The Shepherd Leader

Achieving Effective Shepherding in Your Church

Timothy Z. Witmer

• Éditeur: P Publishing
• Année: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781596384415
• Sujet: Théologie et religion
• Sous-sujet: Église chrétienne

Church leaders are called to be shepherds, not a board of directors. Witmer unpacks four primary ministries of shepherds and seven elements needed for an effective personal shepherding plan.

The Shepherd’s Biblical Right to Lead: A Few Words about Authority

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.” (Heb. 13:17)

The concept of authority is one that is increasingly alien to modern culture, and there may be any number of reasons that church leaders may shrink away from exercising authoritative shepherding leadership. It is important before moving on to what shepherds do that it is clearly understood that leaders have both the right and responsibility to exercise shepherding care. Before presenting the biblical perspective on authority, we will look at the challenges in the culture at large. Following an introduction to the biblical concept of authority, we will examine two movements that have misunderstood the biblical view of authority.

“Who Says?” A Culture Adrift from its Moorings

The late George Carlin was once asked if he still supported the adage of the 1960s, “challenge authority.” He answered in the negative and said that his new adage was “destroy authority.” There would be many such as Carlin who would be quick to point out the abuses of authority throughout history, but G. K. Chesterton warned against throwing out the baby with the bathwater:

Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system has been callous and full of cruel apathy. It is rational to attack the police; nay it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind; a peril as practical as a burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared, if our race is to avoid ruin.[79]

It is unfortunate, but it appears that Chesterton’s perspective is in the minority and that Carlin’s view is no longer the fringe musing of an aging sixties pundit but increasingly represents the perspective of our society and, sadly, of the church.

The deterioration of respect for authority in culture has its root in a failure to respect the sovereign lordship of the ultimate authority, the living God who is the Shepherd and authority of all of life. Though we pay great lip service to faith in God, the bottom line of our culture is not “the Lord is my Shepherd,” but “I am my own shepherd.” Respect for the authority of the Word of the Shepherd results in clear moral boundaries within which the sheep will be safe and secure. The sheep must look to the Shepherd to delineate the bounds of the “green pastures” and “still waters.” It is to these standards that the shepherd-elder must be personally loyal and with which the elders must feed the sheep. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that has denied the authority of the Shepherd and the moral “fences” he has established. With the erosion of respect for the authority of the Shepherd, it is no surprise that respect for authority generally is diminished, whether in government, family, or the church. All of this together is symptomatic of nothing less than the deterioration of the foundation of lawful order in our culture.

This is the cultural crisis—and therefore the political and legal crisis—of our society: the popularly accessible and vibrant belief systems and world views of our society are largely excluded from the public arena in which decisions are made about how the society should be ordered.[80]

Neuhaus continues in proposing that religion must fill the moral void left by the “naked public square.” Unfortunately, respect for the authority of the church has diminished as well, particularly to the extent that the church has forsaken the authoritative standard of the Good Shepherd, accommodating its standards to the surrounding culture. As Chesterton further argues,

. . . we can hear skepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne, In so far as religion is gone, reason is gone. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind . . . And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long division sum.[81]

With the loss of respect for authority, the basis upon which authoritative moral standards can be asserted in the public square or in the church has disappeared as well.

Doing What Is Right in Our Own Eyes:
The Loss of Moral Values

In speaking of the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union, Os Guinness observed that it represented a dual victory for the American political order and economic order. But here’s what he said about a “third” sphere:

But the third great sphere . . . the moral and cultural sphere is in deep trouble. At the very moment of her historic political and economic vindication, a crisis of cultural authority is sapping the very vitality of the United States. Americans are no longer shaped by beliefs, ideals, and traditions as they once were. It is now questionable whether America’s cultural order is capable of nourishing the freedom, responsibility, and civility that Americans require to sustain democracy.[82]

The loss of respect for authority has led to the loss of authoritative standards. The loss of authoritative standards has left each person to be his own standard-maker. The sovereign authority of God has given way to the sovereign authority of the individual. Futurist Robert Naisbitt confirms the rise of individualism: “The great unifying theme at the conclusion of the 20th century is the triumph of the individual. Threatened by totalitarianism for much of this century, individuals are meeting the millennium more powerful than ever before.”[83] In fact, in his concluding analysis of culture at the end of the twentieth century he says, “Recognition of the individual is the thread connecting every trend described in this book.”[84] What are the implications of individualism upon morality? “The destruction of standards is inherent in radical individualism.”[85]

This pessimistic conclusion is supported by the research of Patterson and Kim, who conducted a comprehensive survey of 2,000 Americans who responded to 1,800 questions. Here is one of their enlightening findings:

Americans are making up their own rules, their own laws. In effect, we’re making up our own moral codes. Only 13 percent of us believe in all of the Ten Commandments. Forty percent of us believe in five of the Ten Commandments. We choose which laws of God we believe in. There is absolutely no moral consensus in this country as there was in the 1950’s, when all our institutions commanded more respect. Today, there is very little respect for the law—for any kind of law.[86]

The first chapter of Patterson and Kim’s book is entitled “A New Moral Authority: You’re It!” The question, “Who are our moral leaders now?” produced the following result: “Well, the overwhelming majority of people (93 percent) said that they—and nobody else—determine what is and what isn’t moral in their lives. They base their decisions on their own experience, even on their daily whims.”[87] This is nothing less than moral relativism. The picture is not unlike that portrayed in Judges 21:25, which states, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Without the authority of the king, the people became their own moral authority.

“We are living in what could be called a ‘Me First’ generation, whose primary interest seems to be to satisfy itself first, to do its own thing, to go its own way, to capture and hold on to absolute personal freedom, free from the restraints of law, discipline, self-denial, and self-control.”[88] This perspective pervades our culture and has become a Madison Avenue selling point:

The early pioneers were Nike’s “Just Do It!” (in other words, don’t think about it and don’t let anything stand in the way to your doing it) and Burger King’s “Sometimes, you gotta break the rules.” And the imitator’s have been numerous. Bacardi Black rum, which advertises itself as “the taste of the night,” goes on to say, “Some people embrace the night because rules of the day do not apply”; Easy Spirit shoes even latched onto this theme promising a shoe that “conforms to your foot so you don’t have to conform to anything”; Ralph Lauren’s Safari celebrates “living without boundaries”; even stayed and reliable Merrill Lynch declares that “Your world should know no boundaries”; and Nieman Marcus encourages its customers to relax because, it says, there are “No rules here.”[89]

Have any of these retailers considered the implications of their words? Imagine taking a trip to Nieman Marcus (which I’m sure you do regularly!), but this time you merely walk toward the door with your merchandise instead of to the checkout. Before you reach the door you are approached by a stern looking security guard who asks if you have paid for the items. You respond, “No.” He informs you that you cannot leave the store without paying for them to which you say, “But I thought there were NO RULES HERE!” Do you think the security guard would say, “Oh, that’s right. I forgot.” I don’t think so. Advertising phrases like these might sound good for marketing purposes as they capture the spirit of the day, but they really don’t work out very well in day-to-day life.

Someone once said that “before you tear down a fence, you should find out why it was put there in the first place!” The authority of the Lord, the Shepherd, is no longer respected, and the natural consequence is the dismantling of the moral principles and “fences” he has given us for our own good. The postmodern flight to relativism has ushered us into a postmoral age. As if that weren’t bad enough, without the absolute standard of the Scriptures, the culture slowly deteriorates, becoming accustomed to each successive step downward. “With each new evidence of deterioration, we lament for a moment, and then become accustomed to it. . . . As behavior worsens, the community adjusts its standards so that conduct once thought reprehensible is no longer deemed so.”[90]

This downward trajectory of cultural standards places increasingly greater pressure on the church as it strives to maintain the clear moral imperatives of the Scriptures. Sadly, even those who are involved in the church are less and less influenced by their religious beliefs.

When the pollsters go on to question how beliefs influence life, it becomes clear that for many people “belief” is little more than religious assent. . . . They give conventional answers because they have never stopped to consider the implications of those stated beliefs for their manner of life. There is a disturbing gap between belief and personal co...