The longer I pastor and the more I learn about sheep, the more I marvel at what an apt analogy that was for God to use to describe his people. My congregation members seem to have an inexhaustible list of ways to damage themselves, and I am not so different from them in this. I sometimes quip to our leaders that at least it gives me some job security to know that there will always be a need for counseling, healing, and guidance.
What really gets me is how often the woes and complaints I address during a week have to do with something I preached in the recent past. I wonder to myself why I am having to deal with these issues in their lives when I already addressed it from the pulpit not too long ago. But it is one thing to shout directives to the flock as a whole, and quite another to do hands-on pasturing and get to know the true condition of each sheep as an individual.
It hasn’t really been my style to be the aloof spokesman. I’ve always tried to be “in the trenches� with my parishioners. But often I’ve considered it a nuisance when I have had to help someone struggling from foolish self-inflicted harm. I am coming to appreciate that this is simply the nature of sheep and shepherding. To deal with their afflictions is not an extra burden to the task of pasturing—it is integral to it.
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