Over at The God Journey, Brad and I did a podcast on The Blame Game. We have been amazed at how various ones have processed and responded to this podcast.
Today someone sent me to a link to the Live With Desire blog that has some extended comments on that podcast. I think you’ll be blessed by Heidi’s reflections and what God is doing in her life to set her free from the paralyzing shame that impacts many. It really encouraged me. Good on you, Heidi!
I don’t know what’s going on exactly, but I’m getting a bit of email these days from folks that are finding freedom from depression in part because of some of the things they’re reading here, but I think we all know who is really responsible for their freedom.
But it blesses me nonetheless to hear how God is drawing people out of long and deep places of darkness and setting them in the warmth of his life and grace. I do think Christianity as religion actually promotes and prolongs depression with its focus on performance, its trust in intellectual answers alone and its use of guilt to try to make people do better. As well-intentioned as all that might be, it can be incredibly destructive for people caught in depression.
I got this earlier in the week with a book order from Rick:
I am so thank for your willingness to make the Jake book and Transitions available for free. God has used you to literally save my life, I was severely depressed and ravaged with guilt a year ago and considering making an end of myself, but now I live free knowing that I have an affectionate father who loves me. Thanks be to God for your ministry.
And I received a longer story from a sister still in the process, but I so appreciate where God has led her and where he continues to lead her. I met this lady this past summer and she lives in what’s called the Heartland of the US.
I am 45 years old today. One psychologist estimated I have suffered from chronic mild depression since I was 12 years old. I have to date never been suicidal. However, I have so bought the lie that if I did everything right, then I would get to look emotionally balanced and mature. The way I have addressed the problem has been so shame-based. Mature Christians don’t get depressed.
Religion, especially the brand I was raised in, put I high premium on rational thought, logic, creeds. Emotion and passion were pretty suspect. Well, I don’t have to be embarrassed about being an emotional person anymore. Organized religion tends to shun and stigmatize mental illness. I had another friend who lost her husband to schizophrenia. She said if he had had cancer she would have had overwhelming support, but got very little when her husband left her and their children as a result of his mental illness. Most of these illnesses are not about making “right choices†at all.
One pastor told me if I just found goals and vision for my life I’d be excited not depressed. OK I am already finding everyday life overwhelming, and he wants to add tasks to the pile. He’s been down; he’s been sad. He doesn’t understand depression. What I needed most was to be let off the hook.
I am still struggling, but for the first time I realize He loves me whether I get over this thing or not. It’s not up to me. I have been so ashamed of this weakness. Whether I break free from depression or not, I am still free because I don’t have to fight and try so hard to be healthy. He can do whatever He pleases with me because I trust Him. I’m going to stop demanding that He change me and see what He does with it. It’s spoiled my relationship with my Father long enough.
John Eldredge once said to me that some of the best times, the most restful and inviting times, he had with me were when I was a mess. And for years I’ve thought what the hell did he mean by that. Now I know. In those moments I stopped trying so hard to be perfect and just was what I was. Being me even the broken messed up me was better than the fake striving I invented because I was ashamed of the real me. I think he said that to me in 1998; I am as thick as a post—but God loves me anyway.
Last night my husband was just driving me around because he had to get me out of bed and break up a crying spell. We talked about medication or another counselor. You know that scripture in which Paul brags about how religious and what a great Pharisee he was. Well I’ve had three counselors, a psychiatrist, a curse breaking, demon kicking prayer guy, theophostic prayer, etc. I’ve been through ancient paths and living waters programs. I’ve read a library of books. I said I give up. I surrender to God. Now those weren’t all bad things really. You see getting over being a depressed person has been what my relationship with God has been all about. I can be part of the adventure right now; he loves me as I am. If this battle could be won by learning, talking, confessing, rebuking, forgiving and believing, it would have be won by now. I am not worried about or embarrassed by depression and anxiety anymore. Now that I am convinced I am loved nothing else matters; it’s all I ever wanted.
I really think laying down the fight and embracing love will go a long way towards leading me through the final stages of healing. I think at the bottom of depression is I am unloved and unlovable. I will always be very, very sensitive and there is no doubt a good purpose in that. There is much I have thought needed to be fixed that doesn’t need to be fixed. I love this quote from John Milton’s sonnet about going blind. Here’s the one of the greatest poet’s in Western literature. He’s losing his sight. How is he going to read and write? The last line reads, “They also serve Him who only stand and wait.†One of my favorite poems. Anyway I go on and on. This in an incredible epiphany for me; you had a hand in it. I thought you would enjoy knowing.
I love what God did in Rick and what he is doing in this sister, and their experiences speak louder than anything I could say. I always encourage people to take depression seriously. Religious folks tend to blame themselves and try harder, which, as you read here, only intensifies the depression. This is a battle few can fight alone. If you’re caught in depression find someone to help you walk out of it. Don’t find someone steeped in religion and human performance, because that won’t help. That’s often why a secular counselor can be more helpful for someone in depression than a religious one. But get help! Causes very for different people, but it is important that you find a way to reverse the spiral and find your way into greater freedom.
If you haven’t heard my voice blathering enough on the web, there are two new interviews now available.
A few months ago I did an interview for a Canadian TV show called On the Edge about the Jake Colsen book and my other passions in this kingdom. . That interview is airing today (Friday) at 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time on the Miracle Channel in Canada. You can stream it online if you like by going to The Miracle Channel and clicking the ‘Watch Us Online” button. It will also re-air tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon at 3:00 Pacific Time. This is the second part of the interview. The first part aired last week, which I didn’t know about. The final part will air next weekend (February 23-24) at the same times.
I also did a podcast interview with the folks at Plain Truth Ministry that is now on their website. This is as clear an introductory piece as I have done on Lifestream and what we hope Father accomplishes through my writing and sharing. You can listen to my interview here.
A great big thanks to all of you who have offered your input. For those who’d like to see the back cover concept to date and to get a bit more feel for what’s in the book, here it is!
Look at the cover below:
And if you haven’t commented yet, please feel free to…
Many of you know I am involved in helping bring a new novel and novelist to the public table with a book that has captured my heart. The folks I’m involved with want to do a bit of focus group consideration for a cover concept. If you’d like to give us your feedback, that would be awesome.
Look at the cover below:
The less you know about the book, the better, since we just want some reader input from the cover design itself. If you don’t mind could you either leave a comment here or email me to let me know what you think.
What kind of book would you expect behind the cover?
Does this entice you to read it or turn you off?
Are you male or female?
Feel free to make any other comments about what you like or dislike about he cover.
We hope to have the book out around May 1.
Thanks.
The last few days have been filled with preparing for trips in the next couple of months, including quite a few BridgeBuilders events. I head to Tulsa for the weekend, gathering with some long-time college friends and sharing with the folks at Bread of Life on Sunday morning. This is part college reunion and part spiritual retreat taught by one of the people who greatly impacted my journey at a young age. So, I’m really excited to be going and seeing what Father has in mind. Beyond that I will be in Central California, Nashville, Washington, DC and South Dakota in February and March.
And because so many people have asked us for these, we are releasing two new CDs at Lifestream. We have now placed mp3 files for the audio versions of both He Loves Me and So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore on one Audio Book Combo Disc. The cost for this one CD is $14.00 and gives you both books. Both of these are available on our book or audio collections pages.
Also, we’ve just released the second archive disc for The God Journey. This CD holds the mp3 files for all the podcasts Brad and I did between March 31, 2006 and January 2007. Cost is $12.00. Both of these discs are data discs containing mp3 files and will not play in a CD player. You can however access them by computer, mp3 player and on most new DVD drives. Find out more on our book or audio collections pages.
This morning I have started to read Matthew again in my own readings. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been in one of the Gospels and I’m always excited to get a fresh look at the life of Jesus and how impacted people around him.
He was a religious leader who sought Jesus out in the dark of night. He knew Jesus’ miracles were proof that God was with him and he wanted to be part of his kingdom. But he had no idea what it would demand from him.
Perhaps Nicodemus wanted some instructions to follow, new rules that would let him in on the life Jesus lived. But Jesus didn’t offer any. He simply told him that he needed to be born all over again. The idea sent Nicodemus’ head spinning as he tried to conceive how he, an old man, could be born a second time. Jesus must have smiled at the thought. It was not a physical rebirth that Nicodemus needed, but a spiritual one. He already knew all too well how to live as a human in the world. If he was going to see into the reality of this coming kingdom he needed a rebirth of the Spirit. Why? Because nothing in this kingdom can be seen, embraced or pursued by the flesh no matter how well intentioned. It runs contrary to every way our flesh sees and acts.
What’s surprising here is that there was no conflict between Nicodemus’ flesh and being a religious leader. While his religion at one level sought to restrain his fleshy appetites, it also provided a way for it to satisfy others, such as a lust for power or spiritual status. But the kingdom Jesus was bringing was different. It offered Nicodemus not another performance standard but a completely different way of living. To embrace that would take a rebirth of the Spirit that would open his spiritual eyes. And that’s when Jesus drops the bombshell. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)
I could understand how the Spirit was like the wind that we can’t define or control, but the thought that those who are born of him are like that as well captured my heart the first time I heard thes words as a young man. I don’t even remember who was reading them or where I was, but I remember to this day how those words filled my heart with an irresistible call of mystery and adventure. Every time I’ve read John’s gospel since, those words re-ignite that same passion of living that religion at it’s best could never produce.
We have certainly cheapened this passage in the past 50 years by applying the term ‘born again’ to those who have said a sinner’s prayer, been baptized, or those who go to a ‘Bible-believing’ fellowship as opposed to a more liberal one. The term ‘born again’ is often used today synonymously with the term ‘evangelical’ to validate a conservative brand of Christianity and question the faith of others who don’t use the same label. We have turned a term Jesus used to invite people into his kingdom into the most divisive term in Christendom, proving that we missed his point entirely.
If Jesus were going to define his kingdom by a creed, this was his time to say it. If Nicodemus could see the kingdom by participating in certain rituals or sacraments or ascribing to the ethics of a Godly life, Jesus would have told him here. Jesus was not refining the religion of the Old Covenant; he was offering a new way of living that was indefinable and incomprehensible to the natural mind.
Nicodemus didn’t need new principles; he needed to start his spiritual journey all over again. The religion he knew so well could never evolve into a life-transforming faith. Being born again meant that in spiritual things he needed to lay down everything he thought he knew and learn a life based on the Spirit. Jesus knew that would be difficult for a man so steeped in religion, and Nicodemus’ ensuing struggle over Jesus’ words demonstrated how right he was.
And so it is with us. The more we have been schooled in religious activity, the more difficult it is to see this kingdom for what it really is. We have millions of people on the planet today claiming to be born again who don’t have the foggiest idea who Jesus is or how to live in his reality. They may subscribe to Christian beliefs, follow Christian ethics and practice Christian rituals, but they do not know how to ride the wind of his Spirit and be transformed by him.
Being born again is a real process that opens our eyes and heart to participate in a kingdom that supersedes the material world we’ve all been taught to live in.
To illustrate this rebirth Jesus turns to the wind as a metaphor and describes three things that are true about it.
It blows where it wills. No man controls the wind. Even with our increased technology it is controlled by forces larger than humanity can influence. There are times we might like for it to stop or blow a different direction, but there isn’t a blasted thing we can do about it.
You hear its sound. While the wind is invisible, we can hear it, feel it on the skin and see its effects on the world around us. We’ve just endured about a week’s worth of Santa Ana winds that consistently blew 25-30 miles per hour and often gusted up to 50. One morning our street was filled with garbage as trashcans had been overturned on collection day.
You cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. Haven’t you ever wondered where all that wind comes from and where it ends up? I know it swirls around high and low pressure areas, but I don’t know where the wind swirling around my face began that morning or where it will end that evening.
What an excellent metaphor to describe the working of the Spirit. He is like the wind, blowing where he wills, unseen but not knowable and it is true that we mostly have no idea what he’s up to on any given day. And while all that may be true, that’s not what Jesus was saying. He compares the wind to everyone born of the Spirit.
That’s you and me! Those born of the Spirit move in this world just as Jesus described the wind. They live out of different motivations. You can see the impact they have, even if you can’t figure out why they’re doing what they do.
People like that used to drive me nuts. When I was a pastor, it bothered me that some of the most spiritual men and women I came across, wouldn’t fit into the program the way I wanted them to. They were uninterested in staff positions I dangled before them, and they declined invitations to join our elders. Maybe they weren’t as spiritual as I thought.
I came to find out, however, that they were tuned to a higher frequency. When I expressed my frustration to one of them, he answered. “I don’t know that I can explain it, but one day you’ll know.”
I didn’t like his answer at all until I heard myself saying almost the exact same words five years later to a group of elders courting me to become their next pastor.
Unfortunately most believers have never been exposed to life in Christ like this. They have seen Christianity only as a religion with truths to learn, rules to follow and rituals to observe and have missed the beauty of what life in Jesus can be.
I love the way Paul expressed this to Timothy in warning him to keep the main issue the main issue: “The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love – love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God.” (1 Timothy 1:5 – The Message)
This is a life of love, not obligation. It is not what we know about God that matters as much as knowing his affection for us, and loving others in the same way. Timothy needed to keep that in mind especially where believers had become more enamored with doctinal controversies of doctrine, rather than living in love.
Notice that this love is uncontaminated by self-interest. We all know what it is to live to our own self-interest, looking to maximize our benefit or to minimize our pain in the circumstances we face. We learned to survive that way in the world. But the wind Jesus was revealing to Nicodemus doesn’t operate on self-interest, but the self-giving love of God. That’s what will mark his people in the world. It’s not hard for us to understand people controlled by self-interest, even when they use their religion to advance their personal goals or say it is in love. But we don’t understand people who live by the laying-down-their-lives kind of love that only Jesus can shape in us. Those who are well loved will love well.
I used to think that Christian growth came by learning new truths and putting them into practice. While that can be helpful, more often than not it doesn’t work. How many of us have heard a powerful sermon or read an inspired book ready to embrace its message and committed to living it out, and then failed to follow through? Then we blame ourselves for not trying hard enough and only ended up with another standard by which to measure our failures.
That’s why he said the Spirit would lead his followers into all truth (John 15). This was not something we could do on our own, like studying algebra or Latin. Jesus challenged Nicodemus not to think of his life as learning a new catalog of information, but to learn to live in love. That would so change the way he lived other people wouldn’t recognize him or be able to explain his actions.
Every time I think I’ve figured out the way God works he’ll amaze me yet again – zigging where I would have zagged, giving strength in the face of circumstances I would have cured, or suddenly and conspicuously absent from the plans and routines that I hoped would contain him.
That used to frustrate me. It doesn’t any more. I am finally settled in the reality that he wouldn’t do anything the way I would. I’m convinced of the fact that he does all things well, even if he doesn’t do them for my comfort or convenience. And I am convinced that following him is the only real way to live, circumstance by circumstance, task by task, obedience by obedience. And I have come to love it that way.
The pursuit to find any formula that can be applied to produce his righteousness, provide me New Testament church life or even grow my trust, is a fool’s errand. It will fail time and time again until in the end I come to realize that this reality only comes through a growing friendship with him. The more I know him amd the more I see his hand at work the freer I will be to trust him and live in his kingdom.
I am convinced that wind is his Spirit, and my need to be born again is not a one-time experience but a daily choice to shed my expectations about the way things should be, to mistrust my own desires and agenda, and to tune my mind to the breath of his Spirit and the truths of his word. Where I live born of the Spirit today, I will ride that wind with increasing joy and freedom. I will see his fingerprints in the jagged places of life and be able to cooperate with his purpose in me.
Where I live out of my own selfish-ambition, religious performance, or natural wisdom I will struggle with unanswerable questions and act in ways that are hurtful to others. I’m so tired of that. And though I’m a long ways from living it perfectly, I want to live no other way – more today than yesterday and more tomorrow than today. And the only way I can do that is continue to live deeply in him, watching for his wind to blow and riding it, even if some of the most significant people in my life can’t understand what I’m doing or why. Jesus warned us that would be so.
Any time we choose to follow a model of spirituality, someone else’s formula for success, or an agenda no matter how well intentioned, we will end up walking by our own limited wisdom. The invitation to this kingdom is to follow a person. Jesus doesn’t give us the way; he is The Way. He doesn’t have life; he is The Life. He doesn’t just speak truth; he is The Truth itself. Everything about his kingdom begins and ends in him and we experience that through a growing friendship with him.
That’s often the hardest thing for people to see when they have been disillusioned by church life as many define it today. Immediately they begin to look for another way of doing church and jump right back into a different form of religious performance, rather than learning how they can simply follow him.
Part of what Jesus was encouraging Nicodemus to do was to stop trying to put boxes around the life of his Spirit, which can never be contained. Have you ever tried to stuff the wind into a box? Have you ever tried to stop it, or make it blow a different direction? How futile! So is trying to control God’s working by boxing it into forms we prefer, or trying to control the outcomes we want from him.
He is the wind. He blows where he wills, and we can follow if we want. The person who is born of the Spirit loses his moorings in the temporal world where the cravings of safety, security and stability must be satisfied. And in doing so we too become like the wind, available to him at each moment to do what he would ask of us.
Faith doesn’t flow from theology; it flows from relationship. From our earliest days he wants to show us how to embrace his unfolding revelation in our lives and teach us how to follow him. I don’t know any other way to describe it than to simply be obedient to those nudges he puts in your mind. He might be revealing something about himself, inviting us to some time with him, drawing us to the Bible, or leading us to serve or encourage someone else. Learning to recognize those nudges and follow through on them is what teaches us to distinguish between our deisres and his. Those nudges almost always begin not by calling us to grandiose ministries, but teaching us to live outside our self-interest in the mundane ways we can serve others around us.
To many people this may sound like emotion-driven, touchy-feely spirituality. I hear those objections often by those threatened with a life in God they won’t be able to control by their disciplines and doctrines. But they couldn’t be more wrong. This is a dance of head and heart together discerning God and his ways. The heart without the head can lead to well intentioned disaster, and the head without the heart will exalt doctrine over love and destroy others with its arrogance.
To grow in this life, I am continually cultivating my relationship with him. I intentionally spend time with him as I grow in my awareness of his working throughout my day. I have a running conversation with him about everything in my life and express my desire to follow his will at every turn. I immerse myself in the story of Scripture, learning how he thinks and acts. I have a steady diet of what God is showing others by what I read and listen to, and the conversations I have with others on this journey.
So how do I sort out his nudges from my own thoughts? Most nudges I get from his Spirit are simple ways of loving and serving people around me. I am not too worried about getting those wrong. There aren’t many downsides to serving others. But to have some measure of confidence to step out in a larger action he may be asking of me, I look for four things to to come into agreement:
1. An intuitive, growing conviction of his leading over time.
2. Affirmation in the truth and example of Scripture that this is how God works.
3. Confirmation from other brothers and sisters as I discuss it with them.
4. And the reality of unfolding circumstances.
When those voices are in synch, I have greater confidence that I am following him. But you know what? Sometimes all of these line up and I still get it wrong. That’s why people born of the Spirit rarely use language like, “God told me to…”, and will instead talk in terms of what they sense. They’ve been wrong enough times not to be so presumptuous, even when they’re most certain. I’ve forged God’s name on my agenda a number of times, only to find out later that it was my penmanship all along. But I’m still ready to get up the next day and learn to keep following him. And while I’m willing to pay the consequences for being wrong, I also know he can weave my mistakes into his purposes.
This is what it means to be born of the Spirit. It has nothing to do with a sinner’s prayer or speaking in tongues. It means we’ve taken wing on a breath of wind that comes from the Father himself and learn to trust his words over our human reasoning and justifications.
It means we lay aside the lies of shame and the demands for performance that drive us from him and find our security in his affection for us and let that transform us. It means finally realizing how our selfish ambitions work against his purpose in us and others around us and laying them down in our growing trust that he knows better than we do and he does all things well.
It means we don’t have to have everything figured out to take the next step he’s put on our hearts and we no longer have to play for the applause of the crowd. It means we’re finally free to surrender our need to think we’re in control and know his plans are far better.
What great freedom to realize that I never had the power or wisdom to accomplish God’s purposes in my life and how losing confidence in my flesh only frees me to live more dependent on him and more grateful for his working. What a joy to wake up in the uncertain adventure of life and not be distressed at what might happen today, because he is with me!
How could human effort ever produce this? It is the work of his Spirit responding to our desire to know him. My prayer for you in these things is the same one that Paul had for the Thessalonians:
May the Master take your hand and lead you along the path
of God’s love and Christ’s endurance.
(2 Thessalonians 3:5)
Living Loved is published periodically by Lifestream Ministries and is sent free of charge to anyone who requests it. For those with email we recommend our web-based version so that we can hold down costs and get it to you much more quickly. This is especially important for international subscribers.
© Copyright 2013 Lifestream Ministries
Permission is hereby granted to anyone wishing to make copies for free distribution.
I hope you don’t mind reading over my shoulder again. It came in an email from someone in Iowa who has recently discovered our website. He told me about a friend of his that he is watching Jesus change before his eyes and the joy of it. I thought you’d love this story and it might encourage you to follow the nudges Father puts on your heart too!
And anyone who’ll barbeque in the snow is a friend of mine. But when they do it for the reasons below, it’s really awesome!
I am warmly filled with the walk of a brother that is new in his faith and just getting to walk with God and see and hear the new things he is learning. Is it right to be proud of the work that God is doing in someone else? It is God doing it and it is so cool to sit back and watch Him form this brother into the image of Christ right before our eyes.
This brother had a dream. He was grilling in his backyard, he is a big griller, and everyone loves to go to his house for fellowship because he cooks the best food. He saw hands reaching into his grill to grab the food. When he looked up, the hands belonged to homeless people that were in his backyard eating his food.
The dream troubled him until he wondered what would happen if he went down to the inner-city and setup his grill and fed anyone that came. So, he made some calls all on his own and the Salvation Army said they would pass out flyers for him during the week to let people know and he could use their back parking lot on a Saturday. As the word got out among his
friends we all wanted to go too.On a snowing Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago we loaded up and headed down there. It was a great time! We tried to give these men and women back their dignity by calling them by name and talking to them without any expectation of anything in return. Not even listen to a
salvation pitch. If it was appropriate we would pray with them if they had concerns that we could bring to the Father.Two guys that were traveling together, Joshua and Michael were such a blessing to us. We enjoyed their fellowship and laughed with them when Joshua said the City Union Mission was unsanitary, he had slept under the bridge in the rail yard because he knew he wouldn’t get sick, instead of sleeping inside in a dorm full of coughing men. What a sweetheart. We prayed for their safe journey and that they would be able to catch a west bound train for San Diego. We loaded them up with food and toothbrushes and sent them off into the snow.
I don’t know what it was, but there was something different about those two; they blessed us more than we blessed them. “Show hospitality to strangers, some in doing so have entertained angelsâ€. All of this because a new brother in the Lord had a dream and he followed thru on it. I don’t know if they were angels and I don’t care, I just really loved the community and love we had that day for each other. Will we do it again? When the Lord sends along another dream, you bet!
The February 2007 issue of BodyLife has just been posted at the Lifestream website.
The lead article is titled Windblown: What Life in Jesus Looks Like and is an extended look at what Jesus was trying to communicate with Nicodemus the night they met to discuss the kingdom. Living in the fullness of Christ is not a matter of embracing theology ritual, or ethics but to engage him by the Spirit and follow him wherever he leads. There’s also some wonderful letters there from many of our readers who are on some amazing journeys, as well as some new information on new things going on around Lifestream.
With this issue we also include two different downloadable PDF files—one for printing and one for viewing. We hope this issue encourages you to keep to the journey God has put before you and draw you into his life and grace.
I got some questions the other day from a reader on the role of shepherding in the body. I know others have similar questions to his, so I thought I’d post our exchange here in case it will help other sort through these issues.
I was wondering if I could ask your opinion on something I’ve heard you make reference to, and seek a bit more clarification. I have heard you make reference to Ezekiel 34 in connection to who is to “shepherd the people” in the New Covenant. That the solution to the “bad shepherds” was not to replace them with “good shepherds”, but to do away with that whole system, and that God Himself would be the Shepherd to His people; that “my servant David” (i.e. the Messiah) would be the shepherd to the sheep. Obviously Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophecy, Who professes to be the True Shepherd.
My question is this: There do seem to be passages that assign a “shepherding role” to key leaders in the Body of Christ. Jesus, when comforting Peter after the denials, tells Him to “feed my lambs, care for my sheep, feed my sheep” (the task of a shepherd), and then we have Peter’s instructions to his fellow-elders, “Be shepherds of Gods flock that is under your care…” (1Peter 5:2), and in Eph 4:11, where it is said that Jesus gave some to be “pastors” is the same word used of Jesus as the “Good Shepherd”.
So while in one sense, it seems we are all sheep to Christ our Sole-Shepherd, in another sense, it seems the Scriptures do indicate that certain members of God’s flock share in the role of “shepherd”; that certain “elders” are “under-shepherds” to the Chief Shepherd; that Jesus does raise up certain individuals to be “shepherds” for the sake of the flock.
Can you offer any additional clarification? Is not this Chief-Shepherd/Under-shepherd paradigm what the typical Church System would claim to emulate? And if we do have “good shepherds” caring for the flock after all, how does this reconcile with Ezek 34?
Here’s how I tried to answer those issues in a 100 words or less: I agree with what you write here. I think the problem for me comes in how we’ve applied that over 2000 years, so that the idea of shepherding people no longer carries the sense of reflecting Jesus’ care in other lives, but in managing them as a wholly ‘other’—the clergy/laity distinction. I know some of that terminology is used in verb form (shepherding as opposed to shepherds in I Peter 5), but there is a marked contrast from the Old Testament to the New as to how the word shepherd is applied to human leaders. No human being, except Jesus is designated as a shepherd in the New Testament. Jesus became the Good Shepherd for all the sheep, promising we’d be one flock with one shepherd.
But I also see that there is a recognition that there are more mature brothers and sisters in this journey who have the calling and equipping to spend a significant part of their time coming alongside younger brothers and sisters helping them get this journey. But to describe that as being an under-shepherd moves away from biblical language and is grossly misunderstood semantically in our day. Shepherds often have a sense of ownership about sheep—‘my sheep’. They are threatened by ‘sheep stealing’ in the body and often treat the ‘sheep’ as different from themselves. None of that would have been in Paul or Peter’s mouths. So I do see this as a semantic problem in part, and also a management problem. To describe institutional leadership in this language definitely corrupts it, putting the emphasis on leading the ‘thing’, not equipping and caring for lives.
But, yes, I agree that there are elders and other gifts in the body who are a great help to equip, release, strengthen, rebuke, and facilitate the life of the body. I just think if we don’t keep the Shepherd definition attached clearly to Jesus alone, others start co-opting his place in the lives of others. This is most often with the best of intentions, but it is no less destructive when people start to follow another human, rather than Jesus…