Shepherd Knowledge

Last night, we had the privilege and honor to ordain a new pastor and two new deacons at our church.  Here is the manuscript (not transcript) of my sermon(ette) from last night.

 

Introduction

While it is easy to miss the forest for the trees, it is also easy to miss the trees for the forest.  The forest is made of so much more than merely trees. There are birds, squirrels, woodchucks, streams, flowers, foliage, ferns, nests,  eggs, deer, and maybe even a big foot or two.  There’s an entire eco-system that makes a forest a forest.  But it is easy to see the forest and miss the trees.  There are spruce trees and maple trees, pine trees and sweet gum trees, oak trees and beech trees, sycamore trees and elm trees.  If one concentrates on the forest too much, he may ignore the trees, but if he only pays attention to the trees, the forest goes unnoticed.

The same could be said about pastoring.  It is common for pastors to look at the church, the gathering of the people together and focus on that.  He focuses on the service, the administration, and basically the big picture.  He can easily forget that the church—the flock—is made up of individual sheep.  Some sheep are strong sheep while others are weak.  Some have more needs than others.  Some are more talkative than others. Some are old, some are young, some are middle age.  Some are matured believers, while others are new-born Christians.  Some have experienced traumatic backgrounds, while others seem to have grown up in a what could only be described as a near-perfect family.  A pastor can so easily focus on all sheep that he forgets about the things that are required for the church as a whole.

While, this makes a good argument for a plurality of pastors, as a pastor, the Bible calls upon you to pay attention to both the flock and the sheep, the church as a whole and the member as an individual.  And so, my hope and prayer for you as you join the pastorate is to share some shepherd knowledge with you, and that as you grow as a pastor, you will pass on your shepherd knowledge to others.

Solomon wrote, “Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds,” (Proverbs 27.23, ESV).  In the next few minutes, my hope is to pass on why it is critical to know your flock well.

 

Practice

If you do not know well the condition of your flock, you will not be able to practice your ministry well.  Pastors do not practice in generals.  They practice in specifics.  In my eighteen years of pastoring, I have come across those people with whom I must speak gently, while others with whom I must be abrupt and unrelenting.  I will say that there are more of the former than the latter.  But the only way I got to know that was by spending time with them as individuals, outside the church services.

If you continue on in the pastorate for any long amount of time, you will find those in the church who seek out for your good, those who seek out for your demise, and those who simply seek out to be yes men or women.  If you practice in generals you’ll not know who these are.  You can find yourself blindsided by those who seek your demise, or by the yes-men and women who allow you to fall into sin.

As I stated before, there are different sheep with different needs.  Some of those sheep will seem fine on the outside and have all the right things to say, but inwardly they struggle. Inwardly they are weak and fainthearted.  Inwardly they are hurting.  If you do not practice your ministry in specifics, geared toward the individual member, you may never know.

Pray

If you do not know well the condition of your flock, you cannot practice your ministry well, but neither can you pray well.  It is not a good thing for anyone, especially a pastor, to pray in generals.  We are to pray in specifics.  However, if you or I do not know that Jane Doe is dealing with anxiety or that John Smith is struggling to understand the Bible in a certain area, how then do you know how to pray for them?

Pastors must rely upon prayer.  A praying pastor is a powerful pastor.  A powerful pastor may preach powerful sermons, but it is not his sermons that make him a powerful pastor.  It is his prayer-life that makes him a powerful and great pastor.  If you hope to have a thriving pastorate, be a pastor that prays for his people in specifics.

Listen to your people when they speak.  Watch their faces. Notice their body language.  Do they tear up when speaking about a subject or a loved one? Do they shift their weight when confronted about an issue?  Do they cross their arms when speaking about a situation?  Those are cues to pray.  Pray for them and if appropriate, pray with them.  I say, if appropriate because the person may not yet be aware of their own feelings, actions, or understandings.  They would not understand why you prayed as you did.  There could also be the possibility that you misunderstood their body language, which would be revealed later as you prayed and continued to pay attention.

Preach

If you do not know well the condition of your flock, you will not be able to practice well, pray well, and finally: you will not be able to preach well.  Sermons on Sundays are not general lectures.  They are not conference speaking engagements.  They are sermons directed to a people that you know and a people that you love.  Brian Croft, senior pastor of Auburndale Baptist Church and founder of Practical Shepherding, wrote:

As you prepare to preach God’s word, you should have your people in mind.  Think about the difficulties they are facing, the challenges in their lives right now.  How does God’s word from this passage minister grace to them?  As questions like, “How does this truth relate to Joe’s marriage?  How does this characteristic of God speak to the pain Margaret is feeling after losing her husband?  How does this passage help Sarah care for her home more faithfully, help Doug deal with is difficult boss, or minister to Sally, who just found out she has cancer?” A pastor should have specific people on his mind to help him apply the truth of God’s word directly to the unique situations in his congregation.[1]

That doesn’t mean that you call out their name or their situation from the pulpit, but that you apply it in such a way that they can grow and learn from God’s Word.  If you don’t know your sheep, you cannot preach in such a way.  The people need doctrine, but they also need direction.  They need specific preaching to specific difficulties with which they deal.

Conclusion

While, I started out by saying that both the forest and the trees are in danger of being ignored, it is the trees that are the easiest to forget about.  It is easy to put off the phone calls and visits for more urgent matters.  But you weren’t called to pastor matters; you were called to pastor your people.  While you cannot know them perfectly, nor can you know them totally, you can know them well.  “Know well the condition of your flocks, and pay attention to your herds,” (Proverbs 27.23, ESV).

[1] Brian Croft, The Pastor’s Ministry, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 2015), pp. 46-47.

We’ve Voted to Have a Plurality of Elders, Now What?

Last night, the church where I pastor, voted to have a plurality of elders/pastors.  This has been a long process, but one for which I am grateful.  In October 2015, the church adopted a new Constitution and By-laws allowing for the set-up and transition of plural eldership, thus setting the first leg of the marathon behind us.  Then it was a matter of waiting for God to send the right men for the job.  It was a long wait.  It’s been almost three years, but God is faithful, even in our impatience, and last night two men were voted in to help pastor our church.  One of these will join our team in a few weeks when he is ordained, the other has pastored other churches and has already been ordained into the ministry, thus last night’s vote brought him immediately into the pastoral role once again.  But now what?  What does this mean for us in the church?

That is a very good question.  It is probably one that I will not be able to answer fully, because I don’t know fully what to expect myself. Some things may not change immediately.  Other matters might change rather quickly.  At present, all of us are reading through Alexander Strauch’s book, Biblical Eldership, at least hoping to get a mental grasp of what it means to share the leadership of the local church.  We are meeting together to flesh out how this shared leadership will actually work.  We will be examining strengths and weaknesses so that we can complement one another in the ministry.  We will be keeping each other accountable in our ministry roles and personal lives.

Soon each of us elders will be given families with whom we will be in contact.  At minimum they will be contacted monthly by phone/text, depending on preference, and visited quarterly.  While all pastors are expected to pray for and/or with all members and attendees of the church at any time, there is a commitment to pray for assigned families regularly and often.  These “assigned” families are only bearing upon the pastors to focus us and give us direction.  They are not bearing upon the flock; any person in our congregation can go to and speak with any pastor.

As elders, we want to lead, not rule.  We are not looking to be an oligarchy (ruled by the few), but a group of shepherds watching over their flock until the Good Shepherd returns.  Therefore, we will be in prayer with one another for the sake of the church, its direction, and its good.  What direction that will be is unknown to us, but well-known from before time began by our Sovereign Lord.  Surely there will be times where we be lying down in green pastures and by still waters, and other times we will be walking the terrain surrounded by deathly shadows.  Yet, we shall not fear for the Shepherd-King is with us, and with his staff he pulls us close, with his rod he fights on our behalf.  As under-shepherds, we three men, will not take His place, but we will fight for the orthodoxy (right beliefs) and orthopraxy (right practice) of our flock, and do our best to keep every false belief and every false way far from those under our charge.

That being said, we ask for patience.  We ask for patience from the flock and from each other.  This is relatively new for everyone.  It will take trust on everyone’s part.  It will take determination and grit to get through those moments when it would be easier just to go back to the way things use to be.

We also ask for prayer.  While many churches have walked this terrain before us, we have not.  We will most likely make mistakes and we will most likely have to apologize for those mistakes, but pray that while on this well-trodden land, we can follow the paths of those who went before us, avoiding most of the pitfalls that other churches and pastors have taken.  Pray for each other.  Changes will happen; that’s inevitable.  Some changes may be exciting and feel good; others may be foreboding and feel overwhelming.  And so we must pray–pray for the elders and pray for one another.

Exactly how things will change, I cannot say at this moment.  But God is doing something new for us and in us and to us.  That means things are and will be changing.  May we respond in unity, prayer, and to the glory of God.