The Good Shepherd and Good Shepherding
Conversation #9 - Wrestling with Expectations
Ministering to a world of grief while immersed in our own pain and loss.
WRESTLING WITH EXPECTATIONS
Introspection…
How detrimental are the expectations we burden ourselves with? This gets complicated for me. Sometimes, I’m afraid my expectations are self-imposed. I’m weak and slow and stupid on a good day… now add grief to the mix! It’s hard sometimes to be sure I’m not acting on something I’ve created in my head. Am I truly in sync with reality… and especially with God’s expectations?
How do we define ourselves? Can we sort out when tradition or peer pressure has hindered a clear-headed approach to where we ought to be? Are we on course to be who God wants us to be for the remainder of our earthly journey?
Are our people being biblically realistic about what a shepherd is and does? Are any of their expectations hindering our healing and spiritual growth?
Anticipation…
We know what proactive looks like. Anyone who has come to Christ because they saw the future and chose to prepare for it demonstrates Spirit-fed wisdom. Yet, there appears to be a short circuit in our proactive-ness when it comes to other very legitimate, God-ordained expectations:
What if we are suddenly left alone?
What if we are suddenly incapacitated?
If we are aging out like Moses, where is our Joshua?
Do we have an inner circle of support in place today?
Just because we happen to be in ministry doesn’t make us strong enough to suck it up and move forward on our own. We’ve seen enough of the dark underbelly of leadership structures where authority becomes the impenetrable armor—the false front—of the guy at the top. How often has that sanctified machismo turned out to be a brittle facade over an empty shell? We need a network of intimate relationships we can default to in the midst of our own personal tragedies.
It will go better for everyone if we let ourselves be included in the flock as just one more hurting sheep among many.
Two Warnings…
Pulpiteer or Shepherd?
There’s that unspoken thing I dare not whisper, much less put in writing: Doubling down on our pulpit ministry will not prepare us for any of the above. Though not necessarily about choosing one over the other, we ought to judiciously consider both facets of our ministry.
The dilemma… We can be good in the pulpit without being good shepherds. We can be good shepherds without a pulpit, but being good shepherds might make us better in the pulpit. So, if I had to pick one, I’d shoot for being a good shepherd. Yes, it’s the harder choice. It requires more than a degree in pastoral theology. We don’t get this in school; a shepherd’s heart comes from the Good Shepherd, worked into our souls by the Holy Spirit. It’s not a vocation. It’s a gifting… a calling. Without it, we will hurt people more than we will help them.
If we’re given to hiding behind a pulpit ministry, we might be shortchanging everyone, including ourselves. The key ingredients for healing, regaining strength, and genuine shepherding are not found there.
The opposite of busy?
I was buying a few things at the corner store one morning. As I checked out, the owner asked what I was doing in Cancun. Without thinking, I replied, “I’m a pastor.” She sighed and said, “Ai, ¡qué tranquilidad!” (Oh, how peaceful!). My first thought was to inform her about what my life was really like. I laughed, but then I wept inside. She was wrong, but she should have been right. She was wrong about my life being tranquil; She was right about what it should have been.
Our Americanness tells us we’re lazy if we’re not staying busy. For biblical shepherding, the opposite of busyness is not laziness… it’s quietness—quietness of soul… of the sort that is restorative for the shepherd and foundational for the nurture of the flock. One author puts it this way: “Leisure is a quality of spirit, not a quantity of time.”
Transition: Hurting sheep need more than a pulpiteer. Tending sheep requires maturing in the art of spiritual conversation.