(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Matthew Suggi here from Verity Baptist Manila, and I wanted to make a quick video addressing the difference between a pastor and an evangelist, and this is a question I've had people come to me with, and it's an interesting question because I'm not a pastor, but I do run a church here in Manila, Verity Baptist Church Manila. The pastor of that church is Pastor Roger Jimenez, and we as a church are underneath his authority, and so whenever it comes to any situations or how we operate the church, he has the final authority on that, I don't have the final authority, and you say, well why is that? Well, in 1 Timothy chapter 3, this is what the Bible reads in verse 1, this is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. Now a bishop, a pastor, an elder, these things are synonymous in the Bible, and so it's referring to a pastor here, and it says, a bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife. So the Bible says you have to have one wife, and there's a lot of people there, especially here in the Philippines, that are pastors, but they're not married. Look, they're not pastors in the eyes of God, they're not even married, the Bible says you must be the husband of one wife, you must be a man married to a woman. Not that you've had a lot of divorces, but that you are married to one person, you've always been married to that person, but you do have to be married. Then it says, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, have to teach. Go down to verse number 4 where it says, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. So the Bible says having his children in subjection, that is plural, it's multiple. Now I do know that there's some people that don't take the same stand on that, but what I believe is that when it's referring to children, it's referring to multiple kids. And so to be a bishop or a pastor or an elder, you need to be married with multiple kids, you have to have children, you have to rule your house well, because if you can't rule your house, how are you going to rule the house of God? Obviously you get a lot of experience when you're a husband and a father and things like that. Now in the Bible, Paul the apostle was not a pastor, he was an evangelist and he helped get a lot of great churches started, which is a purely biblical thing. It's great what he did, but he was not able to become the pastor of those churches because he was not a married man with multiple kids like the Bible says that you need to be. I myself, I am married, I have a wife, I have a son, but I only have one son. I don't have any daughters, I don't have any other sons, and so I am not a pastor at this time, and that's why the pastor of our church is Pastor Roger Jimenez. And so that's why when it comes to the final decisions, obviously he makes the final decision because he's the pastor, and basically I'm just being left in charge and entrusted with the responsibility of running the church, even though he still has the final authority. Obviously I have great leeway as I'm here a long distance to run the church, but at the same time there's already been something where he asked me to do something where I had made a mistake, and I changed it, and why? Because he's the final authority. Now one thing that you see is there's a lot of people that want to be pastors, and oftentimes they want to be pastors because they like the idea of ruling and having authority. And when you see people that become pastors, they get ordained when they're not biblically qualified. Now look, that's a pretty bad thing to do. The Bible says that you ought to wait, and look, I'm not going to become a pastor if I never have another child, and I'm going to make sure I wait until I'm ready like the Bible says. And you have to realize that if you're out there and you say, man, I want to be a pastor one day, look, you're going to be a pastor for decades. I plan to be a pastor for decades, I plan to run church for decades and do great things for God, and so look, I don't need to rush into it and pass the standards and what God requires. And so the Bible says that you need to have multiple children. Now that does lead to an interesting thing because every once in a while somebody will call me, you know, Pastor Stuckey. You know, oftentimes someone will send me a message or talk to me and they'll call me Pastor Stuckey. Now, I kind of wondered how am I going to handle that when I become a pastor. You know, I kind of thought of other men that are in similar situations, and they oftentimes get asked to say the same thing, it would be like, you know, Pastor so-and-so. And so, you know, I don't stop to just, you know, say, well, I'm not actually a pastor and everything like that. But, you know, if you were to ask what's the best way to address me since I'm not the pastor of the church, it would just be Brother Stuckey or Brother Matthew, Brother Matthew Stuckey. Because at this point, I'm not a pastor, so that title would not be fitting. Obviously, I'm not mad when people do that, they're trying to be respectful. But technically, I'm not a pastor at this point, I'm just an evangelist in charge of running the church. And that's a great way to run a church because, honestly, there's a great demand for churches to be started, but there's not necessarily bishops or pastors that are ready to take over those things. But, you know, it's great seeing all the church plants that have started within our movement recently. The difference between a pastor and an evangelist is just simply that, you know, a pastor is married with multiple kids and an evangelist has not met that standard yet, but both still need to meet the standard of having all the other things and being ready and knowing their Bible and having all the requirements listed there in 1 Timothy 3 and also in the book of Titus. And so, that is the difference between a pastor and an evangelist. Thank you and God bless.