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Greener Pastures... Really?

 
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ShepherdLeader.com Forum Index -> While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks -> Day 6: Greener Pastures
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PolarBear2



Joined: 30 Jan 2013
Posts: 5

PostPosted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 6:25 pm    Post subject: Greener Pastures... Really? Reply with quote

Greener pastures may be good for sheep, but not necessarily so for pastors!

“When pastures flourish somewhere else, the news spreads quickly to desperate shepherds” (page 54). I can only imagine that at times, it was a race for shepherds to move their sheep to greener pastures before other shepherds arrived. I wonder, how many times the greener pastures they heard about were not so green when they arrived? Greener pastures can be attractive at luring shepherds and pastors to a new location, but are they really greener, or for very long?

In each mega church I have served, I heard the senior pastor say something like, “If you see God working in an area, then that is where you want to tap into, if you want to be successful.” Or, “If you want to be a success, then go where God is working!” I have never felt at ease or believed in those statements. Is the Great Commission not about going where other people have not gone? Is success really about taping into what someone else or what another church is doing well? Is following Jesus really about riding the bandwagon of worldly ‘success’?

Across the street from one of the churches where I ministered was a small hobby farm, right in the middle of an affluent subdivision. It was just a small house with a few goats on an acre or two of land. As I would go to work in the mornings and leave in the evenings, the goats would typically be feeding in the fenced in yard. While the grass was perfectly green inside the fence, the goats usually had their heads poking through the wire fence, eating the ‘greener’ grass on the other side. When thoughts of resigning and moving on to a ‘greener pasture’ in ministry arose, those goats reminded me, the grasser is not always greener on the other side! For ten years, God provided a living illustration for me about enduring as a pastor and in ministry. The season I finally knew God wanted me to move on in ministry, the goats had disappeared from that yard. Coincidence? I think not.
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