It is foolish to go after the one.

[DMHanke71]

“Jesus defines his followers as those who ‘gather’ with him, and his enemies as those who ‘scatter’.” (201)

The Gospel of Luke provides a few, highly significant, references to shepherding and how that vocation might shape an understanding of pastoral leadership. Most famously, Jesus tells a parable about a shepherd who ‘having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? (Luke 15:4)’ And the assumption is that Jesus’ listeners would be nodding along as he says it with an implied, ‘Of course. Yes. If you lose one, you go find it.’
Pragmatically and tactically this is crazy. First, the shepherd needs to watch over his sheep in a way that one doesn’t get away. If the shepherd can’t watch over those hundred by himself, he needs to find additional shepherds to help him. Secondly, if the shepherd loses one, don’t risk the other ninety-nine by chasing after one. The chase exposes you to additional loss: the shepherd is distracted from his careful watching of the 99. The shepherd will become tired looking for the one and lack the energy that care for the 99 requires. Third, the shepherd will potentially foment jealousy from the 99 because he spent so much time pursuing the 1 and alarmingly encourage ‘imitative lostness’ on the part of others in the 99 so that they get the treatment of being pursued ‘as the one.’ Pragmatically, if one goes, let the one go. Focus on the 99 and make your systems better to hold on to them. It’s foolish to go after the one.

As I write this, I sound like CS Lewis’ Screwtape. I sound cold and calculating. Yet my cynicism is real, if not also worthy of repentance. I know that Andy Stanley is famous for saying, “Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.” I have quoted that to myself and to my staff when we have an opportunity to serve a person in our church and we recognize that we cannot serve everyone in this way. It is costly and challenging to go after the one. At the very least, today’s shepherd leader must count the cost and recognize that it may not work out as planned.

After Laniak’s extraordinarily insightful comparison of the lost sheep parable in Matthew and Luke, he writes, ‘…in this moment of loss, a shepherd chooses to give his full personal attention to the recovery of one animal rather than to the safety of the rest of the flock. Jesus considers this individualized concern to be a natural expression of anyone’s commitment to a flock.’ (204) I understand this in theory and I agree with his conclusion, ‘Through these metaphorical statements a compact theology is affirmed that ‘God counts by ones.’’ (205)

I submit that being a one to one shepherd is very hard and resource intensive. I would alternatively suggest that internally, in our character, we should be shepherds who see each person we lead, as an individual, beloved by God. While at the same time externally, in the structures that we create, we have the means to gather the flock and keep them from becoming lost. We need to see each person as ‘the one’ while we exercise our shepherding on behalf of ‘the flock.’ I believe that people actually get better “shepherd care” as “flock members” than as “the one I am pursuing all by themselves”. Living in this tension between caring for the one and caring the flock is very challenging and probably responsible for the loss of a lot of shepherds who just burn out.
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David Hanke
restorationarlington.org