Sermon Central
Pastors: Be Shepherds, Not Sheep
Dr. Tom Blackaby
Blackaby Ministries International
These are disconcerting times among God’s people. Whereas there seems to be a much greater effort for inter-denominational (read Kingdom) work between churches today and whereas churches are in many cases for the first time implementing strategies for reaching the lost and impacting their communities, there is one glaring issue that is troubling. As I travel from state to state and city to city seeking to encourage and inspire God’s people to know Him, His ways, and His agenda for their life, I have observed that a growing number of pastors across the country have been spiritually neutralized. They may be preaching each week and spending time in personal and private devotion, but it is almost as though they have unknowingly slipped from their role as shepherds and have become sheep. They appear to be wandering with their congregations, seeking a direction and focus instead of leading their people to be involved in the activities and ministries God has ordained for their churches.
Instead of leading their people to find the heart and mind of God for their own congregations, some pastors seek to copy other “more successful” congregations that have blown past the norm, set new standards, and developed innovative approaches for reaching their communities. These churches have successfully marketed their strategies, and multiple thousands of other churches around the world have bought into their techniques and methodologies. We love to buy other people’s techniques because it means we don’t actually have to come up with our own. We don’t have to do the hard work of going before the Lord on bended knee or going without to fast and pray to seek the heart and mind of our Master. We can open a book or watch a DVD and, poof! There it is already prepared for us!
It seems too many pastors have given up their role as shepherds and have become sheep, looking to other more “successful” shepherds for direction. Why are pastors settling for second-hand visions for their congregations? Why will pastors gladly place internet orders from other shepherds in order to feed their churches with pre-packaged meals?
God said to His people, “And I will give you shepherds according to My heart, who shall feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:15). The simple reality is that many pastors are seeking God’s heart in a book or online rather than in His Word, through prayer, or by spending unhurried time alone with God seeking His heart.
The staggering amount of sermon material posted on the World Wide Web has become regular fodder for sermons all across our land and around the world. People are being given second-hand visions from mega churches, and second-hand sermons God gave to other messengers. Pastors have become sheep, giving their congregations the leftovers of what God provided other shepherds for their sheep. The words may be the same when they are re-preached, but the Spirit is missing.
Oswald Chambers, in My Utmost for His Highest says, “Many a Christian worker has left Jesus Christ alone and gone into work from a sense of duty, or from a sense of need arising out of his own particular discernment. The reason for this is the absence of the resurrection life of Jesus. The soul has got out of intimate contact with God by leaning to its own religious understanding. We have put a sense of duty on the throne instead of the resurrection life of Jesus” (Feb 28, p. 59).
When the children of Israel were to gather the wilderness manna, they were instructed that each one should gather for themselves; none should be left over, none should be hoarded. Some pastors are no longer gathering for themselves; they are buying leftover manna from others and offering stale sermons and moldy insight to their people that cannot satisfy their longings for living water and the bread of life.
Pastors are content to obtain their relationship with God from devotional books and ancient readings rather than searching out God for themselves in His Word or seeking Him in times of extended prayers. “And you shall seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). It seems few pastors have the heart that seeks God as demonstrated by our Lord, “For Jesus, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong cryings and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared” (Heb. 5:7, KJV).
“We need to rely on the resurrection life of Jesus much deeper down than we do, to get into the habit of steadily referring everything back to Him; instead of this we make our common-sense decisions and ask God to bless them. He cannot…” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).
We cannot bring our congregations into the presence of God if we have not found our own way there first. We cannot show them someone else’s roadmap; it must come from within. That is why God has placed us where He has, to be transparent maps for our people so they can follow us into the presence of God. “Truth is truth” they say, “it doesn’t matter where it comes from.” However, Noah’s instructions wouldn’t do very well for Moses. Joshua’s instructions concerning Jericho would not have been relevant for David against Goliath. James and John recommended Elijah’s Mount Carmel experience to Jesus for dealing with obstinate Samaritans, but He rejected it (Luke 9). We must stop living off other people’s burning bushes and blinding lights and find our own intimacy with God in life-changing encounters.
Religious leaders of the day cloaked themselves in ritual and tradition and held to the laws passed down by their forefathers. Christ came and tore the veil in two, saying all who will enter may now come directly into the presence of the Most Holy. But we are not making the effort to regularly go beyond the veil into the Holy of Holies; we are stopping by the wayside at the tourist booth to purchase trinkets and postcards of what others saw when they were there, and then bringing them back to our churches to pass off as our own. We deliver second-hand visions, second-hand messages. Our people want so desperately to see that sparkle in the eyes of the pastor, the glow on his face, those tell-tale signs that he “has been with the Lord”. They are no longer content with technique, presentation, or video-enhanced 3-D sermons. They want a fresh word from the Lord, the words of life, the living water, the moving of the Spirit from their shepherd.
Pastors are (for the most part) paid to serve the Lord. We are remunerated to be spiritual for our people. What a joy! People actually paying us to spend time with God! So why do we not take advantage of that opportunity? It can mean life or death for our churches, and the many churches who are struggling and dying have been longing to hear the words of life, a fresh wind of the Spirit from their pulpits for years. They are sheep without a shepherd.
I believe pastors are content to be sheep for the following reasons:
1. Many pastors have not seen a model of a God-seeking pastor in their formative years. There are generations of people who have been content with second-hand messages and vision by consensus. That is all they know. When they read an exciting message from other pastors, they want their people to hear it. But they do not realize they are able to access the same information, the same truth, the same life-changing encounters with God themselves in His Word. These pastors truly believe that tried and true techniques, pre-printed messages and second-hand encounters with God are adequate for their sheep. Some sermons are so full of other people’s quotes there is little evidence the pastor actually developed any of it himself. They are content to defer spiritual responsibility to those higher in authority over them for the welfare of the sheep. They are sheep leading sheep.
2. Some pastors see their ministry as a job that they get paid for, rather than a calling from Christ. Some pastors refuse to be any more accountable to Christ than the average church member. They have abdicated their role as spiritual leader, as shepherd, as a steward of the lives of those God has placed under their care. So they have professional hours, professional salary packages, professional development, and career advancement plans. They have forgotten they are accountable to God first and people second. Pastoring is not for the weak-hearted or the lazy. It requires great burdens be carried, hours needed for sleep to be given up for prayer, and many sacrifices to be made in order to adequately care for the sheep in your charge. A pastor, properly executing his responsibilities, could never be adequately compensated by any salary package or earthly remuneration. The Good Shepherd possesses to give as He sees fit.
3. Some pastors have succumbed to the pressures of their congregation to look like all the other churches. Just as the people of Israel rejected Samuel and sought for a king to lead them, so too have churches pursued CEO’s, executive pastors, and such leaders to look like every other “successful” organization. Pastors have believed the flattery and the adulations of their congregants who seek to be proud of their organization rather than faithful to their Lord’s commands. Endowment funds, spacious facilities, high-tech performances, and state of the art equipment equals success, while the heart and mind of the Lord remains neglected.
4. Pastors simply do not have the time, nor do they particularly want to pay the price personally to seek the Lord. Why spend two or three days alone in prayer and fasting before the Lord, seeking His will and His ways, when you can borrow a vision from a book that God gave someone else after they prayed and fasted? The modern culture calls for “McVision”—“find it quick, make it slick,” and implement it before the ink on the last vision poster is barely dry. The average pastor prays so little today that it is embarrassing to even record the minutes. All study is related to the upcoming sermon rather than to seeking the heart and mind of the Master. In contrast, the early church in Acts saw fit to employ deacons to relieve the Apostles of extraneous activities that drew them away from spending time with God and ministering the word to the people. Too many pastors’ day planners are stuffed with extraneous responsibilities and distracting expectations from their people. Purge the calendar, cut out the distractions, come regularly before the throne of grace, and your people will be transformed by what God will do through you.
Congregations everywhere plead for pastors
- who anguish over their sermons to ensure their people hear from God,
- who plead before the Lord on behalf of their congregations,
- who spend unhurried and adequate time getting to know the Lord personally, and
- who will do what it takes for the Holy Spirit to give a fresh word for their congregations.
A congregation, a flock of sheep, wants to be loved, cared for, and prayed over. But more, they want their shepherd to have spent time with the Good Shepherd, learning at His feet, listening to His voice, and following His ways as he cares for the sheep. This is not an indictment against pastors; it is a call for every pastor to reclaim his or her rightful position as shepherd of the sheep, as a spiritual leader accountable to God Himself, and as a good steward of the lives and the charge given into his or her care by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Moses writes, “But if you shall seek Jehovah your God from there, you shall find Him, if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in trouble and when all these things have found you in the latter days, then you shall return to Jehovah your God and shall be obedient to His voice” (Deut. 4:29-30).
To lead a congregation into the presence of God, a pastor must first have spent much time there oneself. Pastors do not discover how to experience God’s presence together with their people; they go ahead of them into the Holy of Holies and then bring their congregations to the mountain to see the burning bush for themselves. Once we know the mind of God from having spent extended time with Him, we can lead our people to know the heart and mind of God and to identify His activity all around us. Once we have sensitized our own eyes to see things from a kingdom mindset, then we can help remove the scales from our people’s eyes to see the wonderful things God has in store for them. There simply are no shortcuts in ministry. There are no quick fixes for character issues, no instant solutions for powerless ministries or visionless churches. It may not appear wise to put a full stop on the calendar of activities in order for the church to spend unhurried time before their Lord and Master, but not to do so may gut the essence right out of the terms “Lord” and “Master.” These are not mere titles we assign to Christ; they are descriptions of our relationship to Him. He is the Lord; therefore, we are under His authority. He is the Master; therefore, we are His servants. Let us not charge ahead on our own volition waving our own agendas and going under our own power using our own resources, never coming into His presence to seek His commands for us. That is insurrection!
To bring our people into the presence of God is to elevate our opinion of God to its rightful place, and to present our people under His banner determined to stay put until have clearly heard Him speak. If we are not spending time as a congregation to pray, we are not seeking the will of our Lord. “We pray,” you say. “The men pray, the women pray, the singles pray, the teenagers pray, our seniors pray, and our staff prays.” But are you seeking the heart and mind of God together as a congregation or are all your groups off on their own agendas submitting their shopping lists to God for Him to fill at His leisure? In Biblical history, something amazing always happened when God’s people all came together before Him to seek His will, to worship, to pray, and to submit to His authority over them. Few churches today ever plan for this to happen. Most say this is impractical. But what they are really saying is that it is not necessary to seek Him because they already have their three-year plan marked out on their calendar with what they intend for God to do. The church staff designs the plan and presents it to the congregation, but the people of God have never been given the opportunity to seek the Lord together as His body. It is a dangerous thing to let God’s people come together to seek Him. It may wreak havoc on your long-range plans!
I suggest that the Lordship of Christ is more than a spiritual acknowledgement we make at conversion; it is a practical application of our relationship with Him in all aspects of church life. The Lordship of Christ implies He has an agenda for our church and our ministry, but it is our duty and privilege to spend the time it takes in His presence for Him to reveal it to us. This does not happen in our answering-machine message prayers. It happens when we seek Him with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all of our strength. Perhaps that is why Christ listed this as the greatest commandment! To do so acknowledges our complete dependence upon God for everything; our vision, our sermons, our agendas, and our very existence as His people.
It is time to turn pastors who are “reasonable facsimiles” into real shepherds of the sheep who have scouted out the land, who have found the best fields, who have located the fresh waters and the luscious grasses and the cool shade for the heat of the day. These pastors have planned out their routes, taken into consideration the weather patterns and ever-present dangers, and their sheep trust them and love them because of it.
“And I will give you shepherds according to My heart, who shall feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:15). The only way to know God’s heart, the only way to feed your sheep with knowledge, understanding, and with the way, the truth and the life, is to spend time in God’s presence, seek Him out regularly and deliberately, and not let anything distract you from this pursuit. For if you don’t, the entire flock will be in jeopardy of starving to death and being picked off one by one by our adversary who continuously prowls on weak and defenseless sheep.
Dr. Tom Blackaby serves as the Director of International Ministries for Blackaby Ministries International. He is the second son of Henry and Marilynn Blackaby. Tom has co-authored several books with his father Henry including: The Man God Uses, Anointed to Be God’s Servants: Lessons from the Life of Paul and His Companions, and The Blackaby Study Bible.
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