 Later, we're told that these elders were appointed to oversee the churches, to serve as pastors, as shepherds for the people there. One of those traveling church planters, a man named Paul, encouraged those elders. Like this, he told them, "...keep watch over yourselves and all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to be pastors of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood."