Who Do We Call "Pastor"?

Jesus had a strange habit of lifting up children as the kind of people we should imitate. And he thought that a pagan Roman centurion had more faith than anyone in the nation of Israel. So that might call in to question how we think about spiritual authority. Maybe it’s not those who go to seminary or who pastor a church. Maybe there’s another calculus to the equation.

At one point, Jesus gives some very unusual teaching on this subject. What stands out to you as you read it:

You are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.  And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. - Matthew 23:8-9

It seems that he might be talking about remembering that our religious leaders are just like us. They don’t get special access to God.

If that is indeed the case, what does it say about who you should be learning from? How do you make sense of that, given that you’re reading a devotional writing by the religious leaders of a church?!

Spend a little time with Jesus trying to make sense out of what it means to be a spiritual learner and to honor other spiritual learners.