Talk:Minister (Christianity)

Move

Can we move this article frompoo Religious minister to Minister of religion? The latter is usual, the former sounds awful! --Doric Loon 21:46, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree that Minister of religion is probably better. The google test (as far as it's any indication) shows 109,000 hits for "minister of religion" and 17,200 for "religious minister" — of which the first bunch are wikipedia and it's mirrors. Let's give it a few days to see if no objections, then move it. ntennis 03:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, as nobody else has voiced an opinion, let's go for it. --Doric Loon 17:21, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Domine

Actually, Dave Souza's latest edit raises a question which had been worrying me. The article said the word Domine (and related forms) were only used for clergy. Dave adds that they were also used for schoolmasters. To be honest, I wonder if it is not in fact the case that these words were only used for schoolmasters - I have no recollection of ever hearing a minister called a domine. Does anyone have references? --Doric Loon 09:05, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The word Dominee is a Dutch word and is frequently used in South Africa when referring to the clergy of the Dutch Reformed Church. Martinvl (talk) 09:06, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Moved again

Why was this article moved to "Minister (Christianity)" without consultation on the talk page? "Minister of religion" is a set phrase, and seems to me the better heading. Moving an article is a major disruption and should always be preceded by consultation - see above how this was done last time! --Doric Loon 10:03, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

• Definitely a bad move, and not just because of interfaith ministers. Deltabeignet 04:24, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I've reversed that, since no-one else has commented. --Doric Loon 17:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Ministers/Ministries/Clerics

This article and those on Religious ministry (Christian) and on clergy are rather a mess. The clergy article isn't too bad, but it is closely linked to this article; and this article seems to be partly a discussion of offices and partly a discussion of clerical titles/forms of address. Ministers are, depending on where you are:

• The name for the clerics of the church (e.g. in Presbyterian churches)
• The rector/vicar of a parish (so used in the 1979 BCP)
• A synonym for Christian clerics in general
• Part of the title of people with official ministries (e.g. youth ministers)
• Anyone exercising a role in any kind of ministry (e.g. references to "ministers" in liturgies to signify all those with assigned roles, whether lay or cleric)

It seems to me that the titles need to go somewhere else, and that the ministerial offices/roles need to be categorized better, and that the various usages need to be spelled out more clearly. Mangoe 15:23, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Moved again, again

Since I haven't worked on this page for quite a while now, I probably shouldn't stick my oar in, but apart from the lack of courtesy in moving an article without consultation, I do think this is a backward step. The edit summary suggests that narrowing the reference to Christianity is more precise since the term minister is also used by some Muslims. I would have gone the opposite direction. It would make this article so much more interesting if it also had a section talking about Muslims. --Doric Loon 10:19, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

True, but it's easier to retitle the topic than add a section (I'm not throwing stones, just the truth), and as it's a long article solely about Christian ministers, the opening section (and possibly others) would need tweaking to incorporate ministers of other faiths so it wasn't shoehorned in and feel out of place. Revelian 11:27, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Ordained Minister

By the way, any opinions on redirecting Ordained Minister here? It's a stub with all its content mentioned in the roles section here and a bit in the beginning of the ordination article. Revelian 11:27, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Done. Since no comments came for about a month, I thought it was quite all right. Nyttend 02:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Reverting questionable statement

"a minister is someone--a man or a woman who is called of God (YHWH)--"
(1) As far as I can tell based on Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Religions.2C_deities.2C_philosophies.2C_doctrines_and_their_adherents and Names_of_God, normal Wikipedia style would recommend against including the name "YHWH" here.
(2) Wikipedia:Neutral point of view says that NPOV is absolute and non-negotiable. Saying that a minister is called by God represents the point of view of adherents of that minister's religion. Wikipedia is used by people of many different faiths as well as by atheists, who would not agree that it is factual that said minister iscalled by God. The previous version that I'm reverting to ("a minister is someone who is authorized by a church or religious organization") is NPOV and unquestionable.
Please discuss if desired. -- Writtenonsand (talk) 13:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Possible copyvio

We quoted NIV-The Quest Study Bible, copyright 1994, p 1628 in this article. I suspect that that's a copyvio (WP:COPYVIO), though I really don't know. If it is, or just to be safe, we have material at Wikisource that we can use - http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible . -- Writtenonsand (talk) 13:48, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to start stalking you around, I tend to look at people's contributions list. :-)

I'm sure a tiny quote from the NIV is fair use; indeed, there's no reason to specify which printed edition it comes from, and the copyright note could be safely removed.

The enormous 1 Timothy passage below is perhaps more problematic - it doesn't specify where it came from. Evercat (talk) 14:05, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah nevermind, it appears to be the KJV. Evercat (talk) 14:09, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The bottom part of the page does not open... Why this happens?

Can anybody fix the problem?

A. A. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.139.27.126 (talk) 07:57, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Error regarding Orthodox monastics

The GOA page cited for Orthodox clergy is in error regarding forms of address for monastics. Monks are always referred to as "Father", whether they are ordained or not. Likewise, nuns are always referred to as "Mother". "Brother" and "Sister" are only used for monastic novices (who have not been tonsured, and are thus not truly monastics yet). Here is a better source:

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/clergy_etiquette.aspx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.11.6.56 (talk) 19:45, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Image

I noticed someone changed the picture from Olympia Brown to Charles Spurgeon. I think this is much better. I suspect Spurgeon is more recognisable than Brown, but also - it seems that having Brown there seemed to be making the point that women can be ministers too. And that's at least borderline POV. StAnselm (talk) 21:54, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Pastor is essentially about the term, and Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The lede of that article does not make a distinction with the subject of this article. --JFHutson (talk) 01:41, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose on the grounds that the resulting article would be too long. Pastor seems to concentrate more on the theological basis and history, which is reasonable. -- 202.124.75.6 (talk) 06:36, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Move to Christian minister

Per WP:NATURAL, Christian minister seems a better name for this article. --JFH (talk) 19:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Respectfully Opposed by User: walkerdpropjc - When you read the article on Pastor find this quote, "The term "pastor" is ... not synonymous with the biblical understanding of minister." It is not synonymous with minister and should not be merged with minister. I searched for "Pastor" and got the information I was looking for. The information would not have have been readily accessible if the articles had been merged. Walkerdpropjc (talk) 16:22, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I see no reason why we can't merge Pastor with Minister (Christianity)#Pastors. I don't think that we should change it to Christian minister because Minister already exists in various realms and the standing way to delineate a term when it is used in multiple ways is to add the disambiguate in parentheses, just as the current title does. ReformedArsenal (talk) 11:34, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No consensus for merge at this time. Miniapolis 21:24, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

---

On the merge

In my honest opinion, I believe that since the positions are so similar (A leader of a Christian congregation), the various titles such as pastor and minister should probably have their own section under Clergy, maybe 'Types of Christian Clergy'. 2.123.62.58 (talk) 22:39, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Not all ministers are clerics, for example in the Anglican church there are lay ministers, who are ordinary lay people who have ordinary every day jobs but who are licensed to carry out certain defined ministries. I think the normal understanding of the word "clergy" refers to ordained people. Wayne Jayes (talk) 05:45, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I am also opposed to the merger as many pastors in the United Methodist Church are not ordained clergy which makes the title distinctive. Also the role of a "minister" in the Christian faith is much broader than that of pastor, which is a role associated specifically with serving as the spiritual leader of a congregation, church, charge or parish. Ray Trygstad (talk) 23:01, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Topic?

It seems to me that this article has lost its way, and most of it is off-topic. There are other articles on priest, vicar, etc., so this article is not about clergy in general. If it is to have a purpose at all, it must be specifically about clergy in those traditions which use the WORD minister, which mainly is Presbyterian, Methodist and a few others. Everything on Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox tradition should be deleted from this article, because they do not have a concept of "minister". --Doric Loon (talk) 20:56, 20 October 2021 (UTC)