Shepherds After My Own Heart: Intro & Chapters 1-3

[stevebraswell]

I am commenting on Timothy Laniak’s book, Shepherds After My Own Heart. As a pastor myself, I move back and forth in personal reading between two categories of books: (1) books that appear to be immediately practical in my work (e.g. books that give me sermon ideas or illustrations or program ideas that I can implement almost “as is”) and (2) books that deal with ministry issues and theological issues that provide the foundation for Christian ministry but that are “tough sledding” when it comes to actually wading through all the material in the book or that require a lot of thought for me to understand what the author is saying, much less let any of it make any difference in my everyday ministry. As you might guess from the way I’ve weighted these two categories of books, it is much easier for me to read the “first category” of books, although I know that if I never read any of the “second category,” I am keeping a steady diet of candy and ice cream without adding any vegetables and meat. I know that wouldn’t be good as a diet for my body, so my guess is that after a while it will also take a toll on my ministry.

I must confess that when I think of reading a book on leadership in the church, I immediately gravitate toward the “first category” type of books. You know the kind I mean—those that tell me the seven basic principles of leadership so I can measure where I am weak as a leader and then change my style to make myself a stronger leader. The problem with most of those type of Christian books is that they learn more of their lessons from the CEO boardroom than they do from Scripture. And they certainly tend to omit any emphasis on the type of leader who said that he came to be the kind of leader who leads by serving the needs of others (a man named Jesus).

While Laniak’s book may be short on easy to follow leadership principles, it is long on Scripture. In fact, it is the most extensive biblical survey on the topic of leadership that I have seen.

But his book begins, not with a survey of Scripture, but a survey of the role of shepherds in the ancient world (of course, using shepherding as an image for leaders, as the Bible often does). This is the part of the book I want to comment on in this posting.

Laniak tells us from the start that “a good shepherd is one who sees what the Owner sees and does what the Owner does” and is “a follower before he is a leader” and “a leader because he is a follower.” It appears to me that he has put his finger on a missing element in many pastoral ministries. Often it appears that the pastor is the leader and the congregation the followers, without any hint of a place for Jesus in the mix. I often pause in the midst of the busyness of my ministry activities to ask myself: “How well am I following Jesus? Am I attempting to follow him at all?” I know that my congregation can think that I am doing all the things I am supposed to be doing (preparing sermons, visiting the sick, etc.), while at the same time I am not giving any focused attention to being a faithful follower of Jesus. And if that is a prerequisite to being a good leader in the church, I have failed in my leadership, no matter what my congregation thinks of the “job” I am doing.

Laniak then prepares us as his readers for the great amount of biblical material to follow. He lets us know up front that it is not just a matter of doing a word search for “shepherd” (or any other main leadership terms) and then just studying all those individual verses. Instead it will mean taking all of the “rivers” and “streams” in the Bible that talk about leadership and trace their origins and see how they flow together.
The main metaphor of leadership in the Bible is that of a shepherd. I have only been exposed to sheep in a controlled setting called a “zoo,” so Laniak’s survey of shepherds in the ancient world was very helpful to me. I have read some of this background information in preparing sermons on Psalm 23 in the past, but his survey was much broader and not just focused on trying to explain the specific terms in that psalm. He includes specific details that bring out the sights and sounds of being a shepherd like how many sheep (and goats) a competent shepherd can handle (500), what the average birthing rate was in a flock (80%), how vital the provision of food and water is for animals, how important it is to protect them from diseases and wild animals, and how shepherds need to lead their flock from the front to several different locations a day to keep a balanced diet.

In my next posting I will pick up with Laniak’s discussion of the biblical materials.