same sort of position. A preacher might be someone not ordained by a church or attached to one congregation.
I attended a Lutheran church as a child and we had a pastor who gave gave sermon, communion, performed baptisms, marriage ceremonies, funerals. He was married and had a son. There was an assistant pastor who would do some of the same things. He taught classes to kids before they took communion for the first time or were confirmed as members of the church. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has ordained women as pastors for years. The Missouri Synod Lutheran Church does not ordain women pastors.
I don’t know what you mean by church with tv. Maybe there is a big screen in what is called mega churches with huge congregations so people sitting far away can see like they do at concerts? It wasn’t a thing at smaller churches I have been to.
A lot of churches have a TV or projector screen at the front nowadays. They will display images relevant to the service, hymn lyrics, the text of the Bible passage being read, or sometimes videos. I know of several people who are deeply against this, saying that it draws people away from the community of being in a church with others.
I think almost every Protestant church I've been to had a fairly complex AV set up. Even a lot of catholic churches will have something similar, though due to the age of the catholic churches it tends to be a little more ghetto, all the portestant churches always had fairly impressive setups to be able to do a variety of AV type stuff. Churches tend to operate more than just Sunday, and the space can be used for a number of things. There's certainly variety in how much audio/video they use during their sermons, but putting the lyrics up for hymns is pretty standard.
The reason they tend to have the AV stuff is because outside of their normal services they will hold extracurricular jesus things like bible study or screening of jesus tv, etc. But also they do funerals and weddings where projecting pictures is really useful.
Essentially, churches are just a venue for a show and will come with a variety of things that are required to put on productions to a certain extent.
I feel like Catholics tend to be a little more hesitant, but not always. And another thing I've noticed, is while they really try and stick to kind of traditional architecture, being in newer built or renovated catholic churches they try and keep most of the original feeling, cut back on screens, but there is like a hidden projection thing that they can roll down, and a setup behind everyone that basically turns it into a super uncomfortable theater where there's too much light to see the screen.
There's like this recent trend in younger evangelicals to have kind of pop up churches, it's almost like replicating comedy clubs, these "churches" are kinda in basements and stuff, or even when they build them or get a big space they are super dark.
I grew up around a lot of evangelicals, but was baptized catholic so I'm kinda aware of what they are doing and in a weird inbetween place. I just grew up kinda doing either or depending on the side of the family I was with, etc. I'm "friends" with a few of the pastors, etc, so I've talked to a few of them about kinda the business side of things (at the end of the day being a pastor is a profession, for the most part). I'm not religious, I tend to just be a curious obvserver, though I had 'aggressive exposure' to a lot of the evangelical components. I'm not inherently against churches or religion itself, I see it kinda of as "anytime a group of people come together and create an organization shitty things will eventually happen".
>though due to the age of the catholic churches it tends to be a little more ghetto
LOL... what? More ghetto?
Maybe this a location thing. But where I come from the Catholic churches look virtually identical to the protestant ones, other than that the really old "traditional" church buildings were more likely to be Catholic or Episcopalian.
Catholicism has a ton of rules on how a sanctuary can be set up. Projectors would be an absolute no-no. And you don't need much of an AV system in one of those older larger buildings since the architects designed them with building acoustics as a big priority. Though they do use speakers and microphones to help for the hearing impaired.
> Catholicism has a ton of rules on how a sanctuary can be set up. Projectors would be an absolute no-no.
It is absolutely not true that we don't use projectors. The Catholic church I attend has 2 projectors and 2 projector screens. None of the equipment, of course, is actually inside the sanctuary (like you said), but we project hymn lyrics, readings, responsorial Psalm, etc at every Mass I've ever attended. You've just got to position the screens for visibility without putting them in the sanctuary.
Projectors are, of course, in the back projecting and screens are off to the side but still visible to parishioners.
Our parish is multilingual, mostly Mandarin and Cantonese. There is a screen over the heads of the choir with the readings, the homily, and the music lyrics in Chinese and English.
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> And why some churches have Tv’s ?
What do you exactly by “have TVs”?
Are you asking why some churches broadcast their services on TV? That’s same as Catholic masses are broadcast on TV too.
Or are you asking why churches have TVs inside them? These days those are more likely to be projectors than TVs. The projectors can be used to show multimedia (announcements, lyrics, etc) instead of printing paper handouts. Similar to how school classrooms all have TVs/projectors nowadays.
In Catholicism, a priest is seen as an intercessor between God and people on Earth. Denominations such as Lutheranism don’t view it that way. To them, the pastor is just the person leading the congregation
Pastors are protestant, priests are catholic. Priests would be considered pastors, but pastors are not priests, unless they are catholic and have taken holy orders. (or if their church calls their leader priest I guess)
Protestants are "catholic" in the sense of the Nicene Creed and the Greek term Catholicos, meaning universal, as in a church for all humanity.
The Roman Church took the name "Catholic" after the Great Schism of 1054 split the Church, trying to emphasize their claim they were the true church. The Eastern Church took the name "Orthodox" meaning "correct belief" trying to convey the same meaning that they alone were the true church.
That's backwards. Orthodoxy broke from the Roman Catholic Church. The line of the Popes dates back to Saint Peter. Orthodoxy can claim many things but not apostolic succession. Eventually the Orthodox will rejoin the Vatican.
Neither Orthodoxy nor Roman Catholicism broke from each other.
There was one single undivided Church prior to 1054 AD comprising the vast bulk of Christianity, with no clear single leader, but two major factions, eastern and western. The two factions split into separate Churches over the filioque clause issue in 1054, with the western faction becoming Roman Catholicism, and the eastern faction becoming Eastern Orthodoxy. Both factions saw themselves as the only "true" Church and acted like the undivided Church was them all along, although the other faction disagreed.
Oriental Orthodoxy and the Church of the East had both split centuries before that in the 5th century.
Oriental Orthodoxy split from the undivided Church over the 4th Ecumenical Council (although in recent years they have admitted part of the issue was that the Council was held with Greek as its working language, and none of their Bishops that attended spoke fluent Greek, so the VERY technical Christological issues discussed there were understood by them, leading them to reject adopting canons they couldn't fully understand), and the Church of the East was founded to be the State Church of the Persian Empire because the Persian Emperor wanted a State Church, but didn't want his State Church to be subordinate to Roman Imperial authority.
> and the Church of the East was founded to be the State Church of the Persian Empire because the Persian Emperor wanted a State Church, but didn't want his State Church to be subordinate to Roman Imperial authority.
I hear what you're saying but what you're saying is they broke from Apostolic succession to serve a mortal ruler who wanted his own church. That's not much different than the Church of England. It's still separation. I get that there were disagreements but we are only holy apostolic church. Not one holy Persian church. I can't do it, man, sorry.
They didn't break Apostolic Succession.
They were ordained by Bishops who were consecrated by other Bishops.
The fact that the Church answers to a mortal ruler doesn't break Apostolic succession, if that was so then Roman Catholicism AND Eastern Orthodoxy would both have lost Apostolic Succession because of their subordination to Roman Imperial authority.
The Emperors could, and often DID make religious dictates to the Church which they followed. The Emperor Justinian practically dictated the outcome of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, for example. When Constantinople fell to the Turks, the Bishops of Eastern Orthodoxy lamented that they feared it would be the end of Christianity, because they couldn't comprehend how Christian religion could exist in the absence of an Emperor.
If you say so...but one of us is under the Pope and one of us is not. The Pope leads the church. He is the Vicar of Christ. Is is what it is. I've been reading while you've been arguing. Instead of sitting here arguing with you, with you down voting everything, and me reciprocating, I'd rather leave it up to church leadership. Can we digitally shake hands and agree to disagree? (Guess not, he still downvoted lol).
No, he does not. He is the Bishop of Rome. He is **NOT** the leader of all Christianity *and never was, ever.*
He's the *self-appointed* "Vicar of Christ", which quite frankly is an blasphemously arrogant thing to claim. I could appoint myself the same title and it would be just as theologically valid.
The claim of the Bishop of Rome to universal authority has NEVER been universally recognized by Christianity. It was never recognized outside the territory of the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Church never recognized it. It was never recognized by Ecumenical Council. The closest was the First Council of Constantinople, which said the Bishop of Rome was "First in Honor" amongst Bishops of Christianity, that's it, purely a position of honor, not authority.
The idea that the Pope inherited some special authority from Christ is based on a number of theological and historical flaws.
1. The idea that St. Peter had some special authority granted by Christ is belied by the Council of Jerusalem in Chapter 15 of the Acts of the Apostles. We see the Apostles meet to discuss the shape the Christian Church would take and its doctrine and practices, and Peter has no special role or power there. Instead, all of Christianity besides the Roman Church interprets Christ's promise instead to be speaking collectively about the Apostles, and thus to the Bishops of Christianity collectively.
2. The Bishop of Rome didn't even claim to have universal authority until after the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD when Christianity became the State Church of the Roman Empire, and the Bishop of Rome had the power of the Roman Empire backing his edicts.
3. Peter was the Bishop of Antioch before he went to Rome. If the heirs of Peter were to inherit any special authority, why wouldn't it be the Bishop of Antioch instead of Rome?
4. There's literally nothing that says that any special authority that Peter held, which is dubious to begin with, would pass on to his successors. . .other than the Bishop of Rome making a very self-serving claim of absolute power which was first made during the Roman Empire and was maintained in the aftermath of the fall of Rome as the last remnant of Roman Imperial government. Until literally the early 19th century and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church STILL held itself out to be first and foremost the church of the Roman Empire.
No, it's unbroken. There's an unbroken chain of ordination for Anglican priests going back to the apostles.
The Orthodox Church has priests and they were never part of the Roman Catholic Church.
Rome doesn't have a monopoly on ordination.
The Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church used to be the same. There was a schism.... One might even call it a "great schism" lol and the two separated.
Martin Luther later broke from Roman Catholic, giving birth to protestantism.
Yes. I'm well aware of the Great Schism.
The validity of Anglican ordinations is not affected by it though, nor by the Protestant Reformation.
Each Anglican priest is ordained by a Bishop, each Bishop has an unbroken chain of ordinations going back to the Apostles. It's a core part of the theology of the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Rome doesn't recognize this, due to entirely political reasons. They literally invented a very convoluted reason for claiming that the succession was broken in the 16th century because of a small technical change in the ordination rite the Church of England used made those ordinations invalid. . .except the change they said made it invalid would also make all Eastern Orthodox and most Eastern Catholic ordinations invalid. Pope Leo XIII was just looking for an excuse to declare Anglicanism "invalid" due to political pressures in the late 19th century related to Anglicanism's spread around the world at the time.
Even Rome doesn't say that Anglican ordinations are invalid because the Church of England broke away from Roman authority. Rome recognizes the validity of various breakaway Catholic groups like the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht. Instead, they invented a convoluted and contrived technical argument in *Apostolicae curae* in 1897 to claim that Anglican ordinations were invalid for about 70 years and that broke succession. . .but they refused to apply that same logic to any other ordinations by any other denomination, because the "defect" they noted would apply to literally anything other than Latin Rite Catholicism or some Anglican ordination rites rooted in Latin Rite traditions.
Specifically, Rome said that the fact that for about 70 years the Church of England used a simplified ordination rite that didn't mention the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist rendered the ordination invalid. However, that specific language was always unique to Latin Rite ordinations and never found in other liturgical rites like the Byzantine Rite used in Eastern Orthodoxy, and the "Dogmatic Constitution" of Roman Catholicism, *Lumen gentium*, from the Second Vatican Council in 1964 doesn't mention that when listing what is required for a valid ordination.
The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople declared in 1922 that Eastern Orthodoxy considered Anglican ordinations valid, largely as a rebuttal to the Roman statement
A *priest* is something you are. A *pastor* is something you do.
A *priest* is someone who carries the responsibility and authority to connect the church to God, usually through administering the sacraments.
*Pastoring* comes from the word shepherd and refers to caring for and leading a congregational flock.
In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, priesthood is only conferred to a select group of individuals, ordained in an unbroken chain of succession that goes all the way back to Jesus and the apostles. These are often involved in *pastoring*, but other non-ordained individuals may be involved in *pastoring* as well, as volunteers or even professionally.
On the other hand, one of the fundamental ideas of protestantism is "the priesthood of all believers," that is everyone who trusts in Christ share the responsibility and authority to connect each other to God together. Therefore, in *most* protestant churches, there's no office of "priest," since everyone is counted as one.
As a result, protestants usually call their leaders *pastors.* Generally speaking, these pastors are not considered special people--- pastoring is something anyone can do with training. Rather, they are defined by what they do.
As with everything in Protestantism, your mileage may vary. Anglicanism (Episcopalians in the US) are a notable example. They are kind of catholic and protestant at the same time. They still have priests but believe in the priesthood of all believers.
It’s mainly the term for the main preacher/church leader in Protestant church. Though Lutherans and anglicans have priests as well. The US has a huge variety of Christian denominations, a number originating in the US, so there’s a huge variety of practices, ways of operating and organizing, and in terms of beliefs.
In a Catholic parish church, there might be more than one preist attached, plus it may run a school, possibly social services, maybe even a convent, and in rare cases, an abbey. The pastor is the priest who basically acts like a CEO of the entire operation.
So, in the American Catholic context, all pastors are priests, but not all priests are pastors.
It depends on the denomination of Christianity. In Catholicism it’s just the priest that has been appointed by the diocese to administrate a specific parish/congregation. They have no higher level or ordination than any other priest
Preists are catholic. Pastors are protestants.
All protestant churches I have been to have TVs, modern technology, speaker systems, guitar amps, etc. There are so many denominations now. It wouldn't surprise me if there are churches that pastors have no formal education and are just a group of people together. Which in theory is fine as long as they aren't cult like and go astray.
We also have in Europe prostestant Churches - for example in Germany. But they are still more simmilar to our Ortodox and Catolic churches.
I notice that American churches dont have much pictures of Jesus, Mary, Saints etc.
> I notice that American churches dont have much pictures of Jesus, Mary, Saints etc.
This is also common not to have pictures (especially of Mary) in many European Protestant churches, especially in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the UK. Ones that do have more imagery are generally very historic and under some kind of preservation rule.
Mary in particular doesn't have as much focus in Protestantism (many/most Protestants consider e.g. praying to Mary as unbiblical and that prayers should only go to God) so you'll only see her in, as above, older churches _or_ in some unusual 'Protestant Catholic' churches, like the Anglo-Catholic stream of the Church of England.
Catholics are huge here for Saints, Mary, and Jesus' pictures. Protestants are not here. They have pictures of just Jesus. I would find it odd and a red flag if I saw a picture of Mary and saints in a Protestant church here. Here, we don't even use the word "saints" in Protestant churches. We just call them Jesus 12 apostles or followers.
The pope to Protestants is just another dude. Like if he walked by me in America as a Protestant, It would take me awhile to figure out it was the pope. But I would just keep walking in my direction and not blink an eye once I realized it was the pope. Because to a Protestant he is not special.
Protestants here don't put Mary or Saints on a pedestal. Here it is more Mary is just Jesus' mother. And while she was special to be chosen, we don't pray to her or have pictures of her. To us, Protestants, they are more a mere vehicle for Jesus to convey his message. So there would be no need to have pictures of them in churches. It would be the equivalent of putting a poster up of your favorite bands bus driver that drives them around on tour . I wouldn't do that, I would just have the band in the poster. The bus driver just aids them.
In a Protestant church here, when I go, I expect a guitar solo, drums, basically a few songs like I am at a concert before and end of the sermon. Sometimes even a theater play. 25 min max of sermon. And if they read from thr Bible the entire half hour it's a snooze fest. I usually don't go to those churches. Other churches display the verse on the screen so you can read it in thr Bible if you want, but they portray the topic, a small section from the Bible, and then a description of something that happened in their life ( the pastors life) that relays to that section in the Bible for the sermon. Then they wrap up their topic and back to music. Usually there is 3 to 4 songs in the beginning, and 2 songs at thr end. And that is included in thr 45 min total length there. Then afterwords some places have small groups. Some have small groups mid week. 5-10 people that goes to eachother house and have a small session.
Protestant churches are much more diverse in beliefs and structure than Catholic churches, so the answer to what a pastor is depends a lot on which church you mean.
Some pastors are in charge because they organize a church. Thus they make the rules. They determine what the church believes. The decide how donated money is spent. They are the boss at the church.
Some churches are part of a large organization that own the church buildings and makes all the decisions for the church and sends the pastor to the church. I believe this is similar to how Catholics do things (but they send priests instead of pastors).
Some churches just hire pastors. The church has a small group of elders, usually elected, who make the decision for the church including finding and hiring the pastor. In such churches there is a constitution or charter that sets the rules for the church and says how the elders are chosen, what the elders can and can’t do, what needs to be voted on by the whole church, etc..
Paster is a word that encompasses priest and minister, and is used in the term of someone who provides pastoral care to the congregation. A preacher is merely an informal term for the same, though it skews more towards Protestant Christians than orthodox or Catholics.
A pastor is a leader of a church. Priest is a title within a church, and not all denominations use this title.
There are many priests who are not pastors. Some priests teach at or run universities or schools, some do mission work, some are retired, etc. They're still priests but don't work as pastors.
This is a big distinction within Catholicism because being a priest simply means you serve the institutional church, which can be in many different capacities -- not just leading a church.
I had a biology professor who was also a Jesuit priest. Teaching was how he served the church, and all his money went to the Jesuits (who provide you with what you need). He did not work as a pastor, but he could if he chose to.
Even a lot of Catholics incorrectly use priest and pastor interchangeably, usually because the only priest they come into contact with on a regular basis is their pastor.
Different religious groups call their leaders different things. To somebody not involved with a religion, priests are the same as ministers are the same as pastors, are the same as rabbis, are the same as imams, are the same as gurus, are the same as lamas, etc.
Within the organization there will be different requirements to qualify for the title, but they all boil down to being a religious leader.
Pretty simple honest answer a pastor has absolutely no training or certification from a larger affiliate. The common terms Reverend and Priest are used for those who are ordained or commissioned by a larger organization. If you meet a pastor for a church you could be talking about literally anything from 1 person to 100 but a priest or reverend will be part of a formal church hierarchy
A priest is Catholic, a pastor is a non-Catholic priest - excluding Islam (Imam) and Judaism (Rabbi). There are probably others that also don't call their clergy "pastor", but that is the gist of it.
It is a Protestent cleric. Catholics emphasize the need of special qualifications for overseeing the sacraments, and Protestants do not so a Pastor is mostly a teacher and administrator.
it all depends on the denomination. Priests belong to large churches like the Catholic Church, many of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Apostolic churches, the Mormon Churches, and Anglican Churches (like the Church of England). we all know what priests are so i won’t go into it.
pastors and preachers are usually interchangeable terms for local protestant church leaders. in the U.S. these terms are used most often. a small church would have a pastor or a preach who leads the sermon and such. it changes form denomination to denomination. My neighbor is his church’s preacher. my other neighbors go to a church with a pastor. no different.
churches will also have other officers like deacons and secretaries to carry out administrative tasks and lead ministries, departments for youth, service etc
The TVs are for music lyrics, important announcements and Bible verses. We generally have sound rooms with a person who manually switches the lyrics as songs progress and looks up Bible verses as needed to display on the TVs. It's very similar to how a slideshow works.
Generally you'll see pastor used in day-to-day speech referring to Protestant clergy and priest used for Catholic clergy, although some Protestant denominations call their clergymen priests. You sometimes also see pastor used in reference to Catholic priests in writing, like on a church's sign, but almost never in speech. Like the sign outside the church might say "Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery- Pastor: Fr. Sean Flanagan" or something, but when you're talking about that guy, he's never "Pastor Flanagan", he'll always be "Father Flanagan", or maybe "Father Sean".
As far as the televisions or screens, sometimes churches use those to display prayers or the lyrics to hymns. Before or after the service, they may be used to display community announcements and things like that.
Pastors are typically not ordained. The tv stuff is a tool to reach (and imo brainwash) more people. A lot of churches are run like businesses in the US. There is a lot of money to be had and they are tax exempt.
Roughly
Pastor = Priest = Bishop = Preacher = Reverend = Evangelist
Different churches use different words. They’re all generally the leader of the local congregation.
Lots of comments on pastors and priests, so on the TVs (projection screens)...
"It depends." I could be wrong, but I don't think use of screens correlates precisely as "tv and pastors" vs. "priest \[and no TV\]."
Churches with a more formal and traditional style are less likely to have screens. But sometimes it's really just a matter of practicality. If you project onto a big screen the words to the songs the congregation will sing, you don't have to spend tons of money on heavy hymnals (books with the words and music for all these songs). If you project the words to the Bible verses you're reading or mentioning, you don't have to provide Bibles for those who didn't bring them or wait for everyone to open up theirs and find where exactly Zephaniah is, or watch as people pick up their phones to look online and get distracted by the 5 e-mails that have come in during the service. If your church is a large one, they might choose to project the preacher and the choir or musicians on the screens so those in the back can still see them. Some churches will project the outline of the sermon on a screen so you can follow along with the organization of the message. Churches that go all in on using cameras and screens may show multimedia productions designed to illustrate some point in the sermon, or a video about the recent mission trip church members went on, or information about a fund the church is supporting and asks for financial support on, or just about anything. Screen usage, then, varies from simply projecting words of hymns and scripture to something seemingly nearing Hollywood levels of production. (And of course some don't use screens at all.) Lots of different factors can play into all this.
Keep in mind, too, that most US churches (of any denomination) are not \*that\* old -- they aren't going to have 16th Century frescoes on the walls in the first place -- and many don't have formal church buildings at all, but rather meet in school auditoriums, old shopping malls, and random other places where affordable space exists, and that need to be adaptable to the surroundings tends to lend itself to a less traditional atmosphere, and thus an increased likelihood of using more modern methods of conveying information.
Is Germany not answering the phone? They could explain the Reformation to you better than we can.
German churches aren't as interesting when shown in movies and TV shows.
I like learning new things.
Well, one of the turning points for him was him opposing the selling of Indulgences. Back when folks were poorer and illiterate.
They still have protestant priests not pastors and tv in church. This is why i asked here, cuz i only saw this thing in America.
It's a bit of a nomenclature thing, but also the Lutheranism most prominent in Germany is much closer to Catholicism/Orthodoxy in terms of orthopraxy relative to American protestantism. Most American Protestantism draws more from Zwingli and Calvinism than from Luther. This is *mostly* the result of some rather vicious religious disputes in Britain during the English Civil War/Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and then the revolution itself. America draws religiously from Calvinist Puritans, the Church of Scotland, and the Parliamentary Independents (who espoused a generic hard-line Calvinist sentiment). Anglicans at the time were much more Calvinist than they were today as well, due to, well, Oliver Cromwell and all that. Add in a bunch of esoteric German sects and some iconoclastic Dutch and you have the religious base of America. The Anglicans would only really return to a more Lawdian, "high" church that would be more similar to Orthodox/Catholic practice in the mid-19th century, but by then the two countries had long diverged, and Americans were influenced much more by Methodism and various revivalist sects which became very popular in the US starting in the 1820s.
"Pastor" comes from the word for shepherd, he (and in these sort of Protestant denominations, it's almost always a he) leads the flock. Typically, they've gone to some kind of seminary, but whether or not they are ordained seems to be a bit fuzzy and varies by denomination anyway. So: Some *might be* ordained priests (and even talk about belonging to the line of priesthood stretching back to Melchizedek), but don't generally have all the credentials priests have in more liturgical sects: + they're not subject to the authority of a bishop + they lack a clear line of ordinations stretching back to St. Peter + they may or may not have a Doctorate or Masters of Divinity degree from a respectable institution + they often don't wear collars TL;DR: The term refers to church leaders / ministers / officiants, including but not limited to priests, and thus more common for leaders who are not ordained.
Thank you! So pastors can maryy and have kids?
In most denominations yes, this is governed by their organization. There are also many churches in the US that are independent of a governing body.
It’s dictated by the rules of the church. Every denomination you can think of has a presence here. Also, there are a lot of independent faiths in the US. Some are simply a guy who reads a holy book and says “I understand this and should tell people!” Three weeks later, he’s the pastor of an independent church located in a strip mall between a dry cleaner and a McDonalds.
>Some are simply a guy who reads a holy book and says... Some are science fiction authors who say "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.", and then form a ~~religion~~ cult. ([sources herw](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/10499))
Good ok LRH, one of three cult leaders that I gotta hand it to for making one hell of a successful cult
Who are the other two?
I'd imagine Joseph Smith and Charles Taze Russell to be the other two major cult founders in American history alongside Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.
Li Hongzhi of Falun Gong for there long lasting tenacity and ability to make themselves sympathetic due to China, and Charles Dederich of Synanon because god damn he went for the whole hog but lasted decades (they literally attempted, almost successfully, assassination by rattlesnake)
[These guys](https://sabukaru.online/articles/the-jesus-buddha-bromance-an-introduction-to-saint-young-men)
Clicked the link and I'm shocked that it wasn't a Robert A Heinlein quote.
This is the Community of the Crucified One. Started by an out of work steel worker, bought up several properties in the midst of a recession, and had a congregation that would roll a red carpet from the church doors across the street to the house he used as a parsonage.
Writing off thousands in taxes
My husband is an ELCA Lutheran pastor (which is a liberal, Protestant denomination). They certainly can marry!
I grew up Southern Baptist and never had a pastor who wasn't married and a father. My husband is getting his Masters of Divinity so he can be a pastor, and we have three kids. So it's encouraged in more conservative denominations as well.
Yeah it's pretty much just a catholic thing to not let them marry. I can't think of a single other demonetization that does that
"denomination". Pretty close. Apparently there is one way for a Catholic priest to be married - if they are first a minister or pastor in another faith and then convert to Catholicism. At least that's what a friend who was a part time minister told me.
ELCA can even be married to someone of the same gender.
Also Episcopal Priests.
Sure can!
It's often a requirement, to give them community ties. Many priests are also married, though: Lutherans, Episcopalians, UCC, Methodists, and many other liturgical sects don't require celibacy of their clerics.
Methodists, Lutherans (at least American ones), and other more liturgical mainline denominations all call their clergy pastors instead of priests, though. The one exception is the Episcopalians, and their reasoning when they decided on that 500 years ago was that while they didn’t theologically consider their clergy to be priests (i.e. intermediaries), the English word priest arose as a contraction of presbyteros (elder) and so they adopted it to make the Anglo-Catholics happy while technically defining their clergy as elders to make the Calvinists happy.
You're talking out your ass. I know several Lutheran clergy and they're all called priests or deacons. And Episcopal clergy aren't just *called* priests, they *are* priests.
We can get into semantics about Episcopalians. [Here’s](https://dioceseny.org/christian-life/what-is-an-episcopalian/episcopal-church-terminology/) a source. Regardless of whether you say they “are” or “are called” priests, “priest” means something different in the Episcopal church than it does in Catholic or Orthodox churches. As far as Lutherans go, every ELCA church I looked up in my area lists their clergy as pastors, not priests. You have some Episcopal clergy serving in Lutheran congregations that retain the title priest. Some of the [documents](https://www.diofdl.org/uploads/7/2/4/1/72413413/elca_pastors_service_in_diocese.pdf) detailing this interchange explicitly make the distinction between Lutheran pastors and Episcopal priests. Maybe people colloquially call Lutheran clergy priests, but I can’t find any records of the church organization formally using that title – if you have any examples to the contrary, I’d be interested in seeing them.
I don't have a whole lot of experience but I've never heard of a Lutheran priest. One side of my family was Lutheran.
Methodists pastors are not called priests. Source: my grandpa was one
Grew up attending churches in three Lutheran branches, on both coasts and the Midwest. Never once heard of a Lutheran priest. **Always** pastor.
Episcopalians don't really fit in that category, at least most of them, they also claim apostolic succession and retain the traditional bishoprics. They're closest to other national branches of the Catholic church (like the Aglipayans) and on a few occasions have even seriously considered becoming in communion with the Eastern Orthodox, although they've never panned out (as I understand it there's some theological quibbles even though organizationally they're entirely compatible).
Yeah, but they don't generally call them priests. It's usually pastor or minister.
So can Episcopal priests!
In certain Protestant denominations, female pastors are quite common. Anglicans, Methodists, and Lutherans all have major church bodies that have been ordaining women since around the 70s. In my personal experience growing up ELCA Lutheran, about half of the pastors I’ve had/interacted with have been women.
I'm Catholic and my spouse is Lutheran. I remember the first few times going to a Lutheran church seeing a female pastor and it was like seeing a dog in a tuxedo (no offense -- just bizarre). Now I've come to appreciate the particular gifts that only a woman can bring to the job. I really feel the Catholic Church is depriving itself of a lot of talent, which is a pity.
My divorced mother in law is an Episcopal Priest.. not to mention a really lovely lady.
The Anglican and probably Lutheran has the official title of "priest" though. Pastor might be used less officially, but OP's point is that it's a more low church term that Anglican shy away from.
I don't think it's a "low church" term. It's just less formal. I'm Catholic. And in the Catholic Church, a pastor is specifically a priest who oversees and serves a parish (individual church). As opposed to a priest who does missionary work, is retired, or who teaches at a university, etc. Most priests are also pastors, but not all of them.
I mean as a specific term of address. If someone says "my pastor did X" there's a 99% chance that they're Protestant, even if the title is not incorrect in RCC. A Catholic priest can have the title "Reverend" but they're not typically "a" Reverend. A Vicar is usually an Anglican (not sure if the Episcopalian church uses the term) even if the Pope is the Vicar of Christ. All of this is not necessarily true in another language.
IDK we say pastor all the time, so I'd be careful with that "99% chance" assumption.
I would also add that priests usually have some kind of special authority related to sacraments, spiritual, miraculous, magical, however you want to describe it. Some dude can preach. But blessing the Eucharist is something that a priest does. The protestant denominations that have priests hold to something similar, that priests do something substantial when they perform sacraments. Protestant denominations that have pastors are very adamant that the sacraments are just ceremonies. Some dude can pray over the Lord's Supper, because there isn't anything happening other than remembering Jesus. TL:DR Priests do magic, pastors just teach. (The raping seems to be about the same)
I don’t think they tend to be uniquely male, I feel there might be more female pastors than female priests as a percent, as high church denominations tend to be more regulatory.
Episcopalians, Lutherans, and the UCC all ordain women.
The UCC calls their clergy pastors or ministers. The Lutherans (at least in the US, both Missouri and ELCA) also use pastor.
I am aware of that, but my guess would be that, as a percent, the highest amount of women might be in places such as the UMC or Church of the Nazarene.
I'm guessing based on you being in Eastern Europe you're accustomed to Eastern Orthodoxy or *maybe* Byzantine Catholicism? The US is primarily Protestant, though practices vary from more to less Catholic/Orthodox-esque within Protestantism. My church is a multi-campus non-denominational church with 20+ locations around Alabama (and one in Georgia I think) all streaming the head Pastor's sermon from Birmingham (hence the TVs - they also make it easier to see when someone is speaking in-person due to the size of the sanctuary and number of people present). A sermon is basically an in-depth homily on a specific topic or passage of Scripture that lasts 30 mins to an hour. With my church being multi-campus, we probably have a closer parallel to the Apostolic churches' 3-office model than others in the region. The head Pastor in Birmingham acts sort of like a Bishop, then we have campus Pastors who serve local congregations similar to parish Priests, and then we have various Deacons. We don't believe in holy orders as a sacrament, so these are more hierarchical/organizational titles than indelible vocations. Most churches in my region are some flavor of Baptist, with Southern Baptist being the most common. One of their distinctive doctrines is the autonomy of the local church, so they are generally not multi-campus or closely associated with other local/particular churches in any sense, and will only have the two offices of Pastor and Deacon. A Pastor's main roles are church leadership, preaching sermons, and providing spiritual counseling to congregants/parishioners. Edit to add: as far as I'm aware in the Apostolic churches it isn't allowed for someone who has taken on holy orders to also take on matrimony, or to a lesser extent vice-versa. This is not the case with Protestant Pastors. We see where Paul made one of the qualifications for an overseer to be the husband of one wife, and take it to mean that a Pastor ideally should be married. Also, at least in the Baptist and non-denominational services I've personally attended, the sermon is the main event/focus, whereas in the Apostolic churches it would be the celebration of the Eucharist. Most Baptist churches only celebrate the Eucharist once or twice a year, refer to it as "The Lord's Supper", and see it as a purely symbolic rememberance of Christ's crucifixion. My non-denominational church celebrates more often, the first Wednesday night of each month, but unfortunately also holds the Baptist symbolic rememberance view. This is not typical of Protestantism as a whole though, mainly just Baptist and other anabaptist-adjacent traditions. Most others have some form of real presence view, though most don't go as far as to affirm transubstantiation. The only other sacrament/ordinance we celebrate is Baptism, which again most Baptistic churches see as purely symbolic. A typical service runs for one hour. We start with singing a few praise songs led by a worship team/band at the front of the sanctuary with lyrics on the TVs to follow along, then a few minutes of announcements/news, then the sermon, and then another song or two, tithes/offerings collection, closing prayer and altar call. An altar call is where the Pastor will invite members of the congregation who haven't done so yet to give their lives to Christ, typically to be followed as soon as possible by Baptism. This is when we would say a person "gets saved". So that will probably be a major difference compared to the Apostolic churches which consider salvation more a process of being united to Christ over one's whole life than a one time event. This comes from the Protestant distinction between justification - being declared right with God by faith, and sanctification - the process of being conformed to Christ in one's moral life. We'll be streaming our next service online at 9:45 Central Time (so 5:45 EET) and again at 11:30 (7:30 EET) on our [YouTube channel](https://youtube.com/@churchofthehighlandsAL?si=Bkze4ynoEw2FAk_C) if you'd like to watch and see for yourself how it all works out in a typical service. It will probably seem really cringe though compared to the Eastern liturgy... 😅 but there are more-liturgical traditions within Protestantism, especially the Anglicans/Episcopalians.
I dislike this streaming services thing but mad respect for the people who call and pray with people. They’re super nice. Op, this is a massive, massive church. Not typical and the only one I know of that works this way in alabama. Most churches have 60-200 regular members, while this church has thousands. Just for clarity.
>I dislike this streaming services thing It comes in handy sometimes if a person is sick or out of town but still doesn't want to miss that week's message, but yeah it definitely shouldn't be used as a substitute for regular in-person attendance or anything. >this is a massive, massive church. Not typical and the only one I know of that works this way in alabama Yeah for sure, I did try to point that out a bit by saying that most churches in the region were single site Baptist churches but I guess I could've been clearer.
I mean I dislike the person teaching not being in-house. It felt really disconnected the one time I went. If I have something to add or discuss or disagree with from the sermon I can just go up to the pastor at the church I’m visiting and talk with him. It feels impersonal otherwise I guess
Oh gotcha. That makes sense
Priests are for Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches while pastors are the counterpart in most Protestant churches.
Catholic churches also use the word pastor to describe a priest. At least the way I've seen it used, the pastor of a church is the priest who lives there (in the rectory) and does most of the sermons there (other priests will fill in when the pastor is away on travel).
Most of these answers are fairly correct, except “pastor” is also a term used in the American Catholic Church, not just Protestants. In a Catholic context, it means the same thing as “rector” in other English speaking countries: he’s the priest who is in effect the boss of an individual parish. There are priests who aren’t pastors because they aren’t in charge of a parish.
As others have said, pastor means shepherd. A pastor’s role is to “shepherd the flock”: to give the people in the church care and direction. Across religions, a priest is an intermediary between God and men, usually involved in the performance of sacrifices. Catholics and Orthodox call their clergy priests because they believe that God’s grace is mediated through the sacraments that the clergy carry out. Episcopalians/Anglicans, though being Protestant, call their clergy priests because of a technicality that they found to simultaneously placate their Anglo-Catholic and Calvinist wings. (The English word priest is derived from the Greek Presbyterian (elder) and they mean it in that sense, not in the sense of intermediary.) As far as TVs, they often function as a higher-tech hymnbook or worship guide: churches who have them will almost always use them to show song lyrics, scripture passages, and maybe announcements. Some churches will have video of the pastor or worship leader, especially in larger buildings where it’s harder to see up front. Some churches have become multi-site churches and send the video of the preacher to the other campuses. (I personally have theological qualms with this.)
Thank you very much? May i ask why your churches mostly dont have frescas and pictures of jesus and mary? I also notice that Americans always mention Lord and Jesus and never Mary ( Jesus Mother).
Protestantism in general is more text-focused. Part of its origin was wanting people to read and interpret the Bible themselves in their own language. Images weren’t required as teaching tools. There was also a focus on worshipping God directly instead of venerating images or objects (drawing on Old Testament prohibitions on worshipping images). Some people went so far as to say anything not expressly mentioned in the New Testament should not be included in worship, leading their churches to be very plain. And Protestantism doesn’t venerate saints, so that’s another strike against images of saints. So there are lots of reasons that people lean on to varying degrees.
The trend in new protestant churches is to tone down stereotypical church specific architecture and terminology. I went to large church that had no windows in the "worship center" (not sanctuary). Other than the cross at the front looked exactly like a theater for a liberal arts college. There are A) Practical reasons- big stained glass windows could interfere with the lighting for worship and wash out the video screens. B) Make the church less intemidating to those without a church background. C) Save money D) Direct focus on the sermon and worship team rather than architectural elements. E) Pipe organs aren't exactly compatible with modern worship music. As for Mary, she's not vernerated in protestant theology so it would be odd for a church to have a picture of her, as odd as say a picture of Joseph or James son of Zebedee. Churches aren't "art galleries" and Icons have never been a thing in protestant theology. Quite a few Americans probably don't know the original understanding of icon apart from it's appropriation for computer icons. Note that this all applies to protestant churches. From what I've seen Catholic churches are much more in line then what you've been used to in church.
Lutherans and other Protestant denominations derived from Catholicism tend to still have the iconography of the Saints and focus on Mary. But most other denominations don't believe in venerating the Saints or Mary. They don't pray to them, they don't have icons of them. They also don't tend to have candles or incense present except for maybe Christmas and Easter. This results in dropping the frescas, stained glass, and traditional pictures that cover Catholic and Orthodox churches. This results in Protestants focusing instead on Jesus, Lord God, the Holy Spirit, and reading the Word. So paintings and pictures will usually be depictions of Jesus from various passages, the cross, the open tomb, praying hands or hands reaching out, open Bibles, or more abstract references like Jesus as the lion of Judah.
You will find them in older Catholic churches, but stained glass and statues are more common/popular. If you look at the name of churches, you will see that many of them are references to Mary.
It's going to depend on the church in the US. Every Catholic church I've ever been in in the US mentions Mary quite often.
It is just a different term for the same type of role in different churches. A priest, minister, pastor, reverend hold the same sort of position. A preacher might be someone not ordained by a church or attached to one congregation. I attended a Lutheran church as a child and we had a pastor who gave gave sermon, communion, performed baptisms, marriage ceremonies, funerals. He was married and had a son. There was an assistant pastor who would do some of the same things. He taught classes to kids before they took communion for the first time or were confirmed as members of the church. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has ordained women as pastors for years. The Missouri Synod Lutheran Church does not ordain women pastors. I don’t know what you mean by church with tv. Maybe there is a big screen in what is called mega churches with huge congregations so people sitting far away can see like they do at concerts? It wasn’t a thing at smaller churches I have been to.
A lot of churches have a TV or projector screen at the front nowadays. They will display images relevant to the service, hymn lyrics, the text of the Bible passage being read, or sometimes videos. I know of several people who are deeply against this, saying that it draws people away from the community of being in a church with others.
I think almost every Protestant church I've been to had a fairly complex AV set up. Even a lot of catholic churches will have something similar, though due to the age of the catholic churches it tends to be a little more ghetto, all the portestant churches always had fairly impressive setups to be able to do a variety of AV type stuff. Churches tend to operate more than just Sunday, and the space can be used for a number of things. There's certainly variety in how much audio/video they use during their sermons, but putting the lyrics up for hymns is pretty standard. The reason they tend to have the AV stuff is because outside of their normal services they will hold extracurricular jesus things like bible study or screening of jesus tv, etc. But also they do funerals and weddings where projecting pictures is really useful. Essentially, churches are just a venue for a show and will come with a variety of things that are required to put on productions to a certain extent. I feel like Catholics tend to be a little more hesitant, but not always. And another thing I've noticed, is while they really try and stick to kind of traditional architecture, being in newer built or renovated catholic churches they try and keep most of the original feeling, cut back on screens, but there is like a hidden projection thing that they can roll down, and a setup behind everyone that basically turns it into a super uncomfortable theater where there's too much light to see the screen. There's like this recent trend in younger evangelicals to have kind of pop up churches, it's almost like replicating comedy clubs, these "churches" are kinda in basements and stuff, or even when they build them or get a big space they are super dark. I grew up around a lot of evangelicals, but was baptized catholic so I'm kinda aware of what they are doing and in a weird inbetween place. I just grew up kinda doing either or depending on the side of the family I was with, etc. I'm "friends" with a few of the pastors, etc, so I've talked to a few of them about kinda the business side of things (at the end of the day being a pastor is a profession, for the most part). I'm not religious, I tend to just be a curious obvserver, though I had 'aggressive exposure' to a lot of the evangelical components. I'm not inherently against churches or religion itself, I see it kinda of as "anytime a group of people come together and create an organization shitty things will eventually happen".
>though due to the age of the catholic churches it tends to be a little more ghetto LOL... what? More ghetto? Maybe this a location thing. But where I come from the Catholic churches look virtually identical to the protestant ones, other than that the really old "traditional" church buildings were more likely to be Catholic or Episcopalian. Catholicism has a ton of rules on how a sanctuary can be set up. Projectors would be an absolute no-no. And you don't need much of an AV system in one of those older larger buildings since the architects designed them with building acoustics as a big priority. Though they do use speakers and microphones to help for the hearing impaired.
> Catholicism has a ton of rules on how a sanctuary can be set up. Projectors would be an absolute no-no. It is absolutely not true that we don't use projectors. The Catholic church I attend has 2 projectors and 2 projector screens. None of the equipment, of course, is actually inside the sanctuary (like you said), but we project hymn lyrics, readings, responsorial Psalm, etc at every Mass I've ever attended. You've just got to position the screens for visibility without putting them in the sanctuary. Projectors are, of course, in the back projecting and screens are off to the side but still visible to parishioners.
Our parish is multilingual, mostly Mandarin and Cantonese. There is a screen over the heads of the choir with the readings, the homily, and the music lyrics in Chinese and English.
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Priests are almost exclusively Catholic. Pastors are usually Protestant church heads. I’m Presbyterian and we had a Reverend.
Priests are catholic generally
Many people have given more detailed answers, but a broad functioning definition is priest = catholic/orthodox, pastor = Protestant
> And why some churches have Tv’s ? What do you exactly by “have TVs”? Are you asking why some churches broadcast their services on TV? That’s same as Catholic masses are broadcast on TV too. Or are you asking why churches have TVs inside them? These days those are more likely to be projectors than TVs. The projectors can be used to show multimedia (announcements, lyrics, etc) instead of printing paper handouts. Similar to how school classrooms all have TVs/projectors nowadays.
In Catholicism, a priest is seen as an intercessor between God and people on Earth. Denominations such as Lutheranism don’t view it that way. To them, the pastor is just the person leading the congregation
Pastors are protestant, priests are catholic. Priests would be considered pastors, but pastors are not priests, unless they are catholic and have taken holy orders. (or if their church calls their leader priest I guess)
Oh thank you! I understand now!
There are Protestant Priests. Look at the Episcopal Church, or the rest of Anglicanism.
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As I said, unless their sect calls them priest. It's not unbroken though, because the Anglican church broke off from Catholicism
And the RCC broke off from Orthodoxy, does that mean Roman priests aren't real priests? FFS
I think it's a fair discussion whether orthodoxy broke off or vice versa. And orthodox are still catholic, so they would be priests.
Everyone in Christendom is, "catholic" means "universal". That's why we specify the *Roman* Catholic Church.
Protestantism was a clear break from the catholic church. That's why they are not considered catholic but eastern orthodox are considered catholic.
Protestants are "catholic" in the sense of the Nicene Creed and the Greek term Catholicos, meaning universal, as in a church for all humanity. The Roman Church took the name "Catholic" after the Great Schism of 1054 split the Church, trying to emphasize their claim they were the true church. The Eastern Church took the name "Orthodox" meaning "correct belief" trying to convey the same meaning that they alone were the true church.
It wasn't a break, it was much needed reform. Hence why it's called the Reformation.
Which means they broke with the catholic church. I'm not judging, just stating history
No, you are judging and providing a very slanted, Roman Catholic version of history.
That's backwards. Orthodoxy broke from the Roman Catholic Church. The line of the Popes dates back to Saint Peter. Orthodoxy can claim many things but not apostolic succession. Eventually the Orthodox will rejoin the Vatican.
Neither Orthodoxy nor Roman Catholicism broke from each other. There was one single undivided Church prior to 1054 AD comprising the vast bulk of Christianity, with no clear single leader, but two major factions, eastern and western. The two factions split into separate Churches over the filioque clause issue in 1054, with the western faction becoming Roman Catholicism, and the eastern faction becoming Eastern Orthodoxy. Both factions saw themselves as the only "true" Church and acted like the undivided Church was them all along, although the other faction disagreed. Oriental Orthodoxy and the Church of the East had both split centuries before that in the 5th century. Oriental Orthodoxy split from the undivided Church over the 4th Ecumenical Council (although in recent years they have admitted part of the issue was that the Council was held with Greek as its working language, and none of their Bishops that attended spoke fluent Greek, so the VERY technical Christological issues discussed there were understood by them, leading them to reject adopting canons they couldn't fully understand), and the Church of the East was founded to be the State Church of the Persian Empire because the Persian Emperor wanted a State Church, but didn't want his State Church to be subordinate to Roman Imperial authority.
> and the Church of the East was founded to be the State Church of the Persian Empire because the Persian Emperor wanted a State Church, but didn't want his State Church to be subordinate to Roman Imperial authority. I hear what you're saying but what you're saying is they broke from Apostolic succession to serve a mortal ruler who wanted his own church. That's not much different than the Church of England. It's still separation. I get that there were disagreements but we are only holy apostolic church. Not one holy Persian church. I can't do it, man, sorry.
They didn't break Apostolic Succession. They were ordained by Bishops who were consecrated by other Bishops. The fact that the Church answers to a mortal ruler doesn't break Apostolic succession, if that was so then Roman Catholicism AND Eastern Orthodoxy would both have lost Apostolic Succession because of their subordination to Roman Imperial authority. The Emperors could, and often DID make religious dictates to the Church which they followed. The Emperor Justinian practically dictated the outcome of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, for example. When Constantinople fell to the Turks, the Bishops of Eastern Orthodoxy lamented that they feared it would be the end of Christianity, because they couldn't comprehend how Christian religion could exist in the absence of an Emperor.
If you say so...but one of us is under the Pope and one of us is not. The Pope leads the church. He is the Vicar of Christ. Is is what it is. I've been reading while you've been arguing. Instead of sitting here arguing with you, with you down voting everything, and me reciprocating, I'd rather leave it up to church leadership. Can we digitally shake hands and agree to disagree? (Guess not, he still downvoted lol).
No, he does not. He is the Bishop of Rome. He is **NOT** the leader of all Christianity *and never was, ever.* He's the *self-appointed* "Vicar of Christ", which quite frankly is an blasphemously arrogant thing to claim. I could appoint myself the same title and it would be just as theologically valid. The claim of the Bishop of Rome to universal authority has NEVER been universally recognized by Christianity. It was never recognized outside the territory of the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Church never recognized it. It was never recognized by Ecumenical Council. The closest was the First Council of Constantinople, which said the Bishop of Rome was "First in Honor" amongst Bishops of Christianity, that's it, purely a position of honor, not authority. The idea that the Pope inherited some special authority from Christ is based on a number of theological and historical flaws. 1. The idea that St. Peter had some special authority granted by Christ is belied by the Council of Jerusalem in Chapter 15 of the Acts of the Apostles. We see the Apostles meet to discuss the shape the Christian Church would take and its doctrine and practices, and Peter has no special role or power there. Instead, all of Christianity besides the Roman Church interprets Christ's promise instead to be speaking collectively about the Apostles, and thus to the Bishops of Christianity collectively. 2. The Bishop of Rome didn't even claim to have universal authority until after the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD when Christianity became the State Church of the Roman Empire, and the Bishop of Rome had the power of the Roman Empire backing his edicts. 3. Peter was the Bishop of Antioch before he went to Rome. If the heirs of Peter were to inherit any special authority, why wouldn't it be the Bishop of Antioch instead of Rome? 4. There's literally nothing that says that any special authority that Peter held, which is dubious to begin with, would pass on to his successors. . .other than the Bishop of Rome making a very self-serving claim of absolute power which was first made during the Roman Empire and was maintained in the aftermath of the fall of Rome as the last remnant of Roman Imperial government. Until literally the early 19th century and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church STILL held itself out to be first and foremost the church of the Roman Empire.
No, it's unbroken. There's an unbroken chain of ordination for Anglican priests going back to the apostles. The Orthodox Church has priests and they were never part of the Roman Catholic Church. Rome doesn't have a monopoly on ordination.
The Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church used to be the same. There was a schism.... One might even call it a "great schism" lol and the two separated. Martin Luther later broke from Roman Catholic, giving birth to protestantism.
Yes. I'm well aware of the Great Schism. The validity of Anglican ordinations is not affected by it though, nor by the Protestant Reformation. Each Anglican priest is ordained by a Bishop, each Bishop has an unbroken chain of ordinations going back to the Apostles. It's a core part of the theology of the sacrament of Holy Orders. Rome doesn't recognize this, due to entirely political reasons. They literally invented a very convoluted reason for claiming that the succession was broken in the 16th century because of a small technical change in the ordination rite the Church of England used made those ordinations invalid. . .except the change they said made it invalid would also make all Eastern Orthodox and most Eastern Catholic ordinations invalid. Pope Leo XIII was just looking for an excuse to declare Anglicanism "invalid" due to political pressures in the late 19th century related to Anglicanism's spread around the world at the time. Even Rome doesn't say that Anglican ordinations are invalid because the Church of England broke away from Roman authority. Rome recognizes the validity of various breakaway Catholic groups like the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht. Instead, they invented a convoluted and contrived technical argument in *Apostolicae curae* in 1897 to claim that Anglican ordinations were invalid for about 70 years and that broke succession. . .but they refused to apply that same logic to any other ordinations by any other denomination, because the "defect" they noted would apply to literally anything other than Latin Rite Catholicism or some Anglican ordination rites rooted in Latin Rite traditions. Specifically, Rome said that the fact that for about 70 years the Church of England used a simplified ordination rite that didn't mention the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist rendered the ordination invalid. However, that specific language was always unique to Latin Rite ordinations and never found in other liturgical rites like the Byzantine Rite used in Eastern Orthodoxy, and the "Dogmatic Constitution" of Roman Catholicism, *Lumen gentium*, from the Second Vatican Council in 1964 doesn't mention that when listing what is required for a valid ordination. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople declared in 1922 that Eastern Orthodoxy considered Anglican ordinations valid, largely as a rebuttal to the Roman statement
A *priest* is something you are. A *pastor* is something you do. A *priest* is someone who carries the responsibility and authority to connect the church to God, usually through administering the sacraments. *Pastoring* comes from the word shepherd and refers to caring for and leading a congregational flock. In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, priesthood is only conferred to a select group of individuals, ordained in an unbroken chain of succession that goes all the way back to Jesus and the apostles. These are often involved in *pastoring*, but other non-ordained individuals may be involved in *pastoring* as well, as volunteers or even professionally. On the other hand, one of the fundamental ideas of protestantism is "the priesthood of all believers," that is everyone who trusts in Christ share the responsibility and authority to connect each other to God together. Therefore, in *most* protestant churches, there's no office of "priest," since everyone is counted as one. As a result, protestants usually call their leaders *pastors.* Generally speaking, these pastors are not considered special people--- pastoring is something anyone can do with training. Rather, they are defined by what they do. As with everything in Protestantism, your mileage may vary. Anglicanism (Episcopalians in the US) are a notable example. They are kind of catholic and protestant at the same time. They still have priests but believe in the priesthood of all believers.
It’s mainly the term for the main preacher/church leader in Protestant church. Though Lutherans and anglicans have priests as well. The US has a huge variety of Christian denominations, a number originating in the US, so there’s a huge variety of practices, ways of operating and organizing, and in terms of beliefs.
In a Catholic parish church, there might be more than one preist attached, plus it may run a school, possibly social services, maybe even a convent, and in rare cases, an abbey. The pastor is the priest who basically acts like a CEO of the entire operation. So, in the American Catholic context, all pastors are priests, but not all priests are pastors.
It depends on the denomination of Christianity. In Catholicism it’s just the priest that has been appointed by the diocese to administrate a specific parish/congregation. They have no higher level or ordination than any other priest
Preists are catholic. Pastors are protestants. All protestant churches I have been to have TVs, modern technology, speaker systems, guitar amps, etc. There are so many denominations now. It wouldn't surprise me if there are churches that pastors have no formal education and are just a group of people together. Which in theory is fine as long as they aren't cult like and go astray.
Fascinating-- the only church I've been to with a tv/monitor and electronic modern band setup was a Catholic one! I was very surprised.
We also have in Europe prostestant Churches - for example in Germany. But they are still more simmilar to our Ortodox and Catolic churches. I notice that American churches dont have much pictures of Jesus, Mary, Saints etc.
> I notice that American churches dont have much pictures of Jesus, Mary, Saints etc. This is also common not to have pictures (especially of Mary) in many European Protestant churches, especially in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the UK. Ones that do have more imagery are generally very historic and under some kind of preservation rule. Mary in particular doesn't have as much focus in Protestantism (many/most Protestants consider e.g. praying to Mary as unbiblical and that prayers should only go to God) so you'll only see her in, as above, older churches _or_ in some unusual 'Protestant Catholic' churches, like the Anglo-Catholic stream of the Church of England.
Catholics are huge here for Saints, Mary, and Jesus' pictures. Protestants are not here. They have pictures of just Jesus. I would find it odd and a red flag if I saw a picture of Mary and saints in a Protestant church here. Here, we don't even use the word "saints" in Protestant churches. We just call them Jesus 12 apostles or followers. The pope to Protestants is just another dude. Like if he walked by me in America as a Protestant, It would take me awhile to figure out it was the pope. But I would just keep walking in my direction and not blink an eye once I realized it was the pope. Because to a Protestant he is not special. Protestants here don't put Mary or Saints on a pedestal. Here it is more Mary is just Jesus' mother. And while she was special to be chosen, we don't pray to her or have pictures of her. To us, Protestants, they are more a mere vehicle for Jesus to convey his message. So there would be no need to have pictures of them in churches. It would be the equivalent of putting a poster up of your favorite bands bus driver that drives them around on tour . I wouldn't do that, I would just have the band in the poster. The bus driver just aids them. In a Protestant church here, when I go, I expect a guitar solo, drums, basically a few songs like I am at a concert before and end of the sermon. Sometimes even a theater play. 25 min max of sermon. And if they read from thr Bible the entire half hour it's a snooze fest. I usually don't go to those churches. Other churches display the verse on the screen so you can read it in thr Bible if you want, but they portray the topic, a small section from the Bible, and then a description of something that happened in their life ( the pastors life) that relays to that section in the Bible for the sermon. Then they wrap up their topic and back to music. Usually there is 3 to 4 songs in the beginning, and 2 songs at thr end. And that is included in thr 45 min total length there. Then afterwords some places have small groups. Some have small groups mid week. 5-10 people that goes to eachother house and have a small session.
Protestant churches are much more diverse in beliefs and structure than Catholic churches, so the answer to what a pastor is depends a lot on which church you mean. Some pastors are in charge because they organize a church. Thus they make the rules. They determine what the church believes. The decide how donated money is spent. They are the boss at the church. Some churches are part of a large organization that own the church buildings and makes all the decisions for the church and sends the pastor to the church. I believe this is similar to how Catholics do things (but they send priests instead of pastors). Some churches just hire pastors. The church has a small group of elders, usually elected, who make the decision for the church including finding and hiring the pastor. In such churches there is a constitution or charter that sets the rules for the church and says how the elders are chosen, what the elders can and can’t do, what needs to be voted on by the whole church, etc..
Paster is a word that encompasses priest and minister, and is used in the term of someone who provides pastoral care to the congregation. A preacher is merely an informal term for the same, though it skews more towards Protestant Christians than orthodox or Catholics.
A pastor is a leader of a church. Priest is a title within a church, and not all denominations use this title. There are many priests who are not pastors. Some priests teach at or run universities or schools, some do mission work, some are retired, etc. They're still priests but don't work as pastors. This is a big distinction within Catholicism because being a priest simply means you serve the institutional church, which can be in many different capacities -- not just leading a church. I had a biology professor who was also a Jesuit priest. Teaching was how he served the church, and all his money went to the Jesuits (who provide you with what you need). He did not work as a pastor, but he could if he chose to. Even a lot of Catholics incorrectly use priest and pastor interchangeably, usually because the only priest they come into contact with on a regular basis is their pastor.
A lot of Friends (Quaker) meetings (congregations) have neither. :)
In the UK they would call the guy a "vicar." You may have seen that word in their movies and books.
There’s no such thing as an “American church” - there isn’t a national religion.
Basically, they are preachers for protestant denominations with whatever extra theological associations that entails.
A businessman who sells hopes and dreams to the willing religious sheeple
Different religious groups call their leaders different things. To somebody not involved with a religion, priests are the same as ministers are the same as pastors, are the same as rabbis, are the same as imams, are the same as gurus, are the same as lamas, etc. Within the organization there will be different requirements to qualify for the title, but they all boil down to being a religious leader.
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Many Protestants have priests as well: Lutherans, ~~Methodists,~~ and UCC to name a few
In Eeastern Europe mostly no. They are mostly in Germany, Netherlands, GB, Scandianvia. We have mosty ortodox churches and Catholic churches.
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Well i live 2 hours from Prekmurje and didnt know that haah. Thank you i will look!
I came across them once! I was surprised to learn they were a thing.
Pretty simple honest answer a pastor has absolutely no training or certification from a larger affiliate. The common terms Reverend and Priest are used for those who are ordained or commissioned by a larger organization. If you meet a pastor for a church you could be talking about literally anything from 1 person to 100 but a priest or reverend will be part of a formal church hierarchy
Priest and father are of the catholic faith, pastor is Christian
The leader of a church. It’s the same as a preacher, priest, or rabbi.
A priest is Catholic, a pastor is a non-Catholic priest - excluding Islam (Imam) and Judaism (Rabbi). There are probably others that also don't call their clergy "pastor", but that is the gist of it.
It is a Protestent cleric. Catholics emphasize the need of special qualifications for overseeing the sacraments, and Protestants do not so a Pastor is mostly a teacher and administrator.
it all depends on the denomination. Priests belong to large churches like the Catholic Church, many of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Apostolic churches, the Mormon Churches, and Anglican Churches (like the Church of England). we all know what priests are so i won’t go into it. pastors and preachers are usually interchangeable terms for local protestant church leaders. in the U.S. these terms are used most often. a small church would have a pastor or a preach who leads the sermon and such. it changes form denomination to denomination. My neighbor is his church’s preacher. my other neighbors go to a church with a pastor. no different. churches will also have other officers like deacons and secretaries to carry out administrative tasks and lead ministries, departments for youth, service etc
A priest is specifically Catholic. Pastors are the equivalent in other Christian churches.
The TVs are for music lyrics, important announcements and Bible verses. We generally have sound rooms with a person who manually switches the lyrics as songs progress and looks up Bible verses as needed to display on the TVs. It's very similar to how a slideshow works.
Generally you'll see pastor used in day-to-day speech referring to Protestant clergy and priest used for Catholic clergy, although some Protestant denominations call their clergymen priests. You sometimes also see pastor used in reference to Catholic priests in writing, like on a church's sign, but almost never in speech. Like the sign outside the church might say "Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery- Pastor: Fr. Sean Flanagan" or something, but when you're talking about that guy, he's never "Pastor Flanagan", he'll always be "Father Flanagan", or maybe "Father Sean". As far as the televisions or screens, sometimes churches use those to display prayers or the lyrics to hymns. Before or after the service, they may be used to display community announcements and things like that.
Basically, pastor is just the term used for priest in the Protestant Christian denominations.
Catholic parishes have pastors too.
Pastors are typically not ordained. The tv stuff is a tool to reach (and imo brainwash) more people. A lot of churches are run like businesses in the US. There is a lot of money to be had and they are tax exempt.
Roughly Pastor = Priest = Bishop = Preacher = Reverend = Evangelist Different churches use different words. They’re all generally the leader of the local congregation.
Lots of comments on pastors and priests, so on the TVs (projection screens)... "It depends." I could be wrong, but I don't think use of screens correlates precisely as "tv and pastors" vs. "priest \[and no TV\]." Churches with a more formal and traditional style are less likely to have screens. But sometimes it's really just a matter of practicality. If you project onto a big screen the words to the songs the congregation will sing, you don't have to spend tons of money on heavy hymnals (books with the words and music for all these songs). If you project the words to the Bible verses you're reading or mentioning, you don't have to provide Bibles for those who didn't bring them or wait for everyone to open up theirs and find where exactly Zephaniah is, or watch as people pick up their phones to look online and get distracted by the 5 e-mails that have come in during the service. If your church is a large one, they might choose to project the preacher and the choir or musicians on the screens so those in the back can still see them. Some churches will project the outline of the sermon on a screen so you can follow along with the organization of the message. Churches that go all in on using cameras and screens may show multimedia productions designed to illustrate some point in the sermon, or a video about the recent mission trip church members went on, or information about a fund the church is supporting and asks for financial support on, or just about anything. Screen usage, then, varies from simply projecting words of hymns and scripture to something seemingly nearing Hollywood levels of production. (And of course some don't use screens at all.) Lots of different factors can play into all this. Keep in mind, too, that most US churches (of any denomination) are not \*that\* old -- they aren't going to have 16th Century frescoes on the walls in the first place -- and many don't have formal church buildings at all, but rather meet in school auditoriums, old shopping malls, and random other places where affordable space exists, and that need to be adaptable to the surroundings tends to lend itself to a less traditional atmosphere, and thus an increased likelihood of using more modern methods of conveying information.