By George “Chip” Hammond
Taking advantage of the declining Coronavirus infection rate and the consequent easing of restrictions, my wife and I were enjoying a beautiful summer afternoon on the veranda at a local vineyard when we serendipitously ran into some old friends that we hadn’t seen in several years. They invited us to join them and their two teen age children to share some of their bread and olive spread.
As we talked, our friend told us that her son had spent the summer before last with her family in Ireland working on their farm. “Tell them about sheep, Tucker,” she said.
“They’re dumb. They’re the dumbest animals. It’s hard to describe or imagine how stupid they are.”
“Tell them about herding them.”
“It’s pretty easy to herd sheep when they’re all together. I guess they just kind of follow each other as they follow you. But one sheep alone – forget it. It’s stupid on steroids. It’ll get itself into stuff that will hurt it, run away from you when you try to help it, and when you get it out of trouble it runs right back into the danger you just freed it from. Because it’s stupid – stupid on steroids when they’re alone.”
It did not occur to them where this story would take my pastor’s mind, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since because it tracks with my experience in 30 years of pastoral (i.e., “shepherding”) ministry.
The Bible constantly likens God’s people to sheep: “Then he led out his people like sheep and guided them in the wilderness like a flock” (Psalm 78:52). We [are] your people, the sheep of your pasture” (Psalm 79:13). “For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care” (Psalm 95:7). The list goes on and on.
What is noteworthy about passages such as these is that “sheep” is plural. In Hebrew (and in Greek for that matter) there’s no ambiguity between the singular and plural of “sheep” as there is in English (i.e., “one sheep,” “10 sheep”). The picture is not of a single sheep relating to God as the Shepherd, but rather to the flock (sheep in the plural) relating to God as Shepherd. The flock is the appropriate and only safe place for the sheep.
Now it’s true that even in this analogy there is an intimate relationship between God the Shepherd, and his individual sheep: “The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1); “I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I have not forgotten your commands” (Psalm 119:176). And of course, Jesus is willing to do just that, to leave the 99 in the relative safety of the flock to seek the one that has strayed (Matthew 18:12-13). But the restoration is never private or solitary. It’s always a restoration to the flock.
This is, I believe, why God has so emphasized preaching, and why a church that neglects or short-shrifts it does so to the detriment of the sheep. Preaching is God’s ordinary appointed means for shepherding the flock. It’s impossible to shepherd an individual sheep. You can help an individual sheep, rescue an individual sheep, bind up the wounds of an individual sheep, but if the sheep does not return to the fold, you can’t shepherd an individual sheep. It not an accident that in the language of the New Testament (and unlike our English words), “shepherd” (poimen) has the same root as the word “flock” (poimnion), not the word “sheep” (probaton).
This young man had observed that an entire flock of sheep do not tend to go astray. Sheep separated from flock always do. He also observed (contrary to what we might think) that if the flock does go astray, it’s easier to lead the whole flock back to the right way that it is to try to lead an individual sheep.
This is significant because we tend to speak as though “shepherding” is private counsel. We think that “shepherding” is taking place when the elders meet one-on-one with people in the church, but the real-world imagery that the Bible employs suggests something very different. Meeting one-on-one may constitute a wellness check, or the application of spiritual medicine to wounds, or a rescue attempt. But it’s not shepherding. Shepherding can only take place once the sheep is brought into, or back into, the flock; that is, once a person is brought into, or brought back into, the church. It seems to me that many of the problems we encounter in our churches today stem from not understanding this.
Original sheep image is by Niklas Hamann
