Adam’s Blog

but here we go…

You know what the problem with you people is?

Imagine starting a sermon like that. Or maybe a Sunday sch

ool lesson. Could you imagine the indignation, the defensiveness and the overall gasps of terror that would come out of a class or a congregation if someone dared say that?

(Now, this isn’t going to be an attack on any of the speakers I’ve been under recently. In fact, Don’s doing that pretty regularly up in the youth group and Aaron’s pretty good at doing it much more diplomatically. This is probably a skill I need to develop if I want to grow up and be a real pastor someday, right?)

But imagine a typical church on a typical sunday and the pastor stands up with no cute intro story and just lays into people. He might even skip the requisite worship set or even wait to pass the offering plates until afterward.

Wait, that’d be stupid. Pass the plates way before this happens, my friend. But I digress…

What would happen?

Who would be convicted?

Who would cheer him on?

Who would get up and leave?

Who would come back the next week?

Who would email the pastor the next day with a long list of reasons he simply can’t do that here?

Who would sit there politely, nod at all the right moments, then get up, walk out and forget it ever happened?

And which of these would be worse?

How did our churches get so set in their ways, so entrenched in their own culture that a pastor admonishing his flock would be seen as almost an act of performance theater?

I’m sorry if you’re getting a little uncomfortable here, but hang with me and we’ll see where this lands. It’s probably not exactly where you think it’s going.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of the pastor. Why he’s there, what he’s supposed to be doing, how he’s supposed to be doing it and I think I’ve come up on something kinda important here.

A shepherd is not a farmer.

Yep, there it is. My main thesis statement for the day comes in the form of a statement of agricultural fact.

A shepherd is not a farmer.

Lisa and I just bought a house and not to far from that house are about a dozen sheep. They’re in a nice little field with a small stream running through it and trees covering half of it and a nice little barn on one corner up by the house (but not too close, ya know?). Every time we go out I find myself looking for the sheep and can’t help but smiling a bit when I see them in their nice little sweaters grazing on the small tufts of grass that pass for their pasture. And, recently, something occurred to me.

The guy that lives in that house is not a shepherd.

His dog might be, but he, most assuredly, is not.

He is, in fact a farmer. And, as previously stated, farmers are not shepherds.

But why? They’ve both got sheep. The both apparently like wool socks and lamb chops (the meat, not the puppet. I cannot attest to the popularity of sock puppets amongst the world’s agrarians). The both get dirty in the same ways. But one of them gets the title “shepherd” and the other is a “farmer.”

What’s the difference?

Glad you asked.

I’ve got three.

1. Locations, locations, locations.

Farming requires, well, a farm. Rob Bell and Don Golden do a great job of pointing out the inherent traveling orders sent with the human race in their book “Jesus Wants to Save Christians.”

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
- gen 1:28

Did you see it? It’s quick in there. Well, actually, it’s kinda implied more than spelled out.

People were supposed to be moving out and taking over the Earth.

The whole Earth.

Not just a plot of land.

In fact, Rob and Don go on to suggest that one of Cain’s major sins wasn’t just killing Abel, but in settling down to farm instead of being a nomadic wanderer like his shepherd brother (and they do it much better than I did in this short treatment. Do yourself a favor, read the book).

In so doing he disobeyed his God.

Whoops.

So what’s the implication? It’s hard for us to go anywhere anymore without someone having already been there.

Well, hardly anywhere useful, that is.

So maybe humanity’s wandering is done?

Or maybe it’s more a point that shepherds shouldn’t be in one place too long. They should move along every few years, right?

Yeah, I don’t think that’s it because of something the Good Shepherd said right after he called himself that…

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
- jn 10:27

Familiarity and a long lasting relationship aren’t bad.

In fact, it’s rather a good thing to know your flock and be able to know who’s injured.

Who’s afraid of thunder.

Who’s in conflict with other members of the flock.

And it’s good for a flock to know it’s shepherd.

To have a history together.

To know his voice.

To trust him.

So what are we left with?

The shepherd and his flock should be moving.

Always.

To keep one’s flock in the same holding pattern for years is to assure that they get every last nutrient out of that field.

Then the grass dies.

Then they die.

Instead, maybe the model should be to keep things moving.

Not leading them into danger, but rather keeping the flock ’s appitite sated by providing them with a constant supply of new material.

Some might be hard to digest.

Some might be downright strange.

And there’s nothing wrong with coming back to a certain favorite and fertile place every now and again.

But the flock must be kept moving.

And while the shepherd is leading them, he’s got to keep an eye out for dangers. But mostly it’s just trying to keep them from eating the place barren. Which leads me to…

2. A farmer feeds his flock.

That might sound strange, but it’s coming off the end of that last point. Think about it.

I’ll wait.

Seriously, think about it and then go on.

In a farm you’ve got troths of food for the animals, right?

They line up at a certain time and you go out there and you feed them, they eat and then they’re done.

But shepherds don’t.

Think of the image of a shepherd.

Does he have a big trailer of sheep food behind him?

No.

Why?

Because a shepherd doesn’t feed his flock, he leads the to where they can feed themselves.

This one hits pretty hard.

Think about the modern church. The modern church service. The modern pastor.

Most congregations expect a pastor to really put it out there and give them enough to coast on until next Sunday.

The really spiritual ones might need a top off on Wednesday night.

But by and large we expect on big feeding at a routine time and we line up and wait for it.

Then we wonder why our shepherds are so tired after hauling around this feed trailer for a week.

And we wonder why we’re so scrawny we can’t get to anywhere new.

And why we’re so picky we can’t stand anything strange.

And while it’s the shepherd’s job to make sure strange isn’t dangerous, it is his job to think about balancing out the needs of his flock with what is available.

Now, there are, occasionally, those who need to be fed by the shepherd.

They’re mostly called lambs (there is another classification, we’ll get there in a second, but try and think of who they might be).

Think of the lamb without a mother. It needs nourishment and needs it steadily and reliably.

At this time, the shepherd steps in (well, could be the farmer, too) and feed the lamb with milk.

Think about Paul talking to the Corinthinans when he says…

I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.
- 1 cor 3:2

There’s also another option, which would be to pass the lamb onto a ewe capable of providing for it.

In fact, that’s going to be the better and more productive line of action.

But eventually, that little guy is going to learn to eat solid food and move on from milk and special attention.

Oh, and those other sheep who can’t feed themselves that I told you to think about what they’re called?

They’re most often called “stew meat.”

Too tough to make into anything else.

Not worth the trouble.

3. Farmers need fences.

The nomadic shepherd life, by definition, is almost fenceless.

Kinda the way we all think we’d like to be.

Free.

But yet we almost always end up stuck in some fence.

Why?

Because it’s comfortable.

It’s safe.

It’s home.

It’s familiar.

It’s where we get fed.

And it’s where the farmer is safest, too.

A shepherd takes his flock out and, sure, he defends them.

He’ll even pen them in at night when things are at their most dangerous.

But for the most part, he’s out there and he’s in it and he’s one of them.

A lion or a bear is just as dangerous for the shepherd as it is for the sheep.

But it’s his job to protect them and to serve them and, if you’re going to be very Jesus-like about it, give his own life for his sheep.

A farmer can just go inside if it’s too rough.

Withdraw to his enclave and his ivory tower and hope none of his flock get picked off while he’s asleep.

I mean, he will protect them, if he notices them, that is if they make enough noise he has to do something about it.

He is by definition separated from his flock.

A shepherd is one of them.

In fact, that’s allegedly the secret to a lot of good shepherding.

Let them think you’re one of them.

Strange to think of a pastor who doesn’t go by “Pastor” or “Reverend” but is rather seen by his flock as “Fellow Sheep.”

Like he’s just one of them.

Nothing special.

Even though he might be.

But there’s another reason farmers build fences…

According to a recent survey that I can’t remember well enough to actually cite properly, the majority of church “growth” comes by transfers.

In other words, sheep jumping the fence is what we consider a growing flock.

That doesn’t mean that there are more sheep, but just that one flock is bigger.

I’d suggest the typical church is more interested in how many sheep are inside the fence than how many sheep there are total.

Granted, it is easier to count Sunday School attendance than figure out how many Christians there are in the world, but why are we so obsessed?

Because we like to pretend our flock is the bestest ever in the bestest field ever and with the bestest pastor ever.

Only we haven’t got a pastor, we’ve got a farmer.

And we’re all lambs or stew fodder.

And we don’t know any better.

Yay us.

 

Again, sorry about posting a big theological thing here today. I don’t really have a stunning conclusion here. Really, I don’t. Think about it. Mull it over. Get back to me on this. Let’s see what happens and what it brings. Oh, and read “Jesus Wants to Save Christians.” Only a couple of hundred pages and it’s Rob Bell who actually writes like me (in that he uses one line paragraphs a lot, but is much better at it) so it goes pretty quickly. Well, the creme boule is done, so I’m off to clean. Later.